The Mole (Krtek)
Mole (Czech: "Krtek", "Krteček") is an animated character in a series of cartoons created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler. The premiere of the first short film with Mole took place at the Venice Film Festival in 1957. Since its inception, the cartoon has gained enormous popularity in many Central European countries, as well as India, China, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Iran, Iraq, and Japan. History. Krtek was first seen in 1956 in Prague, when Miler wanted to create a children's cartoon about how flax is processed. He wanted a strong Disney influence  to the cartoon by choosing an animal for the leading role, and decided to pick a mole after stumbling over a molehill during a walk. The first film, called ""Jak krtek ke kalhotkám přišel"" (""How the mole got his trousers""), had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1957, where it was awarded two Golden Lions. Production of further episodes started in 1963 and since then, around fifty episodes have been created. The first episode of the cartoon was narrated, but Miler wanted the cartoon to be understood in every country of the world, so he decided to use  his daughters as voice actors, reducing the speech to short non-figurative exclamations in order to express the mole's feelings and world perception. Miler's daughters also became the bottleneck of the creation process as they were the ones who got to see the whole film first, thus Miler was able to decide whether the message of the movie was able to get to children or not. In the United Kingdom, the cartoons were transmitted by the BBC with English narration by Colin Jeavons. Recent developments. Inclusion on US Space Shuttle flight. On May 16, 2011, a plush toy  of Krtek was present on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour, where it accompanied the U.S. astronaut Andrew J. Feustel, whose wife is of Czech ancestry, on the STS-134 mission. US toy market plans. In May 2012, Bloomberg announced that Apple Inc. is planning to help Krtek enter the $21 billion U.S. toy market for the first time. Exporting the six-decade-old “Little Mole” through new media is a first step toward establishing the most popular Czech animated icon in America to spur sales of books, movies, and toys. Mascot. Mole was the mascot for the 2015 European Athletics  Indoor Championships in Prague, and was subsequently used to promote the Federation's Athletics for Children programme. Alfa Romeo Racing partnership. On May 23, 2019, Alfa Romeo Racing, a Formula One team, announced Krtek as the new team partner. Frédéric Vasseur, principal of the team, said that the goal of the partnership is to capture the imagination of hundreds of thousands of children and get them closer to the sport using Krtek's big follower base all over the world. Mole's iconic figure is appearing on the sidepods of the cars for the rest of the 2019 season. CGI  adaptation. In 2016, CCTV Animation and Little Mole a.s. (founded by Zdeněk Miler's granddaughter, Karolína Milerová) created a remake version called "Krtek a Panda". The show ran until 2019. Music. Music plays an important role in the cartoons, since the characters almost never utter more than emotional sounds, the most common of which is "Ahoj!" ("Hello" in Czech). The original series' music uses acoustic and electric musical instruments, rather than synthesized ones. Composers