Subscribe!The Gingerbread Man (1992)
Originally posted on 20 June 2026First episode title: The Arrival
How familiar with the show am I?: I had never heard of it.
This week's show is another sweet little British stop-motion thing, this time focusing on the residents of a shelf in a kitchen, including the titular Gingerbread Man.
As well as the Gingerbread Man, this show features salt and pepper containers called Salt and Pepper, a cuckoo clock's cuckoo named Herr Von Cuckoo, and a teabag called Old Bag.
At midnight, Herr Von Cuckoo announces the time, and Pepper sneezes herself awake. This tips an envelope onto Salt, who wakes up from a nightmare about a storm at sea, so he and Cuckoo move the envelope out of the way. Then they all notice a new presence: a gingerbread man, freshly made and currently inert, without a face. They decide to make him one - raisins for eyes and a slice of cherry for a mouth - and then a sprinkling of Pepper's pepper wakes him up with a sneeze. He turns out to be very energetic and starts running around all over the place, waking up Old Bag who lives in the teapot. She's annoyed, and points out to the Gingerbread Man that if the Big Ones (humans) made him then they're obviously going to eat him. Unbothered, Gingerbread Man puts on the radio and he and his new friends start dancing, until they hear the Big Ones coming and scramble to get back to their stationary positions. We hear a man and woman come into the room, the woman reassuring the man that he was imagining the noise. She also tells him that she baked him a gingerbread man, but he decides it looks too nice to eat and can be a decoration instead. The Big Ones leave, and everyone celebrates the fact that the Gingerbread Man isn't going to be eaten, except Old Bag who's still grumpy.
The Gingerbread Man himself is great, filled with the joy of life from the moment he's conscious. He is perhaps slightly oblivious - he keeps dancing while everyone else is scrambling to hide from the Big Ones, and only makes it down just in time.
Salt is characterised as an old sailor, you know, like a "salty seadog". As a result, he speaks with the stereotypical pirate voice and accent. And he's even designed so that his body is decorated like a sailor's outfit!
Pepper is played up as a refined lady, perhaps so that her pepper grinder body is perceived as an elegant gown. She and Salt both slide around the shelf like Daleks - and if you've heard the story of how the Doctor Who production team came up with the Dalek design, you'll know that's very appropriate!
Herr Von Cuckoo, because of Switzerland's famous association with clocks, has a traditional Swiss outfit and an exaggerated accent to match. He's quite a bit bigger than Salt and Pepper, and his movements around them are quite cumbersome - as in, this is intended by the animators, not an issue with the animation. The fact that he's the most articulated character actually means he shows off the skill of the animators better than any of the other characters.
And the Old Bag is purely a pun on the phrase "old bag" meaning a horrible old woman. Presumably they just felt like the show needed a bit of antagonism, even though the plot would work without her. She does serve the role well though, being perhaps the most over-the-top character in the show.
Amusingly, someone producing the stop motion animation must have realised that the Dole logo was too visible on the box of raisins, so they've added a horizontal line to make it say "Bole" instead.
I love the animation of everyone dancing, especially the Gingerbread Man himself. It's so playful!
The Big Ones, as you may have inferred, are only heard and not seen, meaning the show never breaks from pure stop motion unlike The Amazing Adventures of Morph.
This show was lovely! The stop motion is well-done and the characters are charming.
Want to talk about cartoons? Or perhaps you have some feedback about the site? Whichever it is, please get in touch!