When we’re young, so many mysterious, adult things enter our lives and we, oblivious in our innocence, never recognize them for what they truly are.

Thank God.

Then, one day Jackie Paper decides he has better things to do and turns his back on the world of childhood, perhaps forever. He turns the key in the lock and opens the door to adulthood.

Welcome to the machine, kid.

From the (disad-)vantage point of the grown up world, things look a little different. As there’s a subtle yet crucial difference in perspective from a grassy knoll to, say, a Book Depository window, so too adulthood’s viewpoint casts a different light and different shadows on old, familiar scenes.

Like the psychadelic magic mushroom land of HR Pufnstuf.

Pufnstuf was based upon the acid-induced dreams of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who claimed to have had the drug injected into him by his arch-nemesis, Antonio Salieri. During his hallucinogen-induced trip, Mozart completed all of his most widely-acclaimed works, including The Magic Flute, an opera about a magic flute.

Cooke took the concept of the magic flute and placed it loosely into the hands of a swinging, happy-go-lucky teenager named “Jack…”

The BBC recently announced plans to produce a new “reality” television series based on H.R. Pufnstuf, entitled H.R. Pufnstuff Idol. In the new show, contestants will be set afloat on a foam-rubber island ruled by the foam-rubber dragon. One team will try and protect a magic flute, while the other team tries to steal it. The team that fails to execute “Jimmy” will lose the immunity challenge, and it must select the weakest link who gets “Witchy Poo’d” upon.

The winner of each episode will win a position on the Dancing on Ice judging panel, a new washer and dryer, and all the Marmite they can eat. The second place winner wins a date with classic British beauty gone horribly bad, Jayne Torvill.

It will be a ratings monster.

No, I’m not sorry I said it.

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