back to article Wallace and Gromit get the Google doodle treatment

Google's UK search tentacle has decided to ignore the fact that 4 November marks the day in 1890 that Edward, Prince of Wales, inaugurated the City & South London Railway* and instead is currently flourishing a Wallace and Gromit "doodle" to celebrate the pair's 20th anniversary. Google's Wallace and Gromit doodle Yes …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Neil 32
    Linux

    October?

    Have I jumped back a month in time? :-/

    And is it really 20 years? That would have made me... Still aged in single figures. I am worried now at how time has passed me by so quickly :(

    Penguin; because they're evil!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just noticed

    At google.co.uk (only), when using Safari (only), you get just the basic page - the extras bits around the edge load on mouse movement or tab.

    Why is Safari being singled out for what is quite a pretty effect?

  3. Mike Flugennock
    Thumb Up

    no such luck here in the Colonies...

    ...where The Evil One is serving up a custom masthead featuring Big Bird. Huh. What a letdown.

  4. Mike Echo
    Thumb Up

    Quite fitting too

    It's good to see the anti-pesto lads honoured. I still wear my W&G t-shirts with pride.

    "You'll be hunted down like, well... a dog." Love it.

  5. richietheg
    Coat

    erm...

    If this is to celebrate Wallace and Gromit...

    ... why is the first G represented by the Pixar logo?

  6. Wemb
    Alert

    Oh crikey..

    That makes me feel old... I had no idea it was twenty years old... Blimey..

  7. Geoffrey Summerhayes
    Linux

    Sigh..

    Here in the Great White North we get Big Bird for Sesame Streets 40th, would've preferred W&G. The Wrong Trousers is my fav. Still get a shiver everytime I see a penguin looking around with cold, black eyes, creepy little buggers.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Just noticed

    Has been working for .com with Firefox for quite a while now. Like it too.

  9. Alan 6
    Happy

    No wallace & grommit for me

    As I sit here in Rochdale I see Big Bird's legs as part of the Google logo.

    For reasons known only to our IT department, our IP address sets us deep in the land of the cheese eating surrender monkeys, so the ggogle.co.fr logo celebrates "40ème anniversaire de Rue Sésame"

  10. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    More cheese Gromit?

    Cracking!

  11. Tim 48

    @Mike

    I've changed my home page to www.google.co.uk specifically b/c of that. I may be a redneck gun toting 'Merikan but I'll take W&G over the muppets on Sesame St. any day....

    Now off to find me some cheese.....

  12. KenBW2
    Flame

    Title

    "Google's UK search tentacle has decided to ignore the fact that 4 November marks the day in 1890 that Edward, Prince of Wales, inaugurated the City & South London Railway"

    So some railway in London is more important than something loved by people all over the country? Would that purely be because it's in London?

    Not the centre of the universe you know!

  13. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Coat

    Ugh. Bid Bird

    Sesame Street still sucks, even though Jim Henson was a god. I'm changing to www.google.co.uk too! I wonder if this'll show up on Google's metrics?

    Gettin' my coat and leavin'...

  14. Stevie

    Er...

    The undergound railway thing is on its 109th anniversary.

    We typically only bother when the number is a round one, so the Mornington Crescent community can go bugnuts *next* year without feeling left out this year.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @"No wallace & grommit for me" / Alan 6

    Might be proxies?? Long ago when I worked for EDS all t'Internet traffic went via proxies in Texas, and so got US-centric content a lot of the time... :-(

  16. Kevin Campbell
    Unhappy

    what I want to know is

    where (in the former colonies) can I find Wensleydale cheese?

    Would love to try it. Was also quite disappointed when the missus vetoed naming the new pooch Gromit. (Probably just as well. He turned out to be hyperactive and dumber than dirt)

  17. MeRp

    strange

    US, France, and Japan get Sesame Street's 40th anniversary, so do India and mexico, but with custom pictures (not Big Bird's legs), UK and Germany get Wallace and Gromit. Looks like SE asia, most of latin america, switzerland and australia get neither.

    So a lot of this makes sense... except.. Germany... is Wallice and Gromit really that popular there?

  18. shadowphiar
    WTF?

    Can somebody explain this to me?

    According to the official Wallace & Gromit web site, their first short film "A Grand Day Out was finally finished and transmitted on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve, 1990 - 6 years after production began!"

    As November 4th, 1989 is clearly neither the transmission date nor the start of production, what exactly are we celebrating the 20th anniversary of?

  19. MartinLee
    Go

    www.google.co.uk/ncr

    If you're being bounced to another google domain to the one you want based on some sort of geographic IP oddity, add /ncr to the domain. Stands for No Country Redirect.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @KenBW2

    If you'd read all the huge article and in particular the Bootnote instead of flying off into indignant provincial mode you would know the answer.

  21. GreenOgre

    @Kevin Campbell

    Just a little to the North, The Great White North, I found a nice bit of Wensleydale down the local supermarket.

    Aye up, eh?

  22. CeeTee

    Geoffrey Summerhayes

    So where in the Great White North do you see penguins?

    Methinks we have an imposter in our midst!

    From the Great White North (West)

  23. morph2008
    Thumb Up

    Wensleydale

    Sorry - I know this is OT but you can find Wensleydale in Food Market, and it's cracking cheese (but pricey).

  24. Martin Usher
    Go

    Some pretty weird ones...

    India and Japan don't do legs, South Africa's got a very strange Muppet -- you could spend hours going through the nations.

    Buying good cheese in the US is a bit of an art form but you can find reputable stores that carry decent cheese -- Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, that sort of place. Don't expect too much from the local supermarket ( "American Cheese" and cheese-flavored products such as Cheese-Wiz are a whole different class of sort-of-food).

  25. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I keep missing the doodles

    The price I pay for using http://ipv6.google.com and its bouncing letters I guess.

  26. Mike Flugennock
    Pint

    @Tim48

    Thanks for the heads-up, man.

    Actually, I tried the link in the article, got google.co.uk, and there were W&G happily tinkering away.

    True, Jim Henson was a genius -- even though I was already technically too old when Sesame Street first got popular, I still used to watch it for the puppet work -- but Nick Park is an even bigger genius.

    Actually, as much as I dig Wallace'n'Gromit, one of my favorite Nick Park pieces was one featuring interviews with zoo animals speaking in the accents of their native habitats; the funniest bit was an interview with a leopard speaking in this elegant, sexy Brazilian accent. Too damn' much.

    A wedge of Stilton and some crackers with that pint, please...

  27. jake Silver badge

    @Kevin Campbell

    "where (in the former colonies) can I find Wensleydale cheese?"

    If you are in the largish southern-most portion of North America, Whole Foods in Sonoma, CA carries it. I assume the rest of the Whole Foods Markets nation wide can access the same source. Ask for it at your local WFM, I did, squeaky wheel & all that. (I can get Dogfish Head beer at Whole Foods too ... For you Brits, that's a right-coast micro brew that's not generally available on the left coast).

    Or get it from the source, probably cheaper even including shipping:

    http://www.wensleydale.co.uk/

    It's not quite what I remember from my teenage years in Yorkshire, but it's close. And for GAWD/ESS'S sake, don't get the stuff infested with fruit or vegetation or smoke! If I want fruit with my cheese, I'll cut up a Gravenstein myself! Now if I can only convince 'em to carry Red Leicester ...

  28. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: @Tim48

    "And we don like potatoes. We like meat. And we like fresh meat."

  29. Jad

    Berlin Wall!

    20 years ago Wallace and Gromit first appeared, a week later the Berlin wall fell down!

    Coincidence? I think not!

    :)

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like