The Polka Dot Door

The Polka Dot Door is an educational show for children aired in Canada.

The show features stuffed toys named Humpty and Dumpty (who are egg shaped), Marigold- a gangly doll and Bear, who's a bear.

Every episode revolves around a theme, like Dress-Up Day or Imagination Day and the toys act out their parts with the help of the host and or hostess of the show.

Every episode features a visit from the Polkaroo, a story and some sort of issue requiring a resolution for children to watch and many Canadian children have been brought up on it.

Low-budget kids' show made sometime in the mid-1980's for TVOntario. Featured the usual array of craft making, dress-up and play as found on shows like Captain Kangaroo.

There were always two hosts, a man and a woman, but the actors changed frequently throughout the series. Unchanged were the "talking" plush toys. There was a teddy bear named "Bear" a little girl doll named "Marigold", and two eggs named "Humpty" and "Dumpty"

The term "talking" should be used very lightly, as none of the stuffed animals had animatronic parts or puppet orifices. They just sat there. They didn't even have their own voices. When a stuffed animal would "talk," one of the hosts would lean over to the animal and pretend it was talking very quietly...

"What's that Bear? You want a peanut butter sandwich?"

There was one character that had a voice, (besides the hosts): the Polkaroo. The Polkaroo was an eight foot tall white and green creature vaguely related to a kangaroo. It went around going "Polkaroo! Polkaroo!" making a mess of the set or doing some other very silly things. The deal with it was that only one host would see it, (the woman host, because the other host was usually in the suit!) After the Polkaroo would do his bit, he would leave and the other host would enter to exclaim,

"The Polkaroo was here, and I missed him again?" This happened nearly every show.

The other major attraction was the looking-through of the polka dot door. Yes, there actually was a polka dot door and when it came time the camera would zoom up to it, one of the dots would open, and through the magic of blue screen we'd see a movie about a factory or something. Kinda like looking at a Teletubby's stomach, but they'd only show the movie once as the producers must have assumed that their young viewers had some brains or something.

And of course, here's the theme song, stuck in my brain from repeated viewing:

The polka dot door
The polka dot door
Let's look through
The polka dot door
With songs and stories and so much more
(boop-de-boop ba-doop doop)
The polka dot door!

Actually it was quite a good show.