Hopla
Belgian no-dialogue animated series for infants.
Hopla is a Belgian animated children's television series created by Bert Smets and produced by Bert Smets Productions. The show features the rabbit Hopla and his friends—the pig Onki, the bear Nina, and the kitten Lola—and is aimed at babies, toddlers, and preschoolers between 0–2 years old. It has no dialogue, with the only spoken word being the show's name, and was animated using Strata 3D.
- Field
- Children's television
- Nationality
- Belgian
- Known for
- No-dialogue animated series for infants
- First aired
- 2 April 2000
- Creator
- Bert Smets
- Production company
- Bert Smets Productions
Lore & Background
Hopla first aired on Ketnet, a Flemish television channel, on 2 April 2000, and quickly became popular. The series has been broadcast in 31 countries, including Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Spain, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In Portugal, the show aired on public channel RTP2 with some dialogue added to briefly describe each scene's contents.
Reader's Guide
Hopla holds significance as a spiritual successor to the earlier series Tik Tak, continuing the tradition of dialogue-free programming for very young children. Its success is reflected in strong home entertainment sales in Belgium, with over 300,000 copies sold, and book-related merchandise sales approaching 700,000. The series expanded internationally through a distribution deal with NCircle Entertainment, a subsidiary of Alliance Entertainment LLC, signed in 2007, leading to its broadcast on BabyFirst in the United States in December 2007. The show's simple, colorful characters and lack of dialogue make it accessible to infants and toddlers across different languages and cultures, contributing to its wide reach.
Did You Know?
- The show has no dialogue; the only spoken word is the show's name.
- Hopla was animated using Strata 3D.
- In Portugal, the show aired on RTP2 with added dialogue to describe scenes.
- Home entertainment titles in Belgium have sold over 300,000 copies.
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