Childhood Cartoons

A snack on your knees, the TV on, and the theme song belted out before the episode even began. For a lot of Tunisians, childhood has a soundtrack: cartoons dubbed into Arabic. A childhood cartoons poster pins that feeling to the wall.

Japanese heroes who spoke Arabic

Many of these series came from Japan, but we knew them in classical Arabic, with theme songs rewritten and sung in our own language. Damascus's Venus Centre studio remains famous for this work. Captain Tsubasa became Captain Majid, the footballer with impossible shots who sent every kid running onto the nearest patch of dirt. Future Boy Conan, Hayao Miyazaki's 1978 series, became Adnan wa Lina, with its soft watercolours and post-catastrophe world. Grendizer, for its part, had won over the Arab world through Lebanese television. There was Remi, the orphan on the road, and later Detective Conan.

French-speaking screens knew some of the same heroes by other names: Goldorak for Grendizer, Olive et Tom for Captain Tsubasa. Two parallel childhoods, often lived in the same living room.

Spacetoon, launched on 15 March 2000, carried that culture on to the next generation. Across the region people talk about "كرتون زمان", the cartoons of back then, as shared treasure.

What that nostalgia looks like on a wall

The cartoons of that era share a recognisable palette: pastel or bold colours, hand-drawn outlines, huge skies, expressive eyes. As posters they evoke a feeling as much as a character. The best visuals play on mood: a football against an orange sky, a giant robot backlit, a silhouette on an island.

Which room?

A student bedroom, a home office, a café that wants to make customers smile: these images speak to everyone. Pair them with other memories from our 90s collection, or with the newer worlds of our anime posters.

Printed in Tunisia and paid for on delivery. You supply the theme song.