The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are a fictitious group of short, furry, rodent-like creatures who clear up the rubbish that 'the everyday folk leave behind' and make good use of it in their burrow. The recycling community of Wombles which began life in a series of children's books was far larger than the television version admits. The smaller group consisted of Great Uncle Bulgaria the patriarch, Tobermory the builder, and Madame Cholet, the French cook, who oversaw the antics of the younger Wombles: Orinoco, Wellington, Tomsk and Bungo (all named from Uncle Bulgaria's atlas). The young Wombles invariably caused havoc each episode whether through Tomsk's stupidity, or Orinoco's inventions, and found great possibilities in the rubbish they would find.

British Product

In many ways The Wombles exemplifies a particularly British style of animation and children's programme which was prevalent in the Seventies but which has since succumbed to a more Americanised economy of detail and fast-paced action. The pace of the episodes is incredibly slow, and can only be described as relaxed. Time is taken to endow the narrative with detail which is rarely seen since the Seventies. Characters, for example, do not simply pick up a discarded newspaper, they scan its cover for anything of interest, drop it by accident, or it might nearly get blown away from them. This contrasts greatly with more economic animations in which nothing happens which does not drive the narrative.
The characters themselves are filled with this detail. Voiced by Bernard Cribbins, a few of the characters have difficulty communicating clearly and all of them are given to unnecessary procrastination and inaudible muttering. This again denies any economy of dialogue, and hence narrative. There is also something of a British, and specifically an English, sensibility to this relaxed pace, and attention to detail, which is expressed more clearly in the characters. Uncle Bulgaria is a wise old Scot, dressed in tartan and always sharing old tales with the younger Wombles. Wellington appears as a characature of the Oxbridge student with his fly-away red scarf and floppy hat. The Wombles' reactions are relaxed and controlled, as they find calm mirth rather than laughter in their practical jokes. Overall there is a refrain to The Wombles which is reminiscent of a stereotypical English nature, the Wombles espousing decorum at all times and considering their greatest sin to be eating scones when they are too hot.
The refrain and disregard for economy of narrative detail is an aspect shared by other animated children's programmes of the Seventies, including Trumpton, The Magic Roundabout, the Clangers, and most clearly Mr. Benn. In this respect they all expressed a purely British aesthetic and may be seen to have formed a golden age of British product which has been all but lost in the latter two decades.
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