Olly The Little White Van review

Picture the scene - the start of a long two week holiday (for me and the kids); Mummy's got a stinking rotten cold with a bunged up nose and pounding headache and wants some peace and quiet; it's pouring hard outside and has been all day so cabin fever is starting to set in and they're all squabbling. 

That's when being a reviewer is a wonderful thing because I just looked through my "to be reviewed" box and plucked out a brand new DVD they'd never seen before. As you can see from the picture, the two littlies were glued to the screen and that left Sophie playing Mario Party 9 (which we reviewed here) in peace. Phew !

Now, I have to admit, we'd never watched Olly the Little White Van before but the Madhouse Mini-Testers were enthralled, right from the first episode. The 3D animation reminded me of Postman Pat and the basic idea isn't hugely original, following the Cars/Bob The Builder/Roary The Racing Car/Thomas the Tank Engine tradition of talking vehicles getting into fun and naughty scrapes with their friends. But the Madhouse Mini-Testers told me that Olly isn't like the others because "he does things that cars don't really do like playing football" ! Another huge plus point for the show is that the voice of Olly is provided by none other than the inimitable, effervescent Justin Fletcher.

They both loved the catchy theme tune and got up to dance along, soon joining in with the words "Olly the little white van, helping his friends wherever he can, Olly the Little White Van, always around to give a helping hand" ! And that says it all really - he's a lovely character with great morals, always ready to help out whenever he can. He may get into lots of adventures as he travels around Bumpton, meeting a whole host of human and four-wheeled inhabitants, but his heart is always in the right place.

We were sent two review discs of series 2, each one containing 13 five-minute episodes. I put on the first disc and told the Madhouse Mini-Testers to tell me when they'd had enough - they watched the whole disc in one sitting and would have watched the other one too if I hadn't said it was time to take advantage of a break in the rain to go out and get some fresh air at the park ! The first thing they said when they got up this morning though was "Can we watch some more Olly The Little White Van ?"! They then proceeded to sit through the whole of disc 2 !

If you love the sound of the programme and want to find out more, you can follow Olly on twitter and facebook. They are also on the lookout for more mummy bloggers to review the series so get in touch with them on facebook or twitter if you're interested. If you haven't got a blog, look out for series 3 that will be starting on May 8th on CITV. (It's on every day  at 9.45 am and 12.45 pm.) There will also be an Olly app released in a couple of weeks and you can take part in a fab competition to get your kids singing along with the theme tune (it's so catchy, it won't be hard !).

for more information : http://www.ollythelittlewhitevan.co.uk/

Disclaimer : We received review discs of series 2 in order to write the review.

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