The Clangers is an iconic stop motion animated children's television series made by Smallfilms, the company set up by Oliver Postgate (writer and narrator) and Peter Firmin (modelmaker, animator and illustrator).

Firmin designed the characters and his wife knitted and 'dressed' the Clangers. Music (which was often significant in the stories, as well as being theme and incidental music) was by Vernon Elliot.

The first episode was broadcast by the BBC on November 16, 1969 and a further twenty-five episodes were made. The twenty sixth episode was broadcast on November 10, 1972 and the final Clangers programme was a four minute election special on October 10, 1974. (This last episode has not been seen since its original broadcast, although it still exists in the BBC archive. A short clip is available at the BBC's website)

The programme featured a number of small creatures living in peace and harmony on, and in a small, hollow planet far far away, nourished by Blue String Pudding, and Green Soup harvested from the planet's volcanic soup wells by the Soup Dragon.

The Clangers looked similar to mice, anteaters and, from their pink colour, pigs. They wore clothes reminiscent of Roman armour and spoke in whistles.

The word "Clanger" is said to derive from the sound made by opening the metal cover of one of the creatures' crater-like burrows. Each of these is covered with a door made from an old metal dustbin lid, which is there to protect against meteorite impacts.

The first recorded sighting of a Clanger was in the 1967 Noggin the Nog book The Moon Mouse.