King Rollo

King Rollo is a children's character, created by David McKee in 1980. He is the main character in a series of books, animations^[1] narrated by Ray Brooks, and a comic strip in the magazine Buttons. Thirteen episodes of the animation were produced in 1980 by McKee's own King Rollo Films, where the character is the company's mascot and namesake, and were originally shown as part of the pre-school 'See-Saw' strand.

Rollo himself is a childlike king who is always in need of advice and assistance from his friends. Among these are The Magician (a father figure); Cook (the king's cook, a mother figure, who was arguably the real ruler of the kingdom); his neighbour and girlfriend, Queen Gwen; King Frank; and Rollo's cat, Hamlet, who was generally portrayed as wiser than Rollo himself.^[2]

The animations used the same colourful cut-out paper look as McKee's other works, such as Mr Benn. The 2D animation style saved on production costs.^[3] The characters' legs would rotate outwards when walking until they were at right-angles to the sides of their body.^{[clarification needed]}