The Wombles are fictional characters created by British author Elisabeth Beresford, originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. Wombles are pointy-nosed furry creatures (though the characters in the original books resembled ordinary 'teddy bears') that live in burrows, where they help the environment by recycling rubbish in useful and ingenious ways. This "green" message was ahead of its time in the 1970s, though shared at the time by the popular science-fiction programme Doctor Who.
