Whilst rummaging around in some old LEGO boxes I found this guy above. Larger than a minifigure and with a kind of ball jointed head - he was missing his baguette, which is a shame because look how happy he is up there, just walking around with some bread, dreaming of owning his own rocket pack. Happy days.For the life of me I couldn't remember what this was or where it had come from. Bless the age we live in as a quick trip to the interwebs and all was revealed. He's Rufus Rabbit, and he's just one of the many colourful characters from LEGO Fabuland.And then it all came back to me!In 1979 LEGO launched Fabuland, a range of sets aimed at younger children and intended to bridge the gap between Duplo and regular LEGO. Fabuland was a character based line full of anthropomorphic animals and I remembered, that even as a young child, I always thought they were kinda weird and creepy looking. I mean look at this......That's Peter Pig, he's seemingly murdered one of the other Fabuland residents (let's call him Timothy Turkey) and will be serving him for dinner.Here he goes again...Peter's changed outfits. Clever pig, burn the evidence!For a range aimed at pre-school children, Fabuland is really quite bizarre. It's like if Hunter S. Thompson had designed a range of toddler's LEGO whilst high on hallucinogenics. But then the 70's were a very different time. Case in point, here's Marjorie Mouse, described as "the happy little housewife"......what 70s child wouldn't aspire to livedream? A housewife with not only their own vacuum, but a lovely carpet beater too!Apart from Marjorie, everyone in Fabuland seemed to have a job. For instance here is Harry Horse busy working at Clara Cow's Ice Cream Emporium......Clara always has fresh milk on tap for her ice cream! Yum.LEGO didn't stop with just the brick play sets, there were also Fabuland storybooks and a clothing range, and in 1987, long long before Ninjago, Fabuland got their own TV series...Going under the title "Edward And Friends", these 5 minute stop-motion animated stories were LEGO's first foray into animation and television in general. Bernard Cribbins provided the voice-over, and they were written by Michael Cole with music by Mike Batt. A kinda Wombles reunion.You know, I can kid around on Fabuland a lot because I think they look odd - for instance......here's Paulette Poodle, she borrowed Marjorie's vacuum and is now thinking "Oh Shit! I've just Hoovered up the hatchlings!" - But what do I know? They did great business for LEGO, with the last in the range released in 1989.Some elements originally designed for Fabuland have turned up in other themes over the years, including LEGO Friends, Harry Potter and Spongebob Squarepants, and maybe, just maybe they inspired another popular range...Think about it, Chima is essentially Fabuland at war!To play us out,here's the Fabuland Big Band. On tuba it's 'murdering' Peter Pig (who's still on the run and changed his outfit again) with accompaniment on the snare drum by Gabriel Gorilla.What kind of monsters would listen to a band consisting of nothing but a drummer and tuba player? These kind...