Good golly, Noddy’s back!

The latter are “in the style of” books—part of a broader rebranding that includes controversial changes to equally controversial elements in Blyton’s work. Blyton was a writer of her times, and alongside characters like Moonface and Silky are golliwogs—black dolls with spiky hair and exaggerated lips, now viewed with horror as caricatures à la Little Black Sambo. A golliwog, Mr. Golly, runs the garage in the Noddy books—or did, until he was replaced by the ethnically ambiguous Mr. Sparks. In one infamous tale, a golliwog asks Noddy to take him into the woods. The golliwog and his family then steal his car and his clothes—a frightening moment in Toyland history. In the new books, goblins, not gollies, double-cross him—though, as Rudd notes, that choice only makes Noddy seem dippier, because everyone knows goblins are bad!

Other changes: Dame Slap, in a post-spanking era, is Dame Snap. Gone are Fanny and Dick, hello Franny and Rick. Rumour has it that on U.S. TV, Big Ears almost became Whitebeard (surely an ageist slur?). The Famous 5 cartoon features Allie, a Californian who loves shopping and texting, and a villainous DVD pirate. The language of the books has changed, too, and in some cases the tweaks have been so extensive, and so unnecessary, Rudd thinks the company is “in danger of killing the goose with the golden egg.” “She’s often said to have a limited vocabulary,” he says, “and it strikes me as ironic that they’ve actually made it more limited. The word ‘becalmed’ was used in a Noddy work and it has been changed to ‘isn’t moving.’ ”

Blyton’s makeover has roused the ire of fans. “It’s adults interfering,” says Endecott, who runs Blyton-themed tours and a shop, Ginger Pop, that defiantly sells golliwogs.  (“I’ve had more black and mixed-race people buy golliwogs from me than white people who’ve complained,” she says, adding that the people who complain are almost always white.) She points out that Mr. Golly, for one, gave Noddy his first job, and car. “If you take it in the spirit in which it’s written, there is no offence.” Blyton is being watered down, she says—The Famous 5 TV show looks like Scooby-Doo.

But Blyton may not have disapproved entirely. Like every kidlit icon from Beatrix Potter to Rowling, she was a shrewd businesswoman, asking kids to write in about what they’d like to read, and often delivering it. “It was almost print-on-demand,” says Chorion’s Norton. One of the earliest niche marketers for kids, she wrote distinct series for each age group from three to 13—kids could truly grow up with Blyton—and in one nice bit of product placement Rudd saw, flogged the latest Famous Five book in a Secret Seven adventure. She almost out-Disneyed Disney, for no sooner had Noddy launched than merchandising took off: toys, pencil cases, puppet shows.

For the upcoming Noddy book, the challenge is in striking a balance between old and new. Smallwood, whose grandmother died before she was born, has been rereading the books in hopes of channelling Blyton. This is a writing debut for the primary school teacher. “But I’m not trying to write a brand-new Noddy book, I’m trying to write something in her honour,” she explains. “It would be bad to have written something that was totally modern and totally unfamiliar.”

The visuals will certainly be familiar. “It’s ink and watercolours, basically. No computers involved!” Tyndall chuckles. The 88-year-old painter has had the distinction of working with two generations of Blytons. He says he sees more in Noddy now than when he was drawing it, a young man in his twenties. “I like the goblins and what they represent, which is the challenge to established order,” he says. But then he trails off. “There’s something very basic about Noddy,” he says, “which I don’t try to analyze too much for fear of destroying it. When I was a child, I used to take toys to pieces and when I tried to put them together again there were always parts left over. And that taught me a lesson to not just take things apart.” The mysteries about Blyton linger: why she endures, the way her books somehow seem to add up to more than the sum of their words. But in the end the stories are perhaps best appreciated, and loved, just as they are—as we once were.