Who were the fictional characters who influenced you as a child?

Some current teenagers told The Age who they think were important to them.

“In the lead-up to the event (next month’s Teen Gala being staged by the Wheeler Centre) participants were asked to write about the characters who helped them find their way. The results might surprise you.”

Fictional heroes (clockwise, from top left): Zuri and her father in Hair Love, Jake the Dog from Adventure Time, Barbie, Robin Buckley from Stranger Things and the title character from Kiki’s Delivery Service.CREDIT:VASHTI HARRISON, CARTOON NETWORK, AP, TINA ROWDEN/NETFLIX, STUDIO GHIBLI

In the article, teenagers talk about the influence of these characters.

It got me thinking about who was important to me.

Here are the ones I remember. Looking back to the 1950s, this is probably a fairly representative group. Significantly, no women heroes seem to have appeared to during this time.

My first three are a Superman who really did wear his underpants on the outside, Dan Dare, a space pilot with little understanding of physics and Rockfist Rogan an RAF pilot and boxing champion.

My next three are Robyn Hood (played by Eroll Flynn, who I later found out was a man of dubious character and not really fit to be a childhood hero), Biggles and Deadwood Dick (you wouldn’t get away with a character called that today.) Deadwood spent 15 weekly episodes of a black-and-white serial pursuing a masked villain known as the Skull. The final episode and showdown was shown to a packed matinée audience at the Ngaio Hall in1952.

This is the Ngaio hall which doubled as a picture theatre in the 1950s.

I remember my parents would not let me go to the afternoon matinée pictures if the sun was shining. They told me to go out and play which was hard because most of the other kids had gone to the pictures.