Chapolim Colorado

Originally known as El Chapúlin Colorado in Mexico, he is a comedic character created by Roberto Gomez Bolaños. He starred in his own comedic show in the early 1970's, and in conjunction with other Bolaños characters in another program shortly after. It was when Bolaños programs were brought to other Latin American countries that Chapolim really became a mainstream celebrity. In Brazil, Sílvio Santos, owner of the nationally distributed TV station SBT, bought the rights to the series and started airing not only Chapolim episodes as its own series starting in 1984. He also brought another very popular Bolaños character, called Chavo del Ocho, or just Chaves. Both characters were played by Bolaños himself.

Chapolim is mainly a caricature of the comic book superhero - he is confident that he is doing what's good, but in the end, his crazy antics just get in the way. Armed with his trusty Bionic Mallet, he fights evil - or at least tries to - in all sorts of situations throught his TV series. He was known to be able to shrink in size by taking a special kind of pill, taking unsuspecting foes by surprise - at least he hoped he would. His most famous catch frase came when normal people that were in trouble asked "who is gonna defend me?", Chapolim would just jump out of nowhere and shout "I will!", generally followed by applauses from the audience in the theatre where the show was recorded - and also canned laughter and applauses.

Roberto Bolaños, now in his 70s, still regards Chapúlin Colorado as his favorite creation - so much that it went on to become a comic book in the 1980s and a cartoon series in the 1990s. Currently, a new cartoon series is in production, that uses the a cheaper type of animation in the form of Flash.