The Mézga Family (in Hungarian Mézga család) is a fictional family from three animated TV series made by Pannónia Film Studio in Hungary between 1969 and 1978. Scripts for the series were written by József Romhányi and József Nepp. Nepp also served as the film director. The series proved to be very popular, reaching cult status and televised, among others, in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, The Netherlands and both German states. The series still regularly appear on television. Each consists of 13 episodes. The Family The family consists of Géza, the father, a comical and inept figure, his wife Paula who actually dominates family affairs, pubertal daughter Kriszta and 12-year-old son Aladár, a child prodigy. The cat Maffia and a dog, Blöki accompany the family. Dr. Máris, their cynical neighbour, is regularly and involuntarily involved in disasters surrounding the family. The name "Mézga" means glue, mucilage or tree gum in Hungarian and was renamed as rodina Smolíkova in Czech, which is a surname (derived from "smůla", i.e. "tree gum" or "bad luck") used also in fairy tales, La famiglia Mezil in Italian, Familie Metzger in German, which means butcher, Семејството Смола in Macedonian, Семейство Мейзга in Bulgarian, Família Mézga/Mesga in Portuguese, and Miazgovci in Slovak. In Dutch, however, they were quite generically named De familie Sanders; which has no further meaning. The Series The Mézga family The first series was shot in 1968/1969 under the name Üzenet a jövőből – A Mézga család különös kalandjai (A message from the future – The fantastic adventures of the Mézga family). The family makes contact with MZ/X, their descendant from the 30th century, with whom child prodigy Aladár made a contact. MZ/X sends them, through time, various hypermodern gadgets which invariably result in a disaster. (An example is when MZ/X sends them something that makes the fruits in the Mézga's fruit garden grow to exceptional size. The family is happy with the enormous fruits until they realize that they forgot to kill the insects and other parasites, and they are chased away by gigantic locusts and worms. In another episode a house cleaning robot destroys the furniture because he doesn't understand commands in 20th century Hungarian language.) Episodes usually end with Paula's catch phrase "Why didn't I marry Pisti Hufnágel?", implying that she often regrets she chose Géza over another suitor. In the third series she finally accepts that Hufnágel is not what