Flipper and Lopaka – The Secrets of Quetzo (1999)

Flipper the dolphin’s best friend is Lopaka, a young Polynesian boy, and they have many adventures in Quetzo, an ancient sunken city. One day, Lopaka finds an ancient carved stone buried near his village on the idyllic island of Iloka. The carvings reveal that the stone has great power, but it will also bring 50 years of bad luck to anyone who keeps it. The greedy giant octopus Dexter sees the ancient relic as the way to becoming the next great king, but Flipper and Lopaka triumph over Dexter and return the stone to its rightful place.

This is episode two from the first series of Flipper & Lopaka a successful Yoram Gross EM.TV 2D animated action-comedy series, very loosely based on the famous original US film and television live-action character ‘Flipper’. Producer Yoram Gross realised that using animation freed up the character of Flipper in a remarkable way. As he describes, ‘In the old series, Flipper was like an extra – he couldn’t speak and wasn’t heavily involved in the action … we gave him the chance to be the action hero of this new series.’

Series 1 of Flipper and Lopaka was first broadcast on the Seven Network in 2000.