Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller

Ralph James is a timid young stamp collector from Montreal who stutters.

One day Tommy Tricker, a schoolmate and crafty stamp trader, offers him a set of rare stamps in exchange for a spare Bluenose stamp belonging to Ralph's father.

Ralph agrees, but Tommy swaps the stamps and runs off with the Bluenose.

He sells it at a stamp shop for $300 and uses the money to buy groceries for his poor family.

Ralph and his sister Nancy try to buy the stamp back, and the shop owners, taking pity on them, give Nancy an old stamp album for free.

Ralph, thinking it worthless, rips it up and finds hidden letters from Charles Merriweather, an 11-year-old boy from 1913. Charles hid his real, priceless collection in a stamp shop in Sydney, Australia.

The letter also contains a magic riddle that lets a person shrink into a stamp and travel by mail.

Tommy, eavesdropping, sets out after the collection too.

Ralph recites the riddle, turns into a tiny animated figure and boards a Mountie stamp on a letter to Australia.

But the letter changes hands and ends up with Tommy, who sticks the stamp on a postcard to Chen Tow, Nancy's pen pal in Hangzhou, China.

There, with the help of Chen Tow and his friend Mai Ling, Ralph passes a test of courage and is launched toward Sydney with a dragon kite.

In Sydney the stamp shop has become a bookstore, and a boy calling himself "Charles" arrived the day before.

Ralph and Cheryl, granddaughter of the late shop owner, go to her uncle "Mad Mike" and find that "Charles" is Tommy in disguise, caught trying to steal the album.

Ralph offers Mike a koala for his zoo in exchange for Tommy and the album, and the two boys are mailed home with the help of a kangaroo.

On the way Tommy notes that Ralph no longer stutters.

Back in Montreal, another Bluenose turns out to show a boy holding a case marked "Charles": Charles Merriweather has been trapped in the stamp for seven decades.

In the end he is freed, still 11 in body but 71 in years.

The film is the seventh in the Tales for All (Contes pour tous) series from Quebec's Les Productions La Fête and producer Rock Demers, created to make quality cinema for children and teens.

It was co-produced with Telefilm Canada and China Film Group, on a budget of about C$3 million.

As with his previous film, The Peanut Butter Solution, Michael Rubbo toured schools across Canada, acting out the story for children and filming improvised auditions.

Some 3,000 children auditioned, from Ottawa, Hamilton, Calgary, Vancouver and elsewhere.

Anthony Rogers (Tommy), Jill Stanley (Nancy) and Andrew Whitehead (Albert) came from Ottawa, Lucas Evans (Ralph) from Montreal and Paul Popowich (Cass) from Hamilton.

Of the main child actors, only Popowich went on to an acting career.

The film was shot in Canada, China and Rubbo's native Australia.

The mall chase, set to Rufus Wainwright's "I'm Running", was filmed at Montreal's Complexe Desjardins.

It combines live action with animated sequences and effects, in a world where an everyday object like a postage stamp becomes a gateway to travel around the globe.

The score was written by Anna, Jane and Kate McGarrigle.

Kate's son Rufus Wainwright made his screen debut here and contributed the song "I'm Running", and his sister Martha Wainwright sang "Tommy, Come Back".

An album came out on vinyl and cassette, with a narrator retelling the film in three parts alongside music and dialogue: Rubbo narrates the English version and Claire Pimparé the French one. In 2011 "I'm Running" was included in Wainwright's House of Rufus box set, alongside his songs from films such as Moulin Rouge, Shrek and Brokeback Mountain.

The film opened in Canadian theaters on 16 December 1988, with screenings sponsored by Vachon Bakery and Canada Post.

In the US it premiered on the Disney Channel on 10 November 1989 and aired there repeatedly through the 1990s. It was released on VHS by Family Home Entertainment, on DVD in 2006, and on Blu-ray in Canada in 2019, as a double feature with the sequel.

In Israel the film is known as "HaBul HaKasum" (The Magic Stamp). According to viewers' memories and nostalgic social-media discussions, it aired on Israeli television, probably with reruns.

However, no broadcast schedules have been found yet to confirm the channel, dates or number of airings, and it is not known whether it aired dubbed into Hebrew or with subtitles.

If you have information or a source, we would love to hear from you.

Noel Taylor of the Ottawa Citizen gave the film four stars, praising its "sense of anything-is-possible adventure" that children delight in. Henry Mietkiewicz of the Toronto Star called it "far and away the best family movie of the holiday season". Lin Connery of the Calgary Herald, on the other hand, wrote that it should have been cut down to a one-hour TV special, and mocked its product placement for Vachon snacks.

At the 1989 Genie Awards the film received two nominations, Michael Rubbo for original screenplay and Rufus Wainwright for the song "I'm Running", but won neither.

A sequel, The Return of Tommy Tricker, came out in 1994. There is no confirmation that it aired in Israel.

In 2009 a remake was announced as a co-production between La Fête and Anonymous Content, but nothing has been heard of it since.