Across the versions
Timeline
OverviewThis archive distinguishes a work from its reprint or re-edited release. A new plot gets a separate entry; collections remain attached to their component stories. Original titles are kept beside translated editorial titles. Release years describe publication, not the characters’ age. Announcements never receive invented endings.
Story & key events
The book appeared in 1966. The Soviet puppet films followed in 1969, 1971, 1974 and 1983: the meeting and House of Friendship; birthday and playground; an interrupted holiday and environmental conflict; then learning to read and preparing a school. These are release dates, not four reliably dated years of the characters’ lives.
Later books expand the setting into business, policing, housing disputes and travel. The Japanese television branch began in 2009, followed by puppet-film assemblies released in different forms and territories. The 2019 studio-moving short and two separate 2020 animated shorts introduce further frames. The human Gena films began in 2023; their 2023 and 2024 holiday shorts belong to that branch.
The new animated bureau series started in 2025 and continued in 2026. Cheburashka 2 opened on 1 January 2026. Cheburashka 3 is announced for 1 January 2027 and remains unreleased at this archive’s 8 October 2026 cutoff. A date prefixed with ≤ means the work is verified by that edition date; its first publication still needs confirmation.
Place in the world
Keep five shelves separate: the books, Soviet puppet films, Japanese adaptations, new Russian animation and live action. Names and images travel between them, but events do not automatically transfer. A crocodile employee, a human grandfather and a bureau founder can be related interpretations without sharing a single life.