Ferenc Sajdik, Hungarian cartoonist best known for his beloved animated series Pom Pom meséi and A nagy ho-ho-horgász, passed away on Friday, 19 September, at age 95. News of his passing just broke in Hungarian media today, 23 September, after it was confirmed by the head of the Caricaturist Department of the National Association of Hungarian Journalists (MÚOSZ).
Sajdik was born on 21 August 1930 in Neuenhagen bei Berlin, Germany, to Hungarian parents, a mother working as a ballet dancer and a father working as a jockey. Given their professions, his parents spent a lot of time abroad, which is why Sajdik was born in Germany and completed his elementary school education in Greece.
He attended secondary schools in Hungary that specialized in industrial graphic design, originally training to become a printing press operator. As part of his studies, Sajdik drew his first caricatures—an assignment connected to his printing work—and immediately discovered his passion for the craft. However, he started his career as a lithographer in 1949 and did not start regularly publishing his caricatures until 1960, when his work started to appear in the Hungarian humour magazine Ludas Matyi.
He co-created the cartoon Pom Pom meséi about a little girl and her talking, shapeshifting puffy object with famous Hungarian children’s book author István Csukás in 1978. It ran on Hungarian state television with new episodes from 1980 to 1984.
In 1984 Sajdik and Csukás released their second iconic cartoon, A nagy ho-ho-horgász, about a fisherman and his talking fishing bait, which ran until 1990.
Sajdik received the highest civilian honour, the Kossuth Award, from the Hungarian state in 2013. He has also contributed his drawings to around 300 books during his long and successful career as an artist.
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