Heidi, the classic tale of the Swiss girl living in the mountains. The story is very popular in Asia and there was a kids' cartoon adaptation in 1974 by a Japanese animation studio. I thought the 2015 3d series also involved Japanese animators, though it turns out that one was produced in and for European TV.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070968/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4346362/

Heidi also became infamous here in the US in 1968, when a TV broadcast version of it pre-empted the end of a close football game, which went down in history as "the Heidi game." The furor that resulted led to changes in the way the TV networks managed their operations. The full story is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game.

My favorite part about this story is that they would have actually let the football game keep running if so many people hadn't been calling in about it:

> NBC executives had originally ordered that Heidi begin at 7:00 p.m. EST, but then decided to allow the game to air to its conclusion. However, communicating this revised plan to the technicians running NBC's master control proved impossible – as 7 p.m. approached, NBC's switchboards were jammed by viewers phoning to inquire about the night's schedule, preventing the planned change from being communicated.

Heidi! Yeah I watched that anime as a kid dubbed in Afrikaans too, good times. Well they were often tragic! Lots of tears etc.

Heidi was a fixture on South African TV in the 1980/1990's. Dubbed in Afrikaans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S9NQ4NGiGY

Same for Niels Holgerson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atq032t1wAQ

Heidi is however very well known in Switzerland, too.

In contrast to the Dog of Flanders, who is much less widely known in Flanders.

Owned and produced by a company from Flanders in fact.

https://www.studio100.tv/activities/animation/index.html

Dinner for One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_for_One

This is a big cultural thing that happens once in a while. See:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GermansLoveDavid...

Another example is 'dinner for one', an ancient British theater play/sketch that is on Germany a new years tradition.

An interesting one to me was always this Italian comic that was extremely popular in Yugoslavia but hardly anywhere else. It’s called Alan Ford https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Ford_(comics). I wish I could get some copies now. I loved that dark humour as a kid.

It's still in print in Yugoslavia, you can get old copies at basically any newsstand.

Sugar Man is a good one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_Sugar_Man

"Searching for Sugar Man" is a fantastic film. I first watched it on a flight, w no idea what it was about -- which made it all the more impactful. Highly recommend same to anyone who wants to see a great film about music, just skip any trailers or reviews and just watch it.

Many early heavy metal bands became famous in the Soviet / Eastern bloc.

For instance Uriah Heep, while moderately successful in the UK, they were and still huge in Balkans, Germany, Japan, elsewhere.

In December 1987 they became the first ever Western rock band to play in the Soviet Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uriah_Heep_(band)

The tv series Vickie Viking is super famous in Germany and it’s based on a series of Swedish books. Both the books and the TV series are really unknown in Sweden the tv series doesn’t even have a Swedish article on Wikipedia.

I am Swedish and I remember watching that show when I was a kid, probably 20 or more years ago. Interesting that it is still a thing somewhere else.

An aria from a Croatian opera, "U boj, u boj", is sung by Japanese choirs since WW1. It was first thought to be Czech though because Czech sailors played it while repairing their ship ashore in Kobe after the great war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_boj,_u_boj

It is sung in Croatian!

https://youtu.be/uqQf_92dgHM

Australia here. The wacky Japanese TV serial Monkey, based on a Chinese story from the 1500s, was a hit here in the 80s. ABBA was massive here too.

I was a huge Blake's 7 fan as a kid. I watched it again lately, and a Bulgarian friend said as children she and her friends played Blakes 7 in the street in Bulgaria!

Also, Edgar Allan Poe was huge (first) in France.

In the world of video games, both Metroid and the Legend of Zelda are more popular in Western countries than in Japan. Actually, the whole 'Metroidvania' genre is more popular in the West than Japan in general, with Castlevania being in much the same situation as Metroid.

To give an Asian->West example: plenty of Manga and Anime are more popular in the west than in Japan.

Disney comics, especially Scrooge McDuck, have been way more popular in Europe than in the US.

Jack London's rather pulpy novels of Alaskan adventure found a huge following in the Soviet Union. Here's a citation saying that more than 10 million copies of his words circulated in the USSR between the 1920s and the 1940s. https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/58636...

From a Soviet perspective, London's admiration for socialist principles made him an ideologically fine choice. And his subject material made Russian struggles with winter, prospecting culture, etc. seem universal.

London has been read to some degree in the U.S. ever since his death in 1916, but his awkward (or perhaps horrifying) racial attitudes, plus his gruff, beat-the-drum writing style have diminished his appeal in his native country as tastes change.

Not exactly the same, Enid Blyton (for instance) has a strong presence in some former British colonies.

Whereas in England she's a bit of an embarrassment to be forgotten.

Anne of Green Gables is huge in Japan.