To get a sense of people's reactions to this music video, I recommend this forum thread. People generally say that Rasteryayev captures the spirit of those years very well, though some had a guitar instead of an accordion, or bicycles instead of motorcycles, or had to walk, or had no river. Someone points out that this song is really about teenage years rather than "childhood".

In a 2018 interview, Rasteryayev writes that he decided to use animation, despite its difficulty, because he saw no other choice:
"Nowadays you can't make a video about that time. That era is gone; it seems to be nearby, but its attributes are gone. For example, in Rakovka there is no longer a single "Minsk" or "Voskhod" motorcycle, which they used to race on. [...] That is, it is impossible to recreate this world that seemed to exist only yesterday."

Of Rasteryayev's three (or so) animated music videos, this one is the most "true to life", and based on his actual personal experience, while the other two are fanciful versions at historical events.

Similarity from Vietnam : Ông Ích và ông Kỷ (Mr Ego and Mr Ist).

A surreal film.

That's right ! I have been looking forward to this film for so long.

I can see that a genuine effort was made, but this is still my least favourite of the three films (I think the first is still the best, and each subsequent one took away some of what made it so memorable).

Personally, I was disappointed with this one and think it's the weakest film by Pekar that I've seen so far. There are some interesting visual designs, but the plot is barely there ("two Korean aristocrats are in love and get married, then a dragon threatens the land and the lady sacrifices herself which somehow defeats it"?), the characters don't seem in any way real, and the scene changes are plodding. The film he made next year is way better.

Like a fair number of other films of Bardin's, this one is about the nastier side of human nature. However, there isn't too much humour here to soften things.

Interesting (and I think generally accurate) review of the series from a comment on RuTracker (transkriptase, Jun 13, 2014):

[The summary says] "Introduces children to the simplest concepts of the world around them."

Lol... this cartoon will "introduce" them all right... I can't stop laughing... Still, this one should be watched by those who are not so young, who will understand where the cartoon characters are, so to speak, not in the right. :)

But generally speaking, I recommend this most of all to adults - children's psychology is shown very subtly, and at the same time without any tediousness and with humor - where else can you find something like that? ;)

However, I don't remember the last two cartoons very well - I deleted them from my hard drive when I downloaded them last time. I was very disappointed. Unlike the first ones, they seemed to be just empty and stupid fuss. I'll watch them again now. Maybe I'll delete them again. :) Or maybe not...

But the first three (or four, since the third one is "two in one") are very good. Especially the first two, where Long Ears himself narrates everything that happens. But the following "two in one" cartoon is also excellent, you keep seeing real children instead of animals. :) Moreover, although all the characters start talking in their own voices [in that film], they are voiced by the same actress.
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Downloaded them, watched them. Well, the impression from last time was correct. The last two cartoons are total stinkers. It is as if other people made them under the name of the previous authors, clumsily trying to plagiarize and repeat the style of the original.

But they apparently misunderstood something. For one, that the previous cartoons had meaning, and were not just about fooling around with doll figures. [In those last cartoons] they came up with meaningless and relentless crap.

My own impressions are similar - the first two are very good, the third isn't as good, and the last two are terrible, despite being made by the same creative team. They also changed the puppets, and Long Ears started looking far less charming.

I actually added this because it appeared on r/tipofmytongue recently. Apparently it was dubbed and shown on Swedish television. Processed the audio through Audapolis, and it turned out to not have much dialogue, so it didn't take that long.

The studio was falling apart at the time, but this isn't a bad film. I also like the other ones by the director that I've seen - none are flawless or award-winning, but they're all at least memorable.

A faithful, but slow and unimaginative adaptation, I think... not the best of Aksenchuk's films.
A much weirder adaptation of Krylov's "The Crow and the Fox" can be found in Irina Smirnova's The Song of the Cheese Spirit (1997) and (though it uses completely different text, aside from mocking the whole thing) Aleksandr Tatarskiy's Plasticine Crow (1981).
A much weirder adaptation of "The Cuckoo and the Rooster" can be found in Andrey Hrzhanovskiy's In the World of Fables (1973).