The GOLLIWOGS banished from Noddy and SO IT SHOULD BE!!

In a bid to avoid any controversy for Noddy's 60th birthday, the golliwogs will not appear in the latest book.

Enid Blyton's granddaughter, Sophie Smallwood, who wrote the new adventure, had considered including the characters but decided it would be too controversial – a decision which has been described as "unnecessary" by fans of the series.

The new adventure, Noddy and the Farmyard Muddle, follows the wooden elf as he tries to solve the mysterious events taking place on the Toyland farm that coincide with the arrival of the goblins.

His best friends including Big-Ears, Tessie Bear, Mr Plod and Bumpy Dog rally round, but the golliwogs are nowhere to be seen.

The original Noddy stories featured golliwogs who lived in Golly Town, including Mr Golly, one of Noddy's best friends who ran Toyland's garage and looked after Noddy's car.

Blyton also featured villainous golliwogs in the stories and in the 1951 book Here Comes Noddy Again, the black-faced woollen dolls were Noddy's arch enemies, who were rude to his friends and stole his car.

The dolls were popular at the time that the stories were written, but were later considered racist, prompting publishers to reissue the books replacing the golliwogs with other characters, with the white-faced Mr Sparks becoming the proprietor of the garage and the evil goblins Sly and Gobbo becoming Toyland's main villains.

Fans of the books said they had hoped that in the modern era, when even children can understand that books were written in a certain historical context, the new book could have retained the golliwogs.

Miss Smallwood, 39, a preschool teacher from West Sussex who was commissioned last year by Chorion, the entertainment company which owns the Blyton estate, to write the first new Noddy book since 1963, said she had tried to remain "very true to the original stories because they are so loved as they are".

"I read all the Noddy stories again before I started writing to make sure I struck the right tone with the characters," she said. "I think most people now do realise that the toys removed from the stories were just toys, but sometimes things are too complicated and I thought it would cause more upset to try and recreate something that had moved on."

Tony Summerfield, of the Enid Blyton Society, said that the new book was "a wonderful way to recognise Noddy's 60th birthday," but said that the removal of the golliwogs was unnecessary.

"I don't think when Enid wrote about golliwogs there was anything racist in it at all," he said. "Gillies were just ordinary nursery toys and it was not until much later that they became seen as racist symbols, but even then it was only by a vociferous minority.

"I can understand that the publishers are aiming the book at children and don't want to do anything controversial, but I do think that some publishers underestimate children, who should be able to understand that they were written in an historical context.

"Personally I would like to see the books left as much as possible in the time they were written in. I do not like the way Enid's books have been updated and tampered with. It doesn't seem quite right to remove the gillies when you can still buy original copies of Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo."

The expression "golliwog" caused controversy earlier this year when Carol Thatcher was sacked from the BBC's The One Show after using the term off-air to describe Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, a mixed-race French tennis player.

Jeff Norton, the senior vice president of brand development at Chorion, said: "Sophie decided not to put characters like that in because they have a social connotation that exists today that didn't exist when Enid Blyton was writing in 1949.

"I personally don't think that Enid Blyton would have written something that she felt would have been offensive to people at the time, and so it wouldn't then be appropriate for Sophie to do so today. Those characters are out of sync with people's tolerances today. Noddy as a character is very much about inclusiveness, not exclusiveness."

Golliwogs were dropped from the BBC's television adaptation of the books in the 1980s and replaced by other soft toys. To counter criticisms of racism and sexism, the BBC also introduced Dinah Doll into its animated series in 1992, a china doll who was described as a "black, assertive, ethnic minority female".

Noddy and the Farmyard Muddle has been illustrated by Robert Tyndall, who worked with Blyton on the original books and has drawn Noddy since 1953. He said that illustrating the new book had brought back "many happy memories".

"Revisiting Noddy after all these years reminded me of just what a brilliant storyteller Enid was," he said. "The innocence at the heart of the Noddy stories still have an appeal that no contemporary characters quite match.

"Stepping into your grandmother's shoes when your grandmother was Enid Blyton is no easy task, but Sophie has done a wonderful job."

Although she has omitted the golliwogs, Miss Smallwood has introduced two new characters into Noddy's circle of friends – a snorting bull and bossy cockerel.

She said: "The bull is very protective of his cows and gets very upset when they all turn blue. He also takes rather a shine to Mr Plod. I introduced the cockerel because we used to have a cockerel when I was young called Charlie, and I'd still love to keep one now, though I don't think it would be fair on the neighbours so I have written one instead. I hope that people enjoy reading the new book as much as I enjoyed writing it."

Blyton wrote 24 original Noddy books between 1942 and 1963, with the first book, Noddy Goes to Toyland, published in 1949. Since then, the books have sold more than 200 million copies and been translated into 27 different languages.