BRUSSELS -- Like children anywhere with an answer to give, the youngsters playing in the suburban park here could hardly contain themselves.


"Tintin! Tintin and Snowy!" several of the small voices exclaimed in chorus.


"Captain Haddock!" came another reply.


"Oh, I love them all!" shouted little Laura, 8, jumping up and down.


The children, part of a city-run recreational program, were reeling off their fictional heroes -- and none was from anyplace new.


Forget the latest gimmicks marketed to dazzle their young lives. Forget the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Strawberry Shortcake and the Care Bears. Don't even think about Beavis and Butt-head.


No, this excitement was aimed at the figures in one of Europe's oldest comic strips, "Tintin" -- a strip whose title character is a fresh-scrubbed teenage newspaper reporter with a face so open and free of detail that he tickles imaginations from Hanoi to Helsinki.


Through a series of adventures that are really miniature morality plays, enjoyed as much by parents as children, he confronts an array of villains ranging from hardline Stalinists to Chicago mobsters.


So far, the stories have appeared in 51 languages -- roughly twice as many as "Peanuts" -- and are probably the most widely translated features in the world. In the process, Tintin has become a Belgian national treasure, a character so popular throughout the Francophone world that the late French President Charles de Gaulle once quipped, "Tintin is my only international rival."


Now, de Gaulle's rival is making a new run at the United States. Although first translated into English in the late 1950s and widely known today in Britain, the series has never really caught on big in America. But its backers think now is the time.


An animated television series of Tintin's adventures, which began on Home Box Office cable television network in 1991, boosted American sales of Tintin books. And his premiere this fall in an after-school time slot on the Nickelodeon cable channel will nearly quadruple the potential audience from 16 million to 60 million households, according to Louise Desjardins, the American agent for Tintin's Belgian publisher, Casterman.


In January, Sony Wonder will begin marketing video cassettes of Tintin's adventures, and Desjardins is convinced that this will help the books catch on. "The problem (in the United States) has always been a lack of exposure," she said in a telephone interview from her office in Mystic, Connecticut. "This is going to help change that."


Elsewhere in the world, Tintin needs little promotion.


As "Tintin, world reporter No. 1," the boy with the quiff has thrilled generations by battling drug traffickers in China, fighting the kidnappers of an Arab sheik in the Middle East, even flying to the moon. His supporting cast includes a crusty sea captain called Haddock, an absent-minded professor named Calculus and twin detectives known as Thomson and Thompson.


It has been 66 years since the young reporter debuted with his little dog, Snowy. And nearly two decades have passed since the last of his 23 globe-trotting adventures was completed. Nearly 200 million bound volumes of these adventures have been sold around the world.


But what has surprised many followers of comic strips is that interest in the adventures seems to have increased rather than dropped off in the decade since the death of his creator George Remi, who drew under the pen name Herg?.


Experts in the medium explain that Tintin's universal appeal stems in part from the simplicity of his features. "His face is almost empty, so that almost anyone from any culture can associate with him," said Charles Dierick, director of the Belgian Center for Comic Strips. "He's the best vehicle for a reader to project his emotions."


And the adventures have a timeless quality that keeps their appeal fresh.


"When we ask children today when they think Tintin lived, they always say 'now,'" declared Philippe Goddin, secretary general of the Herg? Foundation in Brussels, which was established to protect the artist's works.