Bob the Builder (1998)

Bob the Builder 🎵Bob the Builder! Can we fix it? Bob the Builder! Yes, we can!🎵 Genre: Children's animation Stop-motion animation CGI animation Comedy Running Time: 10 minutes Country: United Kingdom Release Date: 12 April 1999 – 28 September 2004 (Original Series) 2 May 2005 - 26 August 2008 (Project Build It) 12 April 2010 - 5 October 2011 (Ready Steady Build) Network(s): CBBC (UK, 1998-2002) CBeebies (UK, 2002-2014) ABC (Australia) PBS Kids (US, 2005-2018) Nick Jr. (UK, 1999-2013, US, 2001-2004) Qubo (US (UK dub), 2020-2021) Created by: Keith Chapman Distributed by: HIT Entertainment Starring: Neil Morrissey (UK) Kate Harbour (UK) Richard Briers (UK) June Whitfield (UK) Rob Rackstraw (UK & US) Rupert Degas (UK & US) Colin McFarlane (UK & US) Emma Tate (UK & US) William Dufris (US) Alan Marriott (US) Lorelei King (US) Sonya Leite (US) Lachele Carl (US) Maria Darling (US) Greg Proops (US) Vincent Marzello (US) Marc Silk (US) David Menkin (US) Sophie Aldred (US) Lizzie Waterworth (US) Jo Wyatt (US) Seasons: 18 Episodes: 250 (10 specials)

Bob the Builder is a British children's stop-motion animated series created by Keith Chapman (who also created other cartoons like the British stop-motion children's television series for Channel 5 called Fifi and the Flowertots, as well as the Canadian cartoon for Nickelodeon called PAW Patrol) and HiT Entertainment (who are well-known for owning tons of other franchises like Barney & Friends, Kipper, Fireman Sam, Thomas & Friends, Pingu, and etc).

The original series aired on 12 April 1999 (For the US dub, 13 January 2001) with the episode "Scoop Saves the Day", the show ran for nine seasons before being cancelled in 2004. Soon after that, a sequel show named Project Build It aired on 2 May 2005 with "Bob's Big Plan", and the series would run for seven seasons before being cancelled in 2008/2009 for unknown reasons. After that, a spin-off called Ready Steady Build aired, which first aired in 2010 and got cancelled in 2012.

As the original designs of this show took on hiatus and the reboot started in 2015 and ended in 2018. Another new Bob the Builder reboot series with the return of the original designs is yet to be announced.

Why It Can Fix It

1. Much like Fireman Sam and Postman Pat, it takes a simple concept of a man having a profession and seeing them do their regular job while interacting with the people around him and it manages to take that concept very well and tries to be more unique and different when compared to those shows.
   • Unlike the shows mentioned above, it also takes the concept of having a builder have his own talking machines, which works very well and manages to not be simplistic and generic.
2. The stop-motion animation from HOT Animation is beautifully done and is wonderful for 1998 standards, it also improved significantly in the later seasons of the original series and in Project Build It.
3. The theme song is very catchy and fun to listen to.
4. Despite being cartoony, the show does try to keep the construction and building safety realistic and it normalises it for children, by having each episode involve Bob doing a construction job and it shows how they are usually done.
5. Even though the show's target demographic is mainly for preschoolers, the show tries to be not only enjoyable to just young children, but also older kids and even adults alike, by adding some elements that adults watching the show can identify with.
6. The voice acting is great and is very pleasant to listen to, especially in the United Kingdom version.
   • Rob Rackstraw and Neil Morrissey both do very good jobs at voicing the characters, it is also pretty impressive how they play most of the male characters in the United Kingdom version of the show.
   • Some of the characters' voices are rather cute to listen to as well, such as Lofty's voice and Dizzy's voice.
7. There are a handful of likeable and enjoyable characters such as Bob himself, Wendy, Scoop, Roley, Muck, Dizzy, Lofty, Pilchard and Travis and some really funny ones like Spud the Scarecrow.
   • Bob himself is a likable protagonist who is always passionate about getting jobs done and is also a good role model for the children.
   • Wendy is very likeable too, as she has a great relationship with the machines and most especially Bob, who both have a cute romantic relationship with each other.
   • All of the machines have different and unique personalities to each other:
     • Scoop is portrayed as a sensible, reliable and trustworthy digger who is sometimes left in charge by Bob and Wendy.
     • Muck is portrayed as a silly, but reliable dump truck who loves getting mucky.
     • Dizzy is portrayed as a crazy, energetic, know-it-all cement mixer who loves playing with her football and listening to music with her headphones.
     • Roley is portrayed as a smooth and calm steamroller who loves to "rock and roll" and to create his own songs.
     • Lofty is portrayed as a friendly and shy crane who has a fear of heights and mice.
   • Spud is a very funny comic relief character who despite getting into trouble a lot, is pretty enjoyable and is also a fan favourite amongst fans of the show.
   • Pilchard is a very cute and adorable pet character, she's also quite likeable too.
8. It teaches children about construction safety and how building projects work.
9. This show has a cartoony style, which works really well.
   • The character designs for the machines are pretty cute and appealing to look at and it manages to avoid coming across as generic like most kids shows with the practise of sentient vehicles in them.
10. Project Build It is a very good continuation of the original show, and is arguably just as good as the original, it also has a story about Bob and the Can-Do Crew working together to build an entire city for Sunset Valley by constructing different buildings for each episode, which is an awesome concept.
11. The CGI in Ready, Steady, Build! was also pretty good and it takes an interesting approach by making the CGI imitate the look of the models rather than do what shows like Thomas & Friends did with redesigning the characters and buildings into CGI.
12. Lots of episodes of the show provide great morals for kids, such as working together.
13. The album version of Can We Fix It? is catchy as the original theme song, and it reached Christmas #1 in 2000 during its major success in the United Kingdom.
    • Similarly, their cover of Mambo No.5 became number one in UK Singles Charts in 2001.
14. The show has also had very enjoyable and heartfelt specials like:
    • "A Christmas To Remember"
    • "The Live Show"
    • "The Knights of Can-a-Lot"
    • "Snowed Under" (despite Scoop's behaviour)
    • "When Bob Became a Builder"
    • "Built to Be Wild"
    • "Scrambler to the Rescue"
    • "Race to the Finish"
    • "The Legend of the Golden Hammer"
    • "The Big Dino Dig"
      • As a matter of fact, Elton John even made a guest appearance in "A Christmas To Remember".
15. Each episode of the series are well thought out and it tries to not be generic, preachy and done in a way where it is only enjoyable to small children. In a similar way to Thomas the Tank Engine (especially the Allcroft era), they're usually written in a way where the show doesn't try to hard pander to just young children and tries to appeal to children of all ages.
16. With that being said, there are a handful of very memorable and enjoyable episodes, such as:
    • "Scoop Saves The Day" (which started the series on a high outlook in TV airing order)
    • "Pilchard in a Pickle" (which gave the series a good first impression in production order)
    • "Bob's Big Plan" (which started Project Build It with high regard)
    • "Wendy's Busy Day"
    • "Spud the Spanner"
    • "Dizzy's Birdwatch"
    • "Mucky Muck"
    • "Pilchard's Breakfast"
    • "Muck's Monster"
    • "Dizzy Goes Camping"
    • "Dizzy's Statues"
    • "Lofty the Artist"
    • "Muck's Convoy"
    • "Dizzy in Charge"
    • "Scrambler Gets Clean"
    • "Scoop Knows It All"
    • "Travis and the Tropical Fruits"
    • "The House That Lofty Built"
    • "An Inspector Calls" (which ended both Project Build It and the stop-motion era with a bang)
    • "Lofty's Shelter"
    • "Benny's Back!"
    • "Lofty's Comet"
    • "Spud Lends a Hand"
    • "Magnetic Lofty"
    • "Wendy's Party Plan"
    • "Clocktower Bob"
    • "Runaway Roley"
    • "Travis Paints The Town"
    • "Bob's Birthday"
    • "Bob's Day Off"
    • "Bob's Boots"
    • "Dizzy and the Talkie Talkie"
    • "Here Comes Muck"
    • "Wendy's Tennis Court"
    • "Tea Set Travis"
    • "Scary Spud"
    • "Naughty Spud"
    • "Travis and Scoop's Race Day"
    • "Scoop Has Some Fun"
    • "Dizzy's Crazy Paving"
    • "Scoop The Artist"
    • "High Tide For Lofty"
    • "Scratch Goes Solo"
    • "Roley and the Seagull" (which positively acted as a send off to Ready Steady Build and the entirety of the series)
17. Not only did the show become one of the most popular shows in Britain, but it also became one HiT Entertainment's most popular shows and also one of the most popular preschool shows of all time, with the franchise grossing a total revenue of $5 billion in US dollars.

Bad Qualities

1. Although many episodes of the show are well-structured and thought-out, a few of them, while not flat-out bad, can either be too simplistic or a bit juvenile:
   • While Ready Steady Build is pretty decent, the stories can get pretty formulaic and repetitive at times, this also applies to some episodes in the Project Build It series. Though the repetitiveness in those series nowhere near as bad as it is in the reboot.
   • Some episodes use the infamous three-strike formula, which is a trope that got very repetitive and overused in many other shows by HiT Entertainment (the trope is most infamous in Seasons 9-16 of Thomas & Friends), the episode "Breezy Bristle" is no exception as it involves Bristle making three mistakes in the entire episode; Firstly, Bristle cleans out the foundations, but doesn't realise that he basically trapped himself in there. Secondly, Bristle tries to clean the cement that Tumbler accidentally spilled on the ground, but ends up causing Tumbler to spill more cement on Dizzy. Lastly, he tries to clean the roof that Wendy was painting, but ends up ruining the pattern that Wendy was trying to paint.
   • Though rarely, a bit toilet humour is sometimes used in the series, which is notable in "Travis and the Tropical Fruits" (despite being a decent episode) and "Built to be Wild" (despite being a good special), with former mainly having a few jokes about horse manure in it, and the latter having Spud being the victim of toilet humour in the opening scene where Muck imagines himself as a cowboy.
   • There are a few episodes which use a tiresome cliché of two characters falling out over an argument but they end up making up with each other and become friends again in the end. The worst example amongst these is "Roley Brings The House Down", as it involves Muck being blamed by Roley for "making him" do a skidzee, despite the fact that Muck didn't "make him" do it. Sure, he told him to do a skidzee, but he didn't force him to do one.
2. The United States dub is (arguably) inferior to the United Kingdom version, mostly because it takes away half of the charm of it being a British kids show and even though the US voices sound okay for the most part, they don't seem to capture the same charm as the voices in the United Kingdom version do, despite the fact that a lot of Americans loved the US dub of the show. Although, the US dub for Project Build It is a bit of an improvement when it comes to some of the voices.
   • Another problem with the US dub is that most, if not, all the male machines (with the exception of Scoop, who was voiced by a male) were voiced by female actresses, because of that, most of the male machines either sound way too feminine or too much like children in the US dub.
     • Lofty's voice for example sounds way too young and too feminine in the US dub of the original show, it was to the point where it lead to some fans of the US dub giving the misconception that Lofty was a female character. Though fortunately, his voice improved a bit in Project Build It and Emma Tate (as well as Lizzie Waterworth in Ready Steady Build) did better jobs at trying to make Lofty sound more male.
     • Roley's voice in the US dub makes him sound way younger than he was in the UK version, and his voice in the original show makes him sound a bit too much like Cubert Farnsworth from Futurama.
   • While the US dub's voices of Project Build It is an improvement to the dub from the original series, Greg Proops' voice for Bob in the US dub for the earlier seasons of Project Build It doesn't sound as good as the voice given by William Dufris in the original show or even Marc Silk in later seasons of Project Build It and Ready Steady Build. He also makes Bob sound too much like Fred from Scooby-Doo.
   • Despite being male in the UK dub, Muck was changed to female in the US dub for some reason, it is not only confusing for fans who grew up with either dubs, but it is also very unnecessary to change him to a female as no one was complaining about the lack of females in this show in the UK (though the reboot changed him back to a male character).
3. While the animation in Ready Steady Build is a very good attempt at trying to replicate the character's designs from the stop-motion era, some of the problems with the animation is that it does take away half of the charm from the original stop-motion animation and it can be jarring how the machines now talk with their grill mouths as it looks weird for some characters, such as Roley and Travis for example.
4. Due to the fact that Project Build It was abruptly canceled for an unknown reason in 2008/2009, the series wasn't really wrapped up and it wasn't clear if the crew finished working and building in Sunflower Valley, not helping by the fact that "An Inspector Calls" (despite being a good episode) didn't really give a proper conclusion to Project Build It and also that Ready Steady Build seems to ignore the events from Project Build It and is most likely non-canon to that series and the original show, as it appears to be its own canon.
5. As likable as most of the characters are in this show, some of them can admittedly be unlikable:
   • Spud (from your point of view) can be somewhat unlikable at times, as he sometimes can be extremely rude to the other machines for no reason, he is most notably rude to Lofty in the earlier seasons, as he would occasionally mock him for having fears of heights. But to be fair, he was meant to be unlikable from time to time so he can learn a lesson or end up meeting karma in the end, in a similar manner to how Norman Price in Fireman Sam can often earn karma for his mischievous and irresponsible actions.
   • Scoop can be unlikable at times, which is very notable in the special Snowed Under (despite being a good special), where he would get extremely angry and fussy at the other machines all because he thought they were "acting like they were on holiday", even though he was likeable and sympathetic at the beginning of the special due to him being worried about being in charge and the fact he didn't want to mess anything up to cause Bob to be disappointed with him, he becomes more of a jerk as the special progresses and soon ends up becoming a toxic control freak who forcefully tries to stop the crew from having any sort of fun, which could make the viewer lose sympathy towards him. Halfway through the special, his jerkish behaviour gets cranked up to 100 as he even goes as far as to insult Roley for accidentally crushing a small hill, calling him a "Clumsy Lump", and he also called Muck a "show-off" when Muck and Dizzy claimed that everyone in the Can-Do crew are all good at their own attributes and that he is not better than them. Though luckily, he redeems himself near the end of the special as he realises how much of a jerk he has been and even apologises to the crew for being rude to them.
   • Roley, while still likeable for the most part, can be somewhat unlikeable in some episodes of the series, most notably in "Roley Brings the House Down", in which he completely blames Muck for "making him" do a skidzee and to cause the building shed to get completely destroyed, when in reality, it was Roley's fault because he was the one who did the skidzee and to completely destroy the building shed by accident, fortunately, he and Muck do apologise in the end.
6. The franchise massively went downhill ever since the 2015 reboot, in a similar way to how Fireman Sam, Thomas & Friends and Postman Pat went downhill after Season 6, the Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go! reboot (since history repeated itself again in 2021) and the Special Delivery Service reboot respectively. Which were all reboots, revivals and/or seasons that tried to modernise their original shows for current audiences, but they all failed miserably.
7. There are still some bad or mediocre episodes even before the 2015 reboot, such as:
   • "Bob's Bugle"
   • "Roley Brings The House Down" (perhaps the worst episode of Project Build It)
   • "Breezy Bristle"
   • "Scrambler's Best Idea"
     • However, most of these episodes are not as bad as the worst episodes of Thomas & Friends or the worst episodes in the 2015 reboot.

Reception

Bob the Builder was met with very positive reception from critics and audiences alike. It was praised for its fun and charming attitude and as well as the good morals and building safety tips it sent to children. The show was even nominated in the BAFTA "Pre-school animation" category from 1999 to 2009. Sarah Ball (who was a producer, director and writer for the show) said in an interview: "I think diggers and dumpers fascinate kids in the same way that they are drawn to dinosaurs. They both have a timeless appeal. The technique of stop motion is very tangible - the characters look like you can just pick them up and play with them. It's a safe, lovely, bright, colourful world, which is very appealing. Curtis Jobling did a fantastic job designing the show - it's very simple and stylized but has such charm".

Trivia

• In 2001, the creators of Bob the Builder made a CD album called "Bob the Builder: The Album", which includes some original songs, as well as the 2000 Christmas number 1 single "Can We Fix It" and the 2001 number 1 single "Mambo No.5".
• In 2008, the creators of Bob the Builder made a second CD album called "Never Mind the Breeze Blocks", which includes some original songs and parodies to other songs.
• Bob's original US actor William Dufris died after a cancer battle on 24th March 2020 at the age of 62, along with Vincent Marzello (who voiced characters like Robert in the US dub of the show) on 31st March 2020, who died from COVID-19, as well as Richard Briers (the voice actor for Robert in the UK dub) in 2013 and June Whitfield (the voice actor for Dorothy in the UK dub) in 2018.
• The UK dub managed to keep the original actors throughout the entire series before Ready Steady Build got cancelled, the US dub on the other hand had their actors change throughout Project Build It and Ready Steady Build.
• Seasons 6-9 of the UK dub was added to BBC iPlayer in November 2018 to celebrate the show's 20th anniversary, Seasons 1-5 was later added in September 2020 in celebration of CBBC's 35th anniversary.
• In October 7, 2020, the UK dub aired for the first time in the US on Qubo. This was likely because Universal Kids still owns the US dub and the episodes were distributed from WildBrain which currently owns the UK dub.
• Bob, Wendy, Scoop, Spud and Pilchard all made appearances on the "The Official BBC Children in Need Medley" music video by Peter Kay's Animated All Star Band for Children in Need in 2009, Bob was also the first character to sing in the single too.
• Whilst the UK dub got a full release of all the seasons of the show on Paramount+ in 2019 and the first nine seasons on BBC iPlayer, the US dub of the show has still yet to have a full release of all the seasons, and some episodes of the US dub have either been lost or partially found.
• Prior to being released on Paramount+ in 2019 and BBC iPlayer in 2020, Season 5 was originally the only season for the UK dub of the show to not get a full release.
• In 2020, a pilot for the show was found and uploaded to Internet Archive, it was made to pitch the concept of the show. It involves Bob and Scoop (who was originally called Digger here) having a morning exercise and trying to grab an old bird's nest that is blocking the gutter.
• According to the documentary "Can we fix it? Archiving and analysing 'Bob the Builder': a resources paradigm and research method.", Season 3 had a total of 12 episodes that were eventually cancelled during development.
  • One notable example would be "Spud's Phone Mischief", which was cancelled due to the idea of Spud making prank calls and that the story concept would send children bad morals despite the fact that the target audience would never do a naughty thing like that. While making prank calls can be a practical joke in real life, the idea of Spud prank calling people was too "out of character" and "unnecessary" according to HiT Entertainment.
  • Another example was "Scaffold Bob", which was scrapped due to Bob acting out of character as well as the fact it lacked research and safety aspects.

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