Trivia / Angelina Ballerina

• Adored by the Network: Sprout adored Angelina Ballerina and it was cared by way better on Sprout and the show's spin-off The Next Steps then it's former channels PBS, PBS Kids and Nick Jr. UK it was one of the popular shows of the channel, the show and Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps titular character Angelina was promoted in promos and it had a lot of timeslots on in the morning, afternoon and night.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Judi Dench as Miss Lilly.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Wikipedia once insisted that Justin Bieber voices AZ, resulting in gullible wiki editors actually believing it. That's not true whatsoever. He's voiced by Larissa Murray in the US and by Lizzie Waterworth in the UK (the US dub is recorded in the UK, with some characters having the same voice in both dubs). With the sole exception of a guest cameo in one episode of The Simpsons, Bieber has never done voice acting, so the likelihood of him doing it for a British preschool cartoon was incredibly slim. Hit Entertainment productions are also not known to have celebrity guest stars, let alone ones as left-field and controversial as Bieber, and when celebrities do get cast, they tend to either be British ones (such as the aforementioned Judi Dench or Eddie Redmayne and John Hurt for Thomas & Friends) or child actors that were not celebrities at the time and became so later on in their careers (such as Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato for Barney & Friends).
• Development Hell: In late 2015, it was reported that Mattel (who'd purchased Hit Entertainment) and 9 Story Media Group were partnering for revivals of Angelina Ballerina alongside Barney & Friends, both slated for 2017. As it turns out, these were simply distribution rights granted to the latter, as 2017 came and went with no news on either revival. Although Barney would later get an all-CGI reboot announced for 2024 courtesy of Nelvana, there's still no word on when or if Angelina will grace the small screen once more.
• Kids' Meal Toy: In 2009, Red Rooster had a spinning figure of Angelina, a headband, and a flip the cards memory game for girls. Angelina was paired alongside Bob the Builder for boys.
• Licensed Game: An Edutainment Game for the iPhone (although like most iPhone games, it runs on most other iOS devices as well).
• The Merch: As with many children's shows, there was lots of merch—however, some of the earliest was released (along with reissued books and the release of the separately-made animated series) through American Girl from 2001 to 2004. The collaboration included plush dolls (of Angelina, Alice, Henry, and Polly), doll-sized outfits and accessories, and children's items.
• The Other Darrin: The entire cast for the the sequel series The Next Steps was replaced (with Charlotte Spencer replacing Finty Williams as the voice of Angelina).
• Real-Life Relative: Finty Williams and her mother Judi Dench worked together in the show.
• Recursive Adaptation: Some of the later released books are adaptations of the show, which themselves are adaptations of the books.
• Screwed by the Network: The show often aired in awkward weekend time slots on PBS, and its spin-off The Next Steps wasn't treated any better. Likewise, Nick Jr. in the UK only showed the spin-off in its original timeslot for about a year, moved it Nick Jr. 2 for most of 2011, put it back on the main channel in the school ^note which starts at 4 years in the UK and so generates less viewers than in the US and graveyard hours between late 2011 and 2014 and then moved it back to Nick Jr. 2 in the daytime for a few months before moving it back to graveyard slot until late 2015, when it was pulled entirely, all the while almost never being promoted by the network or website.
• What Could Have Been: When Katharine Holabird first conceived the original book, she imagined the characters as humans, but illustrator Helen Craig suggested that they be mice instead.

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