Trivia / Katie and Orbie

• Channel Hop: In the United States, the series was originally seen on PBS, but after a year it moved to Disney Channel.
• Died During Production: Just a few weeks before production on the series resumed in September 2000, the characters' creator Ben Wicks died at age 73.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only seasons 1, 4, 5 and 6 were available on DVD, and exclusively through a now-defunct Canadian online store. In addition, the first three seasons stopped being reran in 2011. Although in July 2015 somebody (clearly with access to the master tapes) uploaded the series to YouTube, three episodes (The Tree/The Park Swings/The Day Chance Found a New Home, Disappearing in the Dark/Puzzle Race/Skates and How Does the Band Fit in the Radio?/The Garage Sale/A Big Heart) remain missing, as whoever uploaded the series mistakenly posted the episodes that precede them twice and never corrected, so although the named episodes appeared on the site, they were actually not them. However, the first two episodes are from the first season that was available on DVD, although those are out of print and very rare. However, in January 2020, all the episodes were set to private and were no longer available. By the end of that year, the series had been reposted to Dailymotion and as of September 2021 is back on YouTube. An animation cel of How Does the Band Fit in the Radio? can be found on producer Weldon Poapst's Instagram.
  • In December 2022, the Portuguese dub of The Tree/The Park Swings/The Day Chance Found a New Home was posted to YouTube.
• Playing Against Type: An actor best known for his deadpan comedic roles, playing the grandfather-like narrator of a cute slice-of-life cartoon about two best friends. Leslie Nielsen himself loved working on it.
• Screwed by the Network: For unknown reasons, reruns of the series in Canada from about 2007 to 2012 only consisted of the last 26 episodes seen over and over, relegated into a graveyard slot.
  • In Latin America, the series aired on the local version of CBeebies, which only showed it during the evenings and removed it without any prior notice on April 12, 2010. During its time on air, it was overlooked and barely promoted, probably for not being a BBC-produced series like most of the channel's output. The decision to take it off the channel was probably a result of the series' distribution rights being given to a different company, EOne Entertainment, in March 2010 and BBC Latin America deciding not to renew the rights with the new distributor. Curiously, the channel ceased broadcasting on April 13, 2017, exactly seven years to the day after removing the series.
• Series Hiatus: The series went through a four-year one after its original production company, Lacewood Productions, closed down. The second run of episodes were produced by Amberwood Entertainment, a studio founded by Lacewood's former director that later acquired Lacewood's library and rights to the series.
• Short Run in Peru: The series' second run was only seen in Canada, France and Latin America.
• Technology Marches On: In several episodes, even in those from the second run, the characters are seen listening to music on cassette tapes, watching movies on VHS and sometimes using their parents' large desktop computer, definitely giving a mid-to-late-1990s feel to the series.
• What Could Have Been: Apparently, when the original books were being written and illustrated, Orbie was going to be called "Hugme".

---