Trivia / Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat

• 40-Episode Cartoon: The show only ran for one season of 40 episodes, pretty standard procedure for a non-cable kids' show at the time.
• Blooper:
  • In one episode, Wing-Wing, one of the male alley cats, is accidentally given Hun-Hun's voice.
  • In another episode, the three daughters are watching how Tai-Tai applies her makeup; a couple of frames later and the sisters have inexplicably switched places upon the bench on which they were standing.
• Children Voicing Children: Sheegwa is voiced by a little girl (Jesse Vinet) and Dongwa is voiced by a pre-teen boy (Oliver Grainger).
• Creator Backlash: The show appears to be this for Sesame Workshop, as they have barely mentioned it since circa 2008 due to rights issues with CineGroupe, who acknowledge the show's existence (and celebrated the fact that a Facebook post by Buzzfeed of the intro reached 14 million people in 10 days), and PBS, who acknowledged its existence for a Throwback Thursday post on their PBS Parents site once.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: Most of the cast was based in Montreal, while Hiro Kanagawa who voiced the Foolish Magistrate is from Vancouver.
• Fandom Life Cycle: Stuck at Stage 2, as the series is mostly forgotten with a handful of fans remaining.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Only 22 and a half episodes (44 stories) out of forty (79 stories), which is about half of the entire series were ever released on DVD. Most of them are on Youtube. Episodes still at large: A New Cook In The Kitchen, ...And Action, Three Graces, and Homesick Jun (4 stories).
    • In 2021/2022, Common Sense Media's Sensical streaming service added the first 16 episodes, giving it a total of 26 and a half (53 stories) out of the forty (79 stories).
  • There's also the Scholastic book but you can find them scattered online.
  • The Finnish, Greek, European Portuguese, Italian, and Latin Spanish dubs are this. The Latin Spanish dub has one episode uploaded to YouTube, ripped straight from a screening copy, while the Greek dub has about two episodes uploaded to the site. Only the Alternative Foreign Theme Song for the Italian dub has been found while the Finnish and European Portuguese dubs are lost.
• Network to the Rescue: After Sagwa ended, at least one PBS affiliate replaced it with a half-hour block of The Berenstain Bears and Seven Little Monsters, only to give the spot back to Sagwa (via reruns, of course) the following year.
• The Other Darrin:
  • On two Sagwa flash games ("Counting Koi" and "Story Maker" respectively) that were featured on the PBS Kid's Sagwa webpage, Sagwa's voiced by an unknown voice actress (instead of Holly Gauthier-Frankel) and her voice sounded much older compared to the show. The exception is the "Caregivers" Puzzle game where Holly Gauthier-Frankel reprised her role for a brief voice clip alongside the original voice actors for Mama Miao, Tai-Tai, The Foolish Magistrate, and Fu-Fu. However Jesse Vinet was able to reprise her role as Sheegwa during the game "Counting Koi" involving Sagwa counting the number of fish in English, while Sheegwa would say the number in Chinese offscreen.
  • The 2003 album Sagwa and Friends Sing Christmas has Sagwa voiced by a different actress who is obviously not Holly Gauthier-Frankel. In fact, none of the original voice actors (notably Sheegwa and Dongwa) reprised their roles for the album.
• The Shelf of TV Languishment: Most of the episodes were produced in 2000 (hence the 2000 copyright date in the credits) but had their initial airings in 2001 and 2002.
• The Resolution Will Not Be Identified: "Mutt That Would Be King", the show's Grand Finale, plays out like any other episode does, though the ending implies that more was to come, even if the show was cancelled afterwards.
• Pet Fad Starter: The show led to a short spike in demand for Siamese cats, the breed of the titular feline.
• Playing Against Type: Sonja Ball, aka Polly Esther, Beauty Stem and Panther Cap, Arthur's mom, Huckle Cat and Wimzie, plays Nai-Nai, Sagwa's grandmother. Nai-Nai sounds way different from all three of them and is quite different in personality from them.
• Role Reprise:
  • Jesse Vinet was able to reprise her role as Sheegwa for an edutainment flash game called "Counting Koi" involving Sagwa (voiced by an unknown voice actress) counting the number of fish she caught from the pond in English. While Sheegwa (off-screen) counted the fish in Chinese.
  • Holly Gauthier-Frankel also returned to voice Sagwa for a 2005 promo on the nighttime block The Goodnight Show on PBS Kids Sprout when Nina used to host the block.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: This show is one of four Sesame Workshop series not to air on HBO ^note  the other three being Dragon Tales due to legal issues with the Dragon Tunes segments, The Upside Down Show due to the broadcasting rights belonging to Viacom Media Networks, and Big Bag because it used cartoons from around the world in between the puppet segments and there would be a lot of legal red tape to cut to get HBO to rerun it. due to the rights having switched hands to HG Distribution.
• Screwed by the Merchandise: One of the reasons for its cancellation appears to be because the merchandise was near-impossible to find outside of the home media releases and books (the plushies sold in the States were made by the obscure Panache Place leading to limited distribution). And to boot, some of the merchandise was pretty odd and not exactly kid-aimed (a tea set made by Reutter Porcelain and party supplies to name two).
• Screwed by the Network: PBS launched the show in a blaze of publicity with high ratings... only for the 9/11 attacks to take place and cause the show to lose ratings, thanks to PBS not being able to compete with bucket-tons of news coverage (in fact, Amy Tan appeared on The Today Show the day before the attacks to promote the show. Even worse, one of the show's episodes had the misfortune of premiering on the day of the attacks themselves). The show was seemingly stopped in 2002, marking its unofficial cancellation (the "official" cancellation happened in 2004)^note Rumor has it that another reason for its cancellation was because Sesame Workshop wanted to free up funds for Sesame Street. However, the show's titular character did get to appear as part of the PBS Kids Sprout Diner promotion complete with Holly Gauthier-Frankel (who voiced Sagwa, the aforementioned titular character) reprising her role. Some PBS stations still showed the series as late as February 2009, with PBS Kids Sprout unceremoniously removing it from the schedule in March.
• Series Continuity Error: In the very first episode, Sheegwa can't remember the incident in which Sagwa received her markings, to which Dongwa explains that it's because she was a baby, or in his words, "barely even born". However, Sheegwa is nowhere to be seen in the flashback to the incident in said episode. Even more confusingly, a later episode shows Sheegwa to be hanging out with her family in another flashback from long before any of them had received their markings.
• She Also Did: Kamiko Taka, who voiced Ling in "Dongwa's Best Friend", has a IMDB page mostly comprised of adult videos.
• Short Run in Peru: For reasons unknown, the final 5 episodes aired on Disney Channel Asia 6 months before it premiered in North America.
• Uncredited Role: Like with most Greek dubs from the ALTER Channel, the Greek dub doesn't credit the voice actors and dubbing staff, though some of the voice actors who have been identified (Petros Damoulis, Chrisoula Papadopoulou) are known to be from the roster of A-list Greek voice actors that ALTER tended to use in all of their dubs.
• Unfinished Dub: According to this site, only 26 (out of 40) episodes aired in Italy.
• Unspecified Role Credit: The show used the "List of Actors names only" type of cast list, and the PBS Kids website only listed who played who for the Miao family, the palace occupants and staff (excluding Jun), and Fu-Fu. As a result, this can be a problem for fans when trying to figure out who's voiced by who, especially for the sleeve dogs, alley cats, mice, and one-off characters. Fans guess, due to voice recognition, that Haiyo the bird is Zak from Dragon Tales, a stork who appeared in "The Favorite" is Muffy's Dad from Arthur, Ping-Wing and one of the Sleeve Dogs are Polly Esther from Samurai Pizza Cats (in addition to Polly's voice actress Sonja Ball voicing Nai-Nai), and that Aunt Chi-Chi from "Sister Act" is Lucille also from Samurai Pizza Cats.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to one earlier promo image, Yeh-Yeh was originally planned to have markings◊. He was completely mark-less when the actual show aired (and the fact that his curled ears hint his breed is Scottish Fold rather than Siamese).
  • The show was planned to be aired in Australia according to Kidscreen.
  • If the ending to "Mutt That Would Be King" is any indication, there were plans for a second season.
  • Some earlier promo images◊ showed Sagwa wearing a different pink and magenta collar than her regular red and yellow collar.