Trivia / TUGS

• Creator's Pest: David Mitton reportedly wasn't very fond of Little Owl, the goods engine that Lord Stinker catches in "High Tide", due to the model's lack of realism. Puffa was created as a replacement.
• Descended Creator: Series co-director Chris Tulloch voices Zorran.
• He Also Did:
  • Seán Barrett, Big Mac, Captain Zero, Zebedee and Izzy Gomez's voice actor, was also the teenager on the sleeve artwork of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" (technically, the image was actually from Dunkirk (1958), but it's still an unexpected place for a TUGS voice actor to turn up). More recently, he has also lent his talents to a number of video games over the years, including Andre the Blacksmith in Dark Souls as well as the Advisor in Total War: Warhammer. He also voiced Tik Tok in Return to Oz, Urzah in The Dark Crystal, Captain Orion in Star Fleet, and was one of many voices of Lupin IIIs Inspector Zenigata.
  • Sean Prenderghast, voice of Sunshine and Zak, also had a minor role in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Henry V- and yes, his accent is virtually identical to Sunshine's.
  • A good chunk of this show's production team also worked on its sister show, Thomas & Friends.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The rights to the series are embedded in the Television South/MTM/Disney rights catalogue debacle of the 1990s. Other than some official releases on VHS, no one knows who has the rights and any DVD release or streaming of the show are very unlikely.
• The Kiddie Ride: Maxman Leisure made a coin-operated ride of Big Mac. It plays the series' theme song during the ride time, and a push button hooter illuminates Big Mac's eyes when pressed. Some of these rides were modified to look like an original character named "Old Toby Tug".
• The Merch:
  • In the UK, ERTL released models of Ten Cents and Sunshine. There was also a range of reading and activity books (including both adaptations of TV Series episodes and original stories), as well as a board game.
  • In Japan, Takara released models of Ten Cents, Sunshine, Top Hat, and Zorran, as well as a playset of Bigg City port. Bath toys of Ten Cents and a plush of Sunshine were also released.
• Missing Episode: Out of the original twenty minute cuts, only five episodes are available to the public ^note  "Sunshine", "Pirate", "Munitions" and "Regatta", which were released on VHS, with the rest not seeing a proper release. TUGS: The Exhibition, would go on to find a VHS featuring the original cut of "Warrior", which was available for private viewing for years before a fan recording of the full episode leaked online in 2022. The fate of the other eight episodes remains uncertain.
• No Export for You: The show by itself was never given a proper release in the US. Since it aired there as part of Salty's Lighthouse, edited episodes could only be found on the small handful of VHS tapes that Salty had.
• Orphaned Reference: At various points in the series, a hull frame that later becomes a red oxide hull is visible at Lucky's Yard. This was meant to represent the under-construction Diesel Tug the characters would have mentioned over the course of Season 1, with the cancelled episode "Night Story" depicting its launch. Another cancelled episode "Tired Tugs" has Ten Cents and Sunshine position cranes to lift up Big Mickey after the events of "Munitions", explaining his appearance in "High Tide".
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Before Sodor Island Fansite began reaching out to those who worked on the show, it was commonly believed that the series was cancelled because Britt Allcroft found it too similar to Thomas & Friends, and demanded its cancellation to avoid Dueling Works. The actual reason is listed below.
• Spared by the Cut: The 20 minute cut of "Munitions" released on VHS implies that Big Mickey died during the explosion, whereas the 15 minute cut for television states that he survived by landing in shallow water.
• Throw It In!: "Munitions" has a scene where Warrior is hit in the face by a piece of debris. According to Word of God, the debris hitting Warrior wasn't in the script, but instead of redoing the scene, they decided to add in Warrior's line: "Oh! That bit hit me!"
• Troubled Production: TUGS was much higher budget than its sister show, and also a lot more troubled.
  • Episodes were originally written to be 30 minutes long, but the decision was made to cut them down to 20 to keep the attention span of the audience. Before airing, the episodes were cut down again to 15 minutes, leaving several subplots and even entire characters cut out. The reason fans have access to the 20 minute cuts of "Sunshine", "Pirate", "Regatta", and "Munitions" is because they were released to VHS before the series had started airing in an attempt to recoup the high production costs.
  • The models were initially designed to move on their own with the wheeled chassis used to keep the models from drifting out of shots having motors, but the mechanisms to give the characters functional propellers, the ability to emit smoke, and move their heads and eyes proved to be too heavy and required the crew to pull the models with transparent string by hand.
  • The initial plan was to give the characters flat gray faces with round eyes ala Thomas. However, Britt Allcroft, the only major member of Thomas' production crew who didn't sign onto TUGS, sued over the style of the faces being identical to her show, necessitating the crew to change the faces to rounded and flesh-colored with square eyes. All of Lillie Lightship's faces had been completed by this point and needed to be remade in the new style. The faces now being rounded and having square eyes meant the eye mechanism design from Thomas could not be reused and the crew had to figure out a new design. Several signs suggest the new design was more problematic than the Thomas design, such as Zorran's hat being lifted whenever he looks up, and it not being uncommon for the characters to look so far in one direction that a gap is created between the whites of their eyes and their eye sockets.
  • Various aspects of the models were changed late before filming. The Fire Tug had a simpler face design that was replaced by a new design based on Big Mac's faces, though the prototype face ended up in "Jinxed" and resulted in fans assuming it was meant to represent a second Fire Tug. Zorran initially had a shorter superstructure to make him look as if he were "sneaking about with his head down" that the crew decided looked ridiculous when finished and was thus raised higher with a visible seam. David Mitton reportedly didn't like the goods engine Little Owl so the crew created Puffa to take his place after "High Tide" was filmed.
  • The Bigg City Port set proved to be troublesome; it featured far more alleyways and overhead bridges than the standard Thomas set and David Mitton quickly lost his patience trying to navigate the camera through the narrow passageways they were given. A Day in the Limelight for Hercules was scrapped due to it being deemed too difficult to film, and "Bigg Freeze" was rewritten to take place Up River rather than try to recreate frozen water in the awkward Bigg City Port set. Season 2 was planned to take place mostly Up River to avoid the Bigg City Port set, and "Trapped" is often believed to have been carried over from the planned second season in favor of another episode due to Billy Shoepack's model seeming unfinished during filming (note his inability to turn his head or change his expression compared to his appearance in "Up River").
  • Filming for most episodes concluded in 15 days, but "Munitions" was delayed by four weeks to test the episode's prevalent pyrotechnics. When filming started, the relevant scenes required the studio doors to be left open.
• Uncredited Role: None of the voices for the characters were credited; only through investigation and crew confirmation were any voices identified. Patrick Allen (Captain Star) is a particularly easy voice to identify.
• Unfinished Episode: According to Word of God, around 90 episodes worth of scripts had been made. It was dropped after one thirteen-episode season.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Creator David Mitton claimed that nearly a hundred episodes were written and that a second season was in pre-production before Clearwater went bankrupt. Details about said season include:
    • Taking place mostly Up River instead of Bigg City Port due to the latter's set being too restrictive and difficult to film in.
    • Possible return appearances of Sea Rogue and his uncle as when their models were discovered in 2012 they were in the midst of being reverted back to their original selves after being repurposed for other characters^note Sea Rogue became Bluenose while his uncle became Boomer..
  • Early drafts of the script for Thomas and the Magic Railroad included a scene called "Thomas's Sea-side run by" which would've featured the TUGS characters. Sadly, the scene never materialized any further past the early script stage.
  • There were plans to give the series an American English dub, similar to Thomas and Friends if the show was picked up by an American network.