Trucktown is a Canadian All-CGI Cartoon from Nelvana aimed at the preschool demographic. It is the Animated Adaptation of a series of children's books written by acclaimed author Jon Scieszka, who is best known for his Fractured Fairy Tales like The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man, as well as Time Warp Trio. The series was broadcast on Treehouse TV for 40 episodes over 2 seasons between 2014 and 2017.
Trucktown is set in the eponymous town, which is in a world of sentient trucks. The series protagonist is Jack (Amos Crawley), a young and spirited truck who just loves having fun - and by that, we mean the truck definition of fun, which is high-speed, mud-splattering, hood-crashing fun! Alongside a host of fellow trucks, like Dan the dump truck (Joe Pingue), Max the monster truck (Robert Tinkler), Gabby the garbage truck (Stacey DePass), Ted the tow truck (Tyler Muree), Rosie the wrecking crane (Stephanie Anne Mills), Felix the fire truck (Jay Schramek), Craner the construction crane (Adrian Truss), Melvin the cement mixer (Scott McCord), Pete the bulldozer, and Big Rig (both Dan Petronijevic), Jack always finds something exciting to do and new games to play around Trucktown (most of which involves building things up and then smashing them down), all while learning lessons along the way!
Nelvana has made every episode available through their Treehouse Direct channel on Youtube
but only viewable in select countries.
Compare to The Adventures of Chuck & Friends, another vehicle-themed animated Preschool Show from Nelvana.
Tropes of the series:
- Animated Adaptation: Of Jon Scieszka's Trucktown Series.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Max tends to be this due to his wild personality.
- Down in the Dumps: When not racing around the highways of Trucktown or relaxing at the gas station, Jack and his friends typically hang out around the junkyard.
- Extra Eyes: Unlike all of the other trucks, Max has four eyes instead of just two.
- Eye on a Stalk: Pete and Max have their eyes on stalks, unlike all of the other trucks.
- Gentle Giant: Craner is the tallest truck in Trucktown, but also a well-mannered gentleman who looks out for the other trucks and helps them build things. Double subverted with Big Rig; while initially presented as The Bully, he quickly turns out to be simply be actually a pretty decent guy with a bit of a stubborn streak and a terse manner of speaking.
- Lovable Coward: Melvin is always worried and nervous about bad things happening, but nonetheless a dependable friend for Jack and the other trucks.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Vehicle example. Big Rig is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": Craner the construction crane provides an obvious example, although most of the other trucks have names that share alliteration with the type of truck they are (wrecking crane Rosie, garbage truck Gabby, dump truck Dan, monster truck Max, etc.).
- Overly-Long Tongue: Unusually for a truck, Max has a long tongue usually seen dangling from his mouth.
- The Pollyanna: Jack is an excitable, enthusiastic, and optimistic truck with the energy and can-do attitude to approach problems and have fun at the same time.
- The Quiet One: Big Rig. He rarely says more than one or two words in a single sentence.
- Sentient Vehicle: All of the characters are different types of anthropomorphized trucks, with their headlights serving as eyes.
- Signature Headgear: Jack has a large blue shade over his windshield that resembles a trucker's cap.
- Visual Pun: Max has four eyes and an Overly-Long Tongue because he's a monster truck.
