YMMV / Bob the Builder

• Awesome Art: The stop-motion animation of the original series is universally agreed to look amazing.
• Awesome Music: The full-length release of the show's theme song, named after the catchphrase used by the main characters, was the number one best-selling single in Christmas 2000.
• Broken Base: The 2015 reboot is widely considered to be awful due to the many changes made from the original, but that hasn't stopped some fans of the older series from considering it a guilty pleasure.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Spud the Scarecrow gets this for his hilarious Draco in Leather Pants moments, thus his absence in the 2015 reboot infuriated many if they weren't by the other changes.
• Fan Nickname: Bob's team of machines are often referred to as "The Can-Do Crew" or "Team Bob" by fans.
• First Installment Wins: While fans can't seem to agree on whether or not the 2015 reboot is good or bad, everyone agrees that the original series is worth watching. Particularly the original stop motion episodes.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show was huge in the United States to the point where For Better or for Worse ran a strip where a character's child is said to be obsessed with the show. It helps that it aired on Nickelodeon's preschool block Nick Jr., where it was the top-rated show. Merchandise for the show was still being sold in stores even after it finished its run, and the US was one of the first countries to air the reboot. It's so big in that country that people who were fans of the show as kids will be shocked to learn that it was originally British.
  • It also appears to be big in Belgium, where both versions air on TV to this day.
  • The reboot was well-received in Taiwan, where it's YoYo TV's third most-popular program after Yo-Kai Watch and Peppa Pig.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It's no secret that Bob and his vehicles share a catchphrase with Barack Obama. What's amusing is that Obama's rival, Republican John McCain, used the concept of 'Joe the Plumber' to represent the typical, hardworking American and had a supportive campaigner named 'Tito the Builder'. There's no evidence either of these was an intentional joke about Obama's catchphrase. Hence this.
  • The show's cover of "Mambo No. 5" contains the line "There's no job too big or small". 12 years after that song came out, Keith Chapman, the creator of Bob the Builder, would use a similar catchphrase for the characters of another show of his that became a massive hit among kids.
  • A common complaint of the 2015 redesigns is that Bob's more human proportions send him right into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley effect. It was actually worse in the 1997 pilot, and makes said reboot design look natural by comparison.
• Ho Yay: In "Bob's Pizza," Mr. Sabatini kisses Bob on his cheek. This is a common Italian thing, but what puts it into this category is Bob blushing afterward.
• Memetic Mutation: "Can we fix it? Yes, we can!"
  • Alternatively... "Can we fix it? No, we can't!"
• Moral Event Horizon: Conrad from the reboot series crossed it when he started a flood so he could ruin Bob's good name.
• Nightmare Fuel: In the original 1997 pilot, not only does Bob look rather creepy (at least compared to his more familiar, simplified design in the final product), but there's also a scene where Digger (Scoop) accidentally knocks the ladder Bob is on while cleaning the gutter. It's more alarming than it sounds, as Bob is utterly terrified and screaming for help (like, proper screaming) as the ladder wobbles. The scary music doesn't help matters.
• Periphery Demographic: Oh yes. So much of a one that the characters actually got to the top of the UK singles charts with the theme song and again with their version of "Mambo No. 5". The songs also appeared on the Australian singles charts at #1 and #2, respectively.
• Questionable Casting: If you've ever heard Greg Proops' (yes, that Greg Proops) very vulgar and profanity-laden stand-up routines, you have to wonder if money might have been tight for him to be the American voice of Bob for the 2005-07 seasons.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • The animation for the series notably becomes choppier with each season, which is notable with the "Project: Build It" episodes (the first episodes of the series moved like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, while the last episodes of "Project: Build It" were as rough as a crudely-drawn anime). The animation quality aspect was briefly reversed between the switch from "Ready, Steady, Build!" to the 2015 reboot, but once that happened, the second season saw vehicle characters unable to emote orally while speaking, while the third season, which was animated by a different studio, looked decidedly less realistic than the previous seasons.
  • "Project: Build It" is largely considered inferior to the original series in terms of plot qualities, with the Green Aesop, Flat Characters, and constant reuse of certain storylines often meant that it felt stale in comparison. "Ready, Steady, Build" often fell into the same pitfalls, though there were also complaints of Out Of Character Moments and blatant expies that did very little to salvage reception. While the 2015 series was already heavily reviled, it did have completely original storylines and rarely reused anything other than production assets.
• The Scrappy: Many fans of the franchise tend to loathe the reboot's incarnation of Scoop due to his regression into an idiotic Manchild, so much so that even those who find the 2015 reboot to be a guilty pleasure tend to consider Scoop's Adaptation Personality Change to be one of the worst things about it.
• Tainted by the Preview: Once the first images of the reboot were revealed in 2014, fans took to social media to complain about the ugly redesigns of the characters.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The 2015 reboot is generally disliked by fans of the original series. Namely the switch from stop-motion to CGI. And the replacement of the entire voice cast doesn't help matters. The US dub is actually made in Canada (granted, much of the cast is well-known Canadian VAs from Ocean Group and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but still).
  • The changes to the character design were also met with push-back. Particularly the human designs, which some fans felt crossed into Unintentional Uncanny Valley territory. Even the original character designer Curtis Jobling doesn't agree with the new designs:
    "I was surprised to see the new design. My original designs captured children all over the world over. If it's not broke, don't fix it."

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