Trivia / Teletubbies

• Adored by the Network:
  • In part thanks to the original series having enough episodes to play one every day for an entire year, this show is one of the Big Three children's franchises for BBC, with the other two being Postman Pat and Tweenies.^note  Before Tweenies, Noddy was part of this group, but it was dropped because of its Channel Hop to Channel 5's Milkshake! block, where it has stayed to this day. There has never been a day where Teletubbies hasn't aired on the BBC and/or its subchannels since the show's premiere 20 years ago.
  • Before unexpectedly pulling it from the main channel, Nick Jr. treated it this way on weekends by airing it five times a day, which is justified since it was their highest-rated acquired show. Also, it's one of two shows on the Noggin app to most of its episodes on it, the other show being Blue's Clues.
• Banned in China: Any episode with Lion and Bear often got this treatment outside the UK (though Sweden and Malaysia were rare cases where the original was released as-is- in Malaysia’s case, at least the original run on government-owned RTM2). Depending on your country, it was either replaced with the edited sketch, if not, another magical event entirely, or episodes that included it simply were never dubbed. However, the American DVD "Teletubbies Classics: Fan Favorites" included the episode "See-Saw" with the segment intact.
• Channel Hop: In the US, the original show aired on PBS Kids. The reboot airs on Nick Jr.
• Died During Production: Ana Lucia Menezes and Iara Rica, the Brazillian Portugese dub voices of Po and Laa-Laa, both passed away in April 2021, while the reboot series was airing new episodes.
• Dueling Dubs: There's both a US and UK dub of the show. Besides some light changes to the voice cast, the US changes the content of some episodes to better suit educational standards.
• Edited for Syndication: Episodes are pretty much tailor-made for international exports - you can have an episode on a certain educational subject (jumping, for example), but the episode's content as far as inserts go will differ from country to country.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While the UK version of the show is well-archived despite the abundance of episodes, the US dub has largely been lost. Only a handful of episodes can be found online, and it's unknown who's in possession of the master tapes.
• Kids' Meal Toy: At Burger King, there were beanbag finger puppets with a clip attached, a bonus break-apart Tubby Toast, and Kraft Foods even made a defictionalized version of the Tubby Custard as part of the promotion.
  • In 2000, McDonald's had a promotion with keychain plushes.
• Long Runner: The original series had a clean 4-year run of 365 episodes before its cancelation. And that's not even counting the reruns that still continued afterwards.
• Milestone Celebration: To celebrate the show's 20th anniversary, the first-ever Teletubbies DVD to come out in America in over a decade was released. This DVD is called "Teletubbies Classics: Fan Favorites". Instead of a special like the past releases, this one contains popular episodes across a 3-disc set. Not only does it contain the original UK dub (a first for American release), but it's also the first time the infamous "Lion and Bear" magical event makes it on to an American release after the rumor of it being banned in that country.
• Money, Dear Boy: British comedian John Simmit says the only reason he played Dipsy was because he needed money.
• One-Hit Wonder: There was a single that was a Theme Tune Extended simply titled "Teletubbies Say Eh-oh". It topped UK record sales in 1997, and was never followed up.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Two different performers played Tinky Winky during the series' run; the first performer, British comedian/actor Dave Thompson, was fired as a result of the whole Ambiguously Gay controversy surrounding the character. Thompson was incredibly upset over his termination, as he very much enjoyed playing Tinky Winky. The 2015 reboot replaces the entire cast with the following actors: Jeremiah Krage (Tinky Winky), Nick Chee Ping Kellington (Dipsy), Rebecca Hyland (Laa-Laa) and Rachelle Beinart (Po). The narrator was also replaced, with Daniel Rigby taking over from Tim Whitnall.
  • The Brazilian dub of the Netflix reboot was completely replaced, moving from Rio fe Janeiro to São Paulo. Raphael Rossatto as Tinky-Winky, Alex Minei as Dipsy, Marina Santana as Laa-Laa and Mari Guedes as Po, with the latter three being understandable cases as while José Leonardo (the original Tinky-Winky) is still alive, Henrique Ogalla (the original Dipsy) passed away in 2020 (thought he had already retired from the profession in 2008), while Iara Riça (the original Laa Laa) and Ana Lúcia Menezes (the original Po) passed away in 2021 (though Iara had also retired of the profession in 2020). Ricardo Fábio also takes over the role of the narrator in the dub from Guilherme Briggs.
  • The Italian dubs:
    • The original series had everyone except Laa-Laa recast in its latter seasons: Tinky Winky went from Nanni Baldini to Omar Vitelli (later replaced furthermore with Alberto Bognanni), Dipsy was recast from Fabrizio Vidale to Fabrizio Picconi and Po went from Ilaria Latini to Giulia Tarquini.
    • The 2015 reboot recast everyone, except for Mario Cordova keeping his role as the narrator: now Federico Zanandrea is Tinky Winky, Luca Sandri is Dipsy, Jolanda Granato is Laa-Laa and Serena Clerici is Po, plus Jenny De Cesarei voices the female narrator.
    • The Netflix reboot recast everyone once again: Niccolò Guidi is the new voice of Tinky Winky, Dario De Rosa is Dipsy, Benedetta Ponticelli voices Laa-Laa, Giulia Tarquini reprises her role as Po from the latter seasons of the original series and Piero Di Blasio voices the narrator.
• Recut: Most VHS releases only play Tummy Tales segments once, mostly likely done to save on film.
• Release Date Change: The show was originally supposed to be launched in the United States in September of 1998 on PBS, but due to the monster success of the show in the United Kingdom, it instead premiered in April of the same year, switching slots with another show related to the BBC, The Noddy Shop.
• Role Reprise: The first Italian dub of the 2015 reboot has Mario Cordova reprising his role as the narrator from the original series, while the Netflix one features Giulia Tarquini reprising the role of Po after voicing her in the final season of the original series.
• Screwed by the Network: Once a network favorite for PBS Kids, the series eventually fell prey to this. By 2001, the show had ended in its native United Kingdom; this meant that there was very little new material apart from the Teletubbies Everywhere segments to be used for the show's American run, despite said run not ending until 2005. In 2008, PBS officially lost the rights to the show.
• Series Hiatus: The 2015 series went on a four-year hiatus before being continued on Netflix.
• Vacation, Dear Boy: Brennan Pilcher, the boy in the Tummy Tales segment in "Brennan's Moonwalk", stated in his upload of the segment that he was enrolling at TASIS where the crew just so happened to be filming. This also explains why he's the only American to ever appear in the show (as evidenced by the fact that his upload has the ActiMates encoding on it, something only found in PBS airings).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Word of God has it that Ragdoll (the production company behind the show) originally wanted to do a children's sitcom, aimed at the 7-9 age bracket, about bumbling space explorers, but a series of changes to the proposal eventually resulted in a kiddie show aimed at 1-3 year olds about huge baby-like creatures dressed up in spacey outfits who explore their own fanciful world.
  • According to some sources on how the show was created, Anne Wood has stated that she created the show from inspiration by Watch With Mother cartoons (most notably Andy Pandy), which make Teletubbies Older Than the NES.
  • There were rumors that the Tubby Phone was going to be able to teleport the Teletubbies to the "real world" (most likely just the streets of London), but this idea never came to fruition. This would require tons of camera trickery to pull off anyway.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: After the show ended, the owners of the land where it was filmed got so tired of trespassers coming to look at the house that they flooded the set. The Teletubbies' house is now at the bottom of a large pond.

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