Trivia / The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin

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• Acting for Two:
  • Teddy Ruxpin and his father, Burl, are voiced by Phil Baron.
  • Will Ryan voices Grubby, as well as Wooly and Tweeg in the book and tape series, and Louie in the animated series and live-action special.
  • Prince Arin and L.B. are both voiced by Robert Bockstael.
  • Abby Hagyard not only plays Princess Aruzia, but also provides the voices for Eleanor Tweeg and Eunice.
  • Tweeg, the Wizard, and King Nogburt are voiced by John Koensgen.
• Amateur Cast: Most of the voice actors on the show haven't done much other work, though there were some exceptions (besides Role Reprisers Phil Baron and Will Ryan, and John Stocker), like Abby Hagyard and Les Lye being cast members on You Can't Do That on Television, Pier Paquette puppeteered Louis the Otter on Sesame Street's sister show Sesame Park, and Robert Bockstael, Rick Jones, and Terrence Scammell would have substantial voice acting careers afterward.
• The Cast Showoff: Many of the voice actors were decent singers and sang a lot of songs. Phil Baron did a "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune for the cartoon. Averted with Tony Pope on the cassette tapes, who couldn't sing well and did many of his lyrics in Spoken Word (Gimmick sang more often when John Stocker voiced him).
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: According to IMDB, Ashleigh Ball voiced the young Grubby in "Octopede Sailors". However, Will Ryan actually voiced the character during said flashback, since Ball was born 4 years before the series premiered.
• Creator Couple: Phil Baron and his wife Michelle have written a few Teddy Ruxpin books together. Michelle also voiced Karen the Caterpillar in the "Grubby's Romance" adventure story as well as Teddy's mother, Ilana.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Ken Forsse cited "Grubby's Romance" as his favorite adventure story of the ones he wrote.
  • Phil Baron named "The Journey Home" as one of his favorite TV episodes.
• Crossdressing Voices: The late Toshiko Fujita voiced the male Teddy in the Japanese dubs.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: Phil Baron and Will Ryan were the only American voice actors in the animated series. Everyone else in the cast was based out of the Ottawa and Montreal areas.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: Ken Forsse began developing Teddy Ruxpin's story in 1959. The first version of the toy was released 26 years later.
• Follow the Leader: The live-action special was influenced by Welcome to Pooh Corner, which Ken Forsse and Alchemy II were also involved in.
• Franchise Killer: The poor scheduling by networks led to the death of any new stories being produced for the Teddy Ruxpin franchise, and also had a hand in bankrupting series creator Worlds of Wonder.
• He Also Did:
  • Phil Baron (Teddy Ruxpin) and Will Ryan (Grubby) previously worked with Ken Forsse and Alchemy II on Welcome to Pooh Corner. Baron and Ryan also performed as the country duo Willio and Phillio.
  • Animator Bob Jaques would later work on The Ren & Stimpy Show.
  • John Stocker (Gimmick) and Robert Bockstael (Prince Arin, L.B.) later appeared in the first English dub of Sailor Moon, which was initially produced by DiC.
  • Holly Larocque, who voiced Leota in the TV series, was best known for starring in Under the Umbrella Tree as Holly Higgins.
• In Memoriam: The first Adventure Series book was dedicated to Ken Forsse's first wife, Wendy. She died one year before the actual toy was published.
• International Coproduction: The TV series was produced by DiC Entertainment, Alchemy II and Worlds of Wonder in the United States, and Atkinson Film-Arts in Canada. The secondary animation was done primarily in South Korea.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The live-action special aired in two parts on ABC in 1985. Eventually, Children's Video Library released it on VHS in 1986; it has since gone out of print.
  • The animated series was slated to be re-run on the Hub anywhere from late 2014 to early 2015 according to an online article, along with a new season of Kid President: Declaration of Awesome. Then came the switch to Discovery Family, killing the chances of the show being ever re-run on television in the foreseeable future, which is sad because the show only ever reran in Canada on Teletoon to fulfill CanCon quotas and promote the Yes! version of the toy, but aired in a poor timeslot.
  • For a few years, a majority of the episodes were missing for what seemed like forever because Hi-Tops and Yes! Entertainment only decided to release a certain number of episodes, the most notable missing ones being story-building episodes like the finale. Enter Mill Creek Entertainment, who released the complete series circa 2005. Once those went out of print, the series was released in a box set with all 65 episodes by Image Entertainment in June 2012. And after that set went out of print, the entire series was remastered and released by Henson Independent Properties on Amazon Prime in 2019.
  • A new version of the toy was released by Wicked Cool Toys in 2017, although it went out of print a few years later after they lost the rights.
• The Other Darrin: In the live-action special, Tweeg and Wooly were voiced by Will Ryan, Gimmick and L.B. by Tony Pope, and Leota by a pre-Minnie Mouse Russi Taylor. Because the animated series was recorded in Ottawa instead of Los Angeles, Tweeg was voiced by John Koensgen, L.B. by Robert Bockstael, Wooly by Pier Paquette, Gimmick by John Stocker, Leota by Holly Larocque, and Princess Aruzia by Abby Hagyard.
• The Other Marty: During the toy's development, Teddy was initially voiced by Larry Larsen and then Terry McGovern. Later, at Will Ryan's suggestion, Phil Baron was brought in to voice the character.
• Outlived Its Creator: Ken Forsse^note Whose company Alchemy II still exists died of congestive heart failure on March 19, 2014. Three years later, Wicked Cool Toys released a new version of Teddy that has built in stories, with additional stories available through mobile apps on iOS and Android^note Which also includes Amazon Kindle Fire tablets..
• Production Posse: The series was co-produced by Atkinson Film-Arts and features several voice actors from their other works, such as Rick Jones, Terrence Scammell, Les Lye, Abby Hagyard, Robert Bockstael, and Anna MacCormack. Even after the company folded, some of the cast would continue to work together for other studios. Phil Baron and Will Ryan were also Those Two Actors.
• Promoted Fanboy: John Tartaglia, the showrunner for the Jim Henson Company's proposed animated version of Teddy Ruxpin, is a fan of the franchise.
• Reclusive Artist: Holly Larocque, the voice of Leota, never appeared in another television production after this one aside from Under the Umbrella Tree.
• Referenced by...: Has its' own page.
• Role Reprise:
  • For the live-action pilot, quite a few actors from the book and tape series reprised their roles including Phil Baron as Teddy, Will Ryan as Grubby, Tweeg and Wooly, Tony Pope as Gimmick, Katie Leigh as Princess Aruzia and Russi Taylor as Leota.
  • Baron and Ryan later reprised most of their roles for the animated series.
• Same Voice Their Entire Life: The episode "Octopede Sailors" contains a flashback to when Grubby was in a shipwreck as a child. The younger Grubby sounds similar to the normal Grubby.
• Screwed by the Network: Despite being connected with a popular toy franchise, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin was stuffed in timeslots when the target audience wouldn't be able to watch it. It would usually air anywhere from 4:00AM in the morning to 3:00PM in the afternoon, and was supposed to air in syndication again for the 1998-1999 television season but nobody was willing to pick it up. It would later suffer this fate for its run on Teletoon in Canada, where it aired at 10:00AM on weekdays, when the target demographic was in school.
• Self-Adaptation:
  • Series creator Ken Forsse wrote the script to the ABC television special.
  • When the TV series was produced, Forsse teamed up with Leonard Levitt to create a series bible and serve as story consultants along with Teddy Ruxpin's voice actor Phil Baron.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: Worlds of Wonder's run on Teddy Ruxpin didn't last a decade before it closed in 1991. However, they helped release one of the most beloved toys of The '80s, which is still ongoing to this day.
• Studio Hop:
  • The Teddy Ruxpin toy line was first released by Worlds of Wonder in 1985. After WOW closed down in 1991, the rights were picked up by Hasbro, who released the toy under its Playskool line. In 1998, Yes! Entertainment became the toy's distributor, but owing to financial troubles, Alchemy II withdrew the license. In 2005, BackPack Toys released the Teddy Ruxpin toy with digital cartridges instead of the audio cassettes. From 2017 to 2019, an updated version of the Teddy Ruxpin toy was developed by Wicked Cool Toys.
  • The home media releases for the TV series went through many distributors. At first, they were handled by Hi-Tops Video, before switching to First National Pictures in 2006, then Mill Creek Entertainment in 2008, then Image Entertainment in 2012, and finally Henson Independent Properties in 2019.
  • For the cartoon, Atkinson Film-Arts managed to convince DiC to switch animation studios in Asia after the initial episodes came back looking rough and borderline unairable. In spite of this, neither Asian studio went credited for the final product.
• Those Two Actors:
  • Phil Baron and Will Ryan. They did many gigs together as "Willio and Phillio" in the 1970s, then co-starred in Welcome to Pooh Corner before voicing Teddy and Grubby. They were the only voice actors from the cassette tapes to reprise their roles for the TV series.
  • Les Lye and Abby Hagyard. Throughout the 1980s, they co-starred in You Can't Do That on Television and were regulars for various Atkinson Film-Arts productions.
• Unspecified Role Credit: Though the adventure series books as well as the animated series credited the voice actors, their character names aren't listed.
• Voices in One Room: For the adventure series, as well as the TV series, the cast members performed their dialogue in the same room.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Hasbro and Jim Henson showed interest in distributing Teddy Ruxpin during The '80s. However, Hasbro didn't have enough funding (and wouldn't until 1991, when they would re-release the toy under the Playskoool brand for a year) and dismissed the technology as being ahead of its time by 3 years. While attempts to partner up with Henson ultimately didn't work out due to unfortunate timing regarding Worlds of Wonder's bankruptcy^note Jim was noted as being impressed by Ken Forsee's innovations in animatronics and was openly jealous about it when shown first-hand. This resulted in an attempt to bring the Muppet Babies to life in an abandoned toyline called Muppet Magic. In 2018, the Jim Henson Company announced plans to create another TV series; unfortunately, that project was eventually canceled as well. Three years later, dj2 Entertainment (best known for their work on Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)) obtained the TV series and film rights.
  • Originally, the show was to be a live-action series similar to Welcome to Pooh Corner, even getting a pilot in the form of a two-part TV special aired on ABC. It was, however, found to be too expensive to produce, and the animated series was made instead. An even earlier attempt in 1979 featuring cable-controlled puppets and a different design for Teddy was made, but never released beyond a pitch pilot. The pitch is considered lost, with the only elements remaining being some photos of the puppets and sets.
  • At some point after the series ended, an animated film adaptation, which would have been the Grand Finale for the series, was commissioned but nothing came from it, It would have utilized cel animation with CGI backgrounds. The only remnants/proof of its existence were some cels and concept art.
  • "The Story Of The Faded Fobs" was supposed to be released for the 1998 Yes! Entertainment version of Teddy Ruxpin, and went as far as to have art created for it. This version didn't show up until 2017, when it was put on the Wicked Cool Toys Teddy Ruxpin app.
  • This social media post used a quote from "Safe At Home With Teddy Ruxpin", meaning that said title was planned for the Wicked Cool Toys release of the toy. Alas, the title was never released for said version, with the toy being discontinued a few months later.
• Written by Cast Member: Phil Baron (Teddy Ruxpin) and Will Ryan (Grubby, Tweeg, Wooly) have tried their hand at writing a few Adventure Series books.

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