YMMV / Teletubbies

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Once you read about the BEAR and LION ciphers on The Other Wiki, the Lion and Bear skit suddenly becomes an allegory about espionage and counter-espionage.
  • In 1999, a newspaper published by Jerry Falwell (not necessarily Falwell himself, contrary to popular belief) claimed that the show tries to normalize tropes and icons associated with homosexuality, since the largest Tinky Winky is purple, carries a handbag "purse" and has a triangle on his head. The Talking Po toy doesn't help matters.
  • There's also a theory floating around that the antennae of the Teletubbies carry occultic symbols...meant to somehow corrupt the Target Audience (babies and toddlers) away from Christianty and towards "Satanic" (read: non-Christian) beliefs. Most likely, those who sincerely believe that have never seen Teletubbies; religion isn't even dealt with, and the antennae shapes were most likely chosen because they're interesting from a design point of view.
• Archive Panic: 365 episodes for the original run alone, meaning (save for leaps years of course) you could watch one episode every day, for a whole year. Enough said. Luckily, BBC has kept the show well-archived, with almost every episode being uploaded on the official YouTube channel.
• Common Knowledge: The Netflix version of the show is often referred to as a new reboot of the series. It's actually a Re-Cut of various episodes from the first two seasons of the 2015 series that changes a few details, such as redubbing the narrator voice or having a different Baby Sun in each episode.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Noo-noo, the vacuum cleaner, who, on Chris's website, got a Fourth-Wall Mail Slot, where you could speak to him, and he would respond with robotic noises.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The 2015 series is known as "The Teletubbies Reboot" by fans. While nothing has come out saying whether or not it actually is a reboot, all the qualifications of it being one are there.
  • Before "Tummy Tales" became the canonical term, fans would often call them "TV Events" or "Transmissions".
  • The Magic Windmill is often called "The Magic Pinwheel" for obvious reasons. The reboot makes it look more like a windmill, though.
  • The Adobe Flash segments in the "Let's Learn English With the Teletubbies" DVDs are known as "Cartoon Magical Events" by fans. This is because the Magical Event cue plays before the crossfade into them.
  • It wasn't uncommon to hear the voice trumpets being called "speakers". Their official names were never given outside of promotion material anyway.
• First Installment Wins: The original 1997 series is more remembered and better known than the 2015 reboot, to the point that you will find many people who were not aware of the existence of the reboot, and are surprised to find that it exists. That said, it's no wonder people often mistake footage from the 2015 reboot with footage from the original 1997 series.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show is so popular in South Korea that exclusive merchandise for the show was produced for the country and it still airs there. Also, the Korean version of Saturday Night Live has a recurring segment about what the Teletubbies' lives would be like if they were adults.
• LGBT Fanbase: Tinky Winky has a purse, purple fur, and a triangle antenna, which led to theories that he was gay. Despite Word of God debunking this, it led to him being a gay icon.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Baby Sun. For some reason, it spawned a whole bunch of images with faces of celebrities being superimposed onto a crudely drawn picture of the sun. Some which were used in Animutations.
  • Ever since La La Land released, it's quite common to see Laa-Laa photoshopped on the movie's poster.
  • In TikTok, people having been posting videos with their pet/s wearing little paper antennas, drawings of the Tubbies, or other related things, all while this song plays.
  • Bitch that's the tubby custard machine.◊^note Somebody on Tumblr once made a post regarding "pink slime" and mechanically-separated chicken...using a GIF of an overflowing bowl of tubby custard. Another user quickly shut it down with this eloquent response, with the replies quickly filling up with other users quoting the Teletubbies in All Caps.
  • Adult Teletubbies^note A Tumblr user posted about a dream where they encountered enormous mysterious aliens that were grown-up Teletubbies, inspiring fanart reimagining the cast as majestic yet ominous beings, essentially turning them into Pure Form versions of themselves.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • You can count on it that many children were probably freaked out by the Baby Sun's occasional squawking or loud laughs. Game Grumps put it best: "Oh, GOD!"
  • The "lion and bear" segment, which features uncanny puppetry and menacing music. Understandably, the sketch was banned in four countries, including the USA, and a new version was created with silly sound effects and comedic gags like the lion meowing for some reason.
  • The Teletubbies themselves can be creepy, with their unmoving Unintentional Uncanny Valley faces and blank, staring eyes.
  • The Magic House sketch was also rather unnerving to some, especially in the original UK broadcasts where the puppet inside the house made very weird noises and sang off-key.
  • The voice trumpets are benevolent, microphone-like beings that recite songs and nursery rhymes, and are liked by the Teletubbies themselves. However, the loud microphone feedback sound that they make before they speak, and the fact that they can pop up seemingly anywhere, whether indoors or outside, frightened some children. It's also not helped by the fact that, in a word where even the sun and vacuum cleaners have eyes, they are completely faceless.
  • Noo-Noo is the Team Pet who cleans up the messes the title characters make. But the fact that he can suck up seemingly anything, from clouds to Laa-Laa's beloved ball, scared some kids; some now-grown fans claim that they feared Noo-Noo would suck up them. Noo-Noo also frequently looked into the camera, which was likely meant to be humorous, but came off as unintentionally creepy due to the fact that, unlike the Teletubbies, he doesn't talk and thus would be staring in silence.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • The show is popular with young adults who are into rave culture, probably because of its surrealism.
  • The people who make personifications of the characters also count, as well as some people in their early teens.
• Periphery Hatedom: As with Caillou and Dora the Explorer, the Teletubbies is often reviled for being a "baby" show by people who are most definitely not babies. Though a lot of the hatedom derives from the Unintentional Uncanny Valley look of the titular characters and the Sun Baby. Look up "Teletubbies" on sites like Urban Dictionary and you'll find answers like "Four reasons why I should own a gun".
• Ron the Death Eater: It's common in Fanon to imply that the Teletubbies are Bitch in Sheep's Clothing that hide their true Eldritch Abomination forms. Elder Sunbaby and Charles Manson Vs The Teletubbies take this concept and run with it.
• Self-Fanservice: It's surprisingly common for people to make human versions of the Teletubbies. Invariably they'll be fashionable and attractive young adults. At least one of them will almost always wear a hoodie.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Most of the magical events made with CGI (Animal Parade, Dancing Bear, Three Ships, Magic Tree,...) haven't aged well technically. Those still look gorgeous in their own surreal way however.
  • The snow episodes, instead of shooting new footage, lazily Chroma Key the stock footage. Needless to say, it's very noticeable. You can even still see bits of green sticking out in some parts.
• Sweetness Aversion: The show is overly saccharine, even compared to other preschool shows.
• Tear Jerker: For those who are not desensitized, the last 15 seconds of the end credits in the show and the ending of the original extended music video can be depressing, the whole feeling that the fun is over and it's time for bed.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • A lot of fans aren't happy with some of the changes made in the 2015 reboot. These include the removal of Magic Events, cutting the length of episodes in half, and the dramatically changed writing style.
  • When the Netflix revival was first shown off, there was a sizable outcry over the change made to Baby Sun. Not because the head itself was changed to a different baby, but because there's no yellow filter over it, making it look extremely gaudy and out of place.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Baby Sun, which is a baby's face on the sun, can be creepy.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Po is often mistaken for a male due to her fur being red and for her tomboyish antics.
  • So is Laa-Laa to a lesser extent, though she's more girly.
  • Tinky Winky is sometimes mistaken for a girl due to his habit of carrying a purse, despite his masculine voice.
  • The Bear is a woman (voiced by Penelope Keith), but in some languages, like Swedish and Italian, she's a man.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: The second "e" in "Teletubbies" is long, not short. This is Averted, and becomes Ascended Fanon in the Netflix version of the reboot, where it is pronounced with a short "e".
• Vindicated by History: The show was a common source of mockery during the Turn of the Millennium, being nothing more than something for parents sit their children in front of to keep them quiet. Nowadays, you'll find plenty of people that will openly admit to liking it, whether it's authentically or ironically. Even those who weren't fans of the original will say the reboot is at least an improvement.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Arguably one the most memorable segments from the show is "The Tubby Toast Accident" from Feeding the Chickens. It's not hard to see why.
  • "Falling Down Dance" has a really nice panning shot of the Magic Windmill starting to spin that was only used once throughout the entire show.

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