YMMV / Theodore Tugboat

• Awesome Music:
  • Try getting the theme song out of your head. You can't.
  • Much of the background music, composed by Graham Shaw, is pure Sweet Dreams Fuel with its soft, flowing synths and gentle piano melodies.

• Fandom Rivalry: The show sometimes gets this with TUGS. Some TUGS fans think that Theodore is babyish and lacks the depth and maturity that TUGS had. Theodore fans will point out that TUGS had the luxury of being primarily on VHS, allowing it to get away with dark subject matter, while Theodore aired on broadcast preschool television and had more limits. When TUGS made it to the US, it was aired as part of Salty's Lighthouse and was watered-down heavily. Despite this, Theodore did tackle mature topics from time to time; "Hank's Funny Feeling" dealt with the grooming of minors in a sincere way, as opposed to the Too Smart for Strangers specials of yore. However, the majority of TUGS and Theodore fans get along fine, especially with the Thomas & Friends fandom.
• Informed Wrongness: Scally from "Scally's Stuff" Is seen as this to the other tugs after they didn't want to use his stuff as it was useless. The episode was trying to point out that buying extra stuff isn't all that great. The problem wasn't Scally; it was how the tugs were using the stuff. Plus it wasn't like he scammed the tugs as he actually gave them the stuff for free.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Theodore in Theodore The Jokester. After his initial reaction to the stinky seaweed Rebecca is carrying gets a chuckle from the surrounding boats, he proceeds to make more jokes about Rebecca's smell, for which the surrounding boats now shun him. He's later scolded by Emily for making fun of Rebecca for doing her job. This alone would have been enough for Theodore to see the error of his ways, but then The Dispatcher assigns Theodore to haul a stinky garbage barge and then everyone in the harbour laughs at him (even the other Tug boats who chewed him out for making fun of Rebecca). It doesn't make what Theodore did right, but he wasn't making fun of Rebecca out of spite. It was just misguided attention seeking and he was reprimanded for it. Lumbering him with the garbage barge and having everyone laughing at him makes it look like they went more than a little overboard with his karma.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Hank in "Hank and the Hug". Hank gets pissed at the other tugboats for not wanting to play with him, even though they all have jobs to do.
  • Emily in Theodore In The Middle. George making an official complaint about Emily being late to the morning work meeting was treated as a Kick the Dog moment, and the rest of the episode tries to play it as Both Sides Have a Point. However, the Dispatcher wouldn't have given George the option of making a complaint if Emily wasn't breaking the rules. Rather than owning up to her mistakes, she instead gets mad at George, kickstarting the main plot of the episode.

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