Line #18 Trivia/Pinwheel


1	* AdoredByTheNetwork: During its heyday, five episodes of ''Pinwheel'' were aired back to back each day, taking up five full hours of airtime. ''Pinwheel'' was seen as such a staple of the network that when its timeslot began to shrink in the late 1980s, plenty of fans could tell that [[ReTool something major was about to happen]].
2	* CreatorBacklash: Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} refuses to acknowledge the existence of this show, calling it a "distant memory".
3	* FollowTheLeader: The show's crew members were hired for their previous experience in preschool television, with many of them coming from ''Series/SesameStreet''[='=]s production company, the Children's Television Workshop. As a result, the show's general format bears some similarities, though on ''Pinwheel'', the puppet characters are much more of a secondary presence to the human hosts.
4	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: The last rerun aired on Nick Jr. in 1990, and the show has never been re-aired since. There have been numerous attempts to petition the release of some episodes on DVD, but to no avail. Your best shot of watching ''Pinwheel'' would be to find a bootleg recording on eBay, although a few episodes have been uploaded to Website/YouTube. Rights issues with the foreign animated shorts Nickelodeon licensed for the show (see below) are a possible factor.
5	* LongRunners: The show aired new episodes for eight years (1977-1984) and was on the air for thirteen (1977-1990). It survived two network rebrandings before it fell on the third. It had the most episodes of any Nickelodeon show until ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' came along.
6	* MissingEpisode: A majority of the series is missing. While there were 260 hour-long episodes made, only around 10 hours of footage has appeared online. Nickelodeon does still appear to have all of the episodes but have never released them publicly.
7	* PopCultureUrbanLegends: Some webpages claim that Music/{{REM}} made an early appearance on ''Pinwheel''. This is highly unlikely as REM did not form until around 1980 and many of the Pinwheel episodes were filmed in the late 1970s. This may be because they ''did'' make [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoTs0nS0nZs an appearance]] on another early Nickelodeon show, ''Livewire'', in 1983.
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9	* The second and third seasons of ''Pinwheel'' featured inserts of various foreign-made animations. The following is a (very) partial list of the recurring animated segments, grouped by country of origin:
10	** United Kingdom: ''Series/{{Bagpuss}}'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Bod}}'', ''Crystal Tipps and Alistair'', ''Hattytown Tales'', ''WesternAnimation/KingRollo'', ''WesternAnimation/Paddington1975'', ''Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings''
11	** France: ''WesternAnimation/ChapiChapo'', ''Emily'' (''Emilie''), ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicRoundabout'' (''Le Manège enchanté''), ''Miximetric'', "Caterpillar" interstitials
12	** West Germany: ''Piggeldy and Frederick'' (''Piggeldy und Frederick''), "Mouse and elephant" segments from ''The Programme with the Mouse'' (''Series/DieSendungMitDerMaus'')
13	** Belgium: ''Musti'', ''The Peelies'' (''De Pilis''), ''Tip and Tap'' (''Tip en Tap'')
14	** Italy: ''Lilli Put Put'', ''WesternAnimation/LaLinea''
15	** Sweden: ''Alfie Atkins'' (''Alfons Åberg''), ''Charlie's Climbing Tree'' (''Kalles klätterträd'')
16	** Denmark: ''Grizzle and Co.'' (''Brumme og Co.''), ''Indoor Games'' (''Indendørslege''), ''Little Penguin's World'' (''Lille P.'s verden'')
17	** Poland: ''Jym and Jam'' (''Bolek i Lolek'')
18	** Czechoslovakia: ''Animation/TheLittleMole'' (''Krteček''), ''Sally'' (''O paradivé Sally'')
19	** Hungary: ''Animation/TheRabbitWithTheCheckeredEars'' (''A Kockásfülű nyúl'')
20	** Romania: ''Miaunel and Balanel'' (''Miaunel și Bălănel'')
21	** Yugoslavia: ''Professor Balthazar''
22	** Japan: ''Tales of Magic'' (''Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi'')

Context Trivia / Pinwheel