Trivia / Ace Lightning

• Creator's Oddball: This is one of two non-preschool-oriented works that Rick Siggelkow worked on, the other being Dinosapien.
• Descended Creator: Zip and Snip are voiced by Matt Ficner, the character designer of the show.
• He Also Did: The creator, Rick Siggelkow, also created two Importation Expansion series for PBS Kids: Shining Time Station and The Noddy Shop.
• Screwed by the Network: The show was cancelled after three seasons, leaving the viewers on something of a small cliff-hanger. An interview with Rick Siggelkow revealed the rather ironic reason for the show's demise: the BBC produced three rather crumby video game adaptations of the show, but the games' budget and subsequent lack of returns from their development led to the BBC being unable to finance the show's development. So, a show based around a fictional game gained actual games, but ended up getting canned because of the real games' failure.
• Throw It In!: When Rick Siggelkow showed children at a local park an image of the Googler while the show was in development, a boy suggested that the puppets on his arms should fly off and chase people so that they could bite them.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The series originally had the characters coming from a comic book rather than a video game, until Rick Siggelkow noticed how more kids were into video games than comic books.
  • The details of the cancelled third season are minimal, but they would've included Lord Fear teaming up with Mr. Cheseborough, Ace Lightning going into the game to rescue Lady Illusion, and Rick would've been "half animated" after escaping the game world.
  • Numerous character designs that never made it onto the show are available for viewing on character designer Matt Ficner's personal website and Facebook page. These include an early design for Kilobyte named "Scrambler", Buzzbeast, Candy Floss, Gas Master, and unused hero Tesla.
  • The series was originally called Captain Lightning.

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