Trivia / Big Bag

• Acting for Two:
  • Muppet performer Joey Mazzarino performed both Chelli and Lyle, and Rickey Boyd performed both Bag and Argyle.
  • The villagers in the first season were all performed by two people. Clare Sera played all the female villagers (Trudy, Martha and Josie) and Cullen Douglas played all the male villagers (Bernard, Dr. Furball and Waldo).
• Edited for Syndication: When the show was reduced from an hour-long timeslot in the second season to a half-hour, the first season episodes got hit with this pretty badly to be rerun in the half-hour slot. Several parts of the framing story and half of the short cartoons would be cut, though on each episode, two versions of the rerun would exist: one with Troubles the Cat, Samuel and Nina and a Big Bag Beat music video, and another with William's Wish Wellingtons, Slim Pig and Koki. As part of this, Tobias Totz and His Lion was completely dropped from the reruns.
• Fake American: On Samuel & Nina, Allen Enlow and Ivy Austin, who provide both title characters' voices, avert this trope, while Aussie actors and Yoram Gross veterans Keith Scott and Robyn Moore play this straight while voicing other characters.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The show's low ratings caused Sesame Workshop to deny it any further releases. There are a few VHSes of the series, but they are long out of print, and they don't cover the whole series.
• The Merch: Tyco sold a plush of Chelli, and there was also a set of children's books by Golden Books.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The show used a Framing Device surrounding imported characters, so it's not very likely the show will see the light of day again due to licensing issues.
• Screwed by the Network: When the second season premiered in spring 1998, the show would air every weekday morning. But after the summer, the show was just buried on a very early Sunday morning timeslot (usually at 5:30 or 6:00 AM Eastern). This may be one reason why the show's ratings kept dropping and eventually led to its' demise. In fact, during the last month it was on (September 2000), the show aired at 5:30AM, with Small World following it at 6:00AM.