Trivia / Pet Alien

• Acting for Two: There are only four voice actors (Charlie Schlatter, Charlie Adler, Jess Harnell and Candi Milo), and Harnell is also the voice director. As such, every character on the show shares their actor with someone else:
  • Charlie Schlatter voices Tommy and Clinton.
  • Charlie Adler voices Dinko, Flip and Cap'n Spangley.
  • Jess Harnell voices Gumpers, Swanky and Granville.
  • Candi Milo provides all the female voices (most notably Melba and Gabby), for she is the only female voice actor on the show.
• Banned Episode: When the series aired on Qubo, the episode "Day of the Naked Aliens" was cut and replaced with another airing of "Race with the Clinton". This is speculated to be a result of all the nudity-themed jokes and innuendos, such as Tommy gesturing to his crotch while saying "naked stuff", Gumpers singing about being naked, and the ending where the entire human cast gets stripped nude.
• The Cast Showoff: Jess Harnell gets to show off his vocal chops as Swanky a few times, particularly when Swanky sings near the end of "Duet from Another Dimension".
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Various sources, including The Other Wiki, seem to believe both seasons of the show aired throughout the first half of 2005. A cursory look at the production dates in the credits deconfirms this, as several Season 1 episodes are dated to 2004 while many of the Season 2 episodes are dated to 2006/2007.
• Crossdressing Voices: The minor villain Emperor Breet from "Evil Emperor" was voiced by Candi Milo.
• Directed by Cast Member: Jess Harnell — the voice of Gumpers, Swanky, and Granville — was also the voice director for the show.
• Fake Brit: The American Jess Harnell voices Swanky and Granville, both of whom have British accents. This isn't his first time, as Harnell also played the Scouse-accented Wakko Warner from Animaniacs.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Most of the series hasn't been made officially available. The closest thing to such were some compilation DVDs featuring various Season 1 episodes, but they don't cover every episode and have long since gone out of print. Amazon Prime does have the series, but only half of the first season. Qubo reran the second season up to its shutdown in 2021, with "Day of the Naked Aliens" skipped (see Banned Episode above).
• Kids' Meal Toy: At some point around 2007, Burger King released toys for each of the six main characters: Tommy, Dinko, Gumpers, Swanky, Flip, and Scruffy.
• No Budget: The show aimed to be a 3D-animated series that prominently used squash-and-stretch... on a fairly small TV budget. While the animation itself is very expressive, the rest of the show was clearly constrained by the low budget, with odd-looking models that have visibly low-resolution textures, a small voice cast consisting of only four voice actors for the entire show (resulting in a lot of Acting for Two), and a lot episodes primarily taking place inside or around the lighthouse to avoid creating new environments.
• Stillborn Franchise: The series was intended to become a multimedia franchise with various forms of merchandise, but for one reason or another, it never came to fruition and the show ultimately faded into obscurity after two seasons.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The show was originally going to be picked up by Disney, but only on the condition that it was retooled to appeal to toddlers. Jeff Muncy rejected the deal and pitched the show to Cartoon Network instead, who approved it in its current state.
  • The original draft for the series was meant to be more serialized and accurate to the toyline. Dinko, Gumpers, and Swanky would have landed in Tommy's backyard and took refuge in his treehouse, forcing Tommy to keep them a secret for fear of attracting the Big Union of Galaxies. The show would later get reworked into an episodic comedy with more simplistic storylines, Tommy's treehouse becoming a lighthouse, Flip and Scruffy being added to the cast, and the secret-keeping arc being cut altogether.
  • Early concept art◊ shows the series was originally going to have a similar look to the toyline/web shorts before going for a more exaggerated style.

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