YMMV / The Sooty Show

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Sooty first appeared as part of a magic show. Could it be that (in-universe at least) Sooty and his friends are not mere hand puppets, but creatures animated and brought to life by magic?
• Audience-Alienating Era: After Matthew Corbett retired in 1998, the franchise took a drastically different turn, both with the Animated Adaptation Sooty's Amazing Adventures — in which Scampi and Sweep are Suddenly Voiced, among other oddities — and Sooty Heights, which seemed to be unsuccessfully doing its hardest to be hip and current in the late 1990s. By this time Richard Cadell was the main host, but he lacked creative control. The final season, renamed Sooty, suffered from Executive Meddling, with drastic redesigns of the puppets, and Soo’s voice actress being replaced. It was cancelled due to low ratings and the show ended in 2004, ending Sooty's uninterrupted stint on television since 1955. Once Richard Cadell bought the franchise, it was rumored that he destroyed the master tapes to the cartoon series because he found it so awful^note Although this has since been debunked. The master tapes in question are still intact, but are kept deep within the ITV archives; and in accordance with Cadell's wishes, they will likely never be shown any time soon. and accordingly returned the show to more like it had been with Sooty & Co.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The episode “Bun Fight” from Sooty & Co. Its premise is that, to draw customers into the shop, Sooty buys some cream cakes. It’s quickly revealed that he purchased them from a joke shop, and, after a short amount of time, they explode; the only indication that this will happen is that the cake starts ticking. Cue the gang trying to dispose of the buns. Granted, the victims are completely unharmed: they just merely get covered in cream. Three years after the episode's broadcast, Manchester went through a bombing attack. Over twenty years later, another tragedy occurred. As harmless as “Bun Fight” is, the idea of something blowing up in Manchester is now a highly serious matter.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Cos Tooty Poo Smesh", thanks to YouTube Poop videos.
  • In some circles, "Izzy whizzy, let's get busy!" is up there with "Abracadabra" as a known magician stock phrase.
  • "TWINS?!"
  • Matthew Corbett saying "cocks" in one episode became popular thanks to YouTube Poop.
• Retroactive Recognition: Arthur Darvill appeared in one episode years before he played Rory in Doctor Who. He was later reunited with Sooty and Sweep when he appeared on Fern Britton's talk show.
• Signature Scene:
  • Sweep's family visiting and partying in the family bedroom.
  • Matthew trying to convince Sweep to eat runner beans because they make consumers run faster, which Sweep interprets as Super-Speed.
• The Woobie: Sweep, who gets the brunt of a lot of abuse and is often treated as if he's stupid, being called sausage-brain. He normally doesn't react to this, but there are occasional episodes where he gets his feelings hurt.

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