Bob the Builder – how it all began…
Reproduced from “Toonhound”
Bob was created by advertising artist Keith Chapman back in the late 1980s. He’d spied a JCB on a building site one day and thought it might be fun to bring it to life with cartoon eyes. That JCB became Scoop. Other machines followed. Then of course, the vehicles need a human operator, and so Bob was created together with a labourer mate called Lenny. In his original guise, Bob was actually an older character and he sported a macho moustache.
Keith used to tell his children bedtime stories featuring moustachioed Bob and the crew. At the time, however, no one was interested in the concept as a commercial vehicle.
Eventually, Keith brought his long-gestating project to HIT Entertainment, and it was they who developed it into the series we know today. They even formed their own in-house studio, HOT animation, to bring the show to life. The company took a pilot to Cannes in 1996 and acquired a development deal from the BBC and from thereon, HIT’s Kate Fawkes, Jackie Cockle of HOT and designer/illustrator Curtis Jobling worked the project through the rest of the developmemt process.
Bob soon lost that moustache. He also became younger. Then Lenny was dropped, and Wendy stepped in to his shoes. But she too developed. Originally, she was a dizzy secretary-type. Fortunately, one of the more drastic changes never came to fruition. It was a change requested by the BBC and it called for the machines to be made mute – talking machines being a most illogical concept. The production team spent three months rewriting scripts but thankfully for us, the new stories had lost their sparkle so the BBC honchos were persuaded to drop their request!
The series eventually premiered on the BBC 12th April 1999, and Keith, HOT and HIT haven’t looked back. By the end of 2000, Bob had been sold to 108 countries and £60m of licensed products had been sold.
posted lunch time in Bob Trivia by puzz1ed1 | 3,011 Views |
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