Bob the Builder (partially lost American dub of CBeebies stop-motion animated series; 1999-2012)

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BobtheBuilderLogo.png

The show's logo.

Status: Partially Lost

Bob the Builder is a British children's television series created by Keith Chapman. It ran from November 28th, 1998 to December 31st, 2011 and a reboot aired from September 1st, 2015 to December 30th, 2018. When the show was brought to American audiences, it aired with an American redubbing on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block from 2001-2004 and on PBS Kids and Sprout from 2005-2016. Sixteen episodes of the US dub which were not released on DVD or VHS have gone missing over the years, plus five episodes which were retitled in the US dub and have only their US title card missing. 13 of these lost episode dubs have been found in full, while the other 8 are either incomplete or yet to be found. Two episodes of the US dub also had two separate US versions, the first version released in 2005 and a re-recorded version released in 2007.

Lost Episodes

Episode Title Status
Naughty Spud Found
Spud the Super Wrench Found
Tea Set Travis Found
Watercolor Wendy Partially Lost (Missing title card)
Bob's Bird Blind Partially Lost (Missing title card)
Roll on Roley Found
Mr. Beasley's Vegetable Patch Partially Lost (Missing title card)
Wendy's Party Plan Partially Found
Scrambler in the Doghouse (Original 2005 dub) Partially Found
Scrambler and the Colourful Cave (Original 2005 dub) Found
Travis and the Tropical Fruits Existence Unconfirmed
Spud's Cork Tree Lost
Sumsy and the Beast Lost
Benny's Jungle Trouble Found
Mr. Bentley's Big Parade Found
Muck's Mootastic Dairy Found
Roley the Green Cat Found
Zoomer's Snowy Adventure Found
Tumbler and the Ice Rink Lost
Spud the DJ Lost
An Inspector Calls Found (Low-quality)

Existence

In 2014, a YouTuber called Thomasultimate123 uploaded Season 1 of Bob the Builder in its US dub, including "Naughty Spud." Sometime afterwards, he deleted most of his Bob the Builder uploads, possibly due to backlash from his inaccuracy in terms of how he released and edited the episodes. Either way, he deleted all of his uploads barring "Travis and Scoop's Race Day," making "Naughty Spud" completely lost (at the time), as the original series rarely aired on US TV after 2016, and any PBS airings of Seasons 1 and 2 are quite sparse.

A clip from "Naughty Spud" was uploaded onto YouTube under the user EntertainmentFan2004 in 2019 but was gone since the owner of the channel closed it due to fear of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Three months before this, a clip from "Spud the Super Wrench" was uploaded onto YouTube under the user Bob the Builder Archives. Eventually, the clip of "Naughty Spud" was reuploaded on May 25th, 2020 under the user CleverHilarious 20.

It is currently unclear if "Travis and the Tropical Fruits" received an American redub, as the episode was never aired on PBS Kids, likely due to the episode's depiction of horse manure. In addition, the voice actor for Bob in the American dub does not seem to remember the episode.[1] Some fans claim that PBS Kids Sprout and Treehouse aired the episode with the US dub, but there isn't any real proof backing these claims up.

Findings

In 2018, a Nick Jr. airing containing "Tea Set Travis" was uploaded to Archive.org by Kristopher Walker. Two years later, he recently uncovered personal VHS recordings of "Naughty Spud" and "Spud the Super Wrench," later uploading them on Microsoft OneDrive. A clip from "Wendy's Party Plan" has also been found on YouTube.

In April 2019, various episodes of Bob the Builder reran on Universal Kids with their US dub, however the UK intro was used instead of these airings, and the show stopped airing on Universal Kids a few months later and the US dub hasn't been aired since. A few of the episodes with lost US dubs were aired on Universal Kids, some of which were recorded by fans and uploaded to the internet. Bob the Builder later started airing on Qubo and Paramount+ in the US, but both of these channels use the original UK dub, due to Universal still holding the distribution rights to the US dub.

See Also

External Links

References