Bluey (found pilots for Australian children's animated TV series; 2016-2017)

A screenshot of the intro to the 2017 pilot.

Status: Partially Found

Bluey is an animated show about a 6-year-old blue heeler dog named Bluey and her family, younger sister Bingo, mother Chilli, and father Bandit. 2 pilots were made for the show, a 1-minute test in 2016 and a 7-minute pilot in 2017.

2016 Pilot

This pilot was only one minute long and centered around Bluey being pushed on a swing and getting faster and faster until the climax when she goes all the way around on the swing and crashes into her father, who didn't seem to be paying attention to the whole thing. The short was made in the creator's spare time and was never shown outside of network offices, the reason according to the show's creator, Joe Brumm, is that quote "It was just unsafe. You could never put that on kids TV."^[1] The short was found in February 2023 by an anonymous user and was shared by a user named ThatOnePickle on Twitter.

2017 Pilot

This pilot is 7 minutes in length and was later made into the episode "The Weekend". The theme song is the song Pinball Lez by Custard with a kid dubbed over saying "Bluey! Ruff Ruff!". The episode used the same actors and script as the final version but with simplified character models and the house mainly having white plank walls. It was showcased at Asian Animation Summit in 2017^[2] and picked up by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Availability

Screenshots of the 2017 pilot were supplied by Studio Ludo for a news article by ABC in 2017^[3] and 1 minute of the 2017 pilot was released online in December of that same year^[4]. It is unlikely that the 2016 pilot will be released due to the creator's concern for the safety of the show's children audience, but the 2017 pilot might be found with a little digging.