Salty's Lighthouse

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Salty's Lighthouse
Salty's Lighthouse title card.jpg
Salty's Lighthouse opening screen.
Genre Children's television
Format Animated series
Created by Nina I. Hahn (show concept)
Theme music composer Chase Rucker Productions
Country of origin United States
Language(s) English
No. of series 1
No. of episodes 39
Production
Executive producer(s) Carole Weitzman
Producer(s) Mark Stratton
Running time 11 minutes
Broadcast
First shown in 1997

Salty's Lighthouse was a series for young children, produced by Sunbow Entertainment in 1997 in association with the Bank Street College of Education in New York. The show centred around a young boy named Salty, as he plays and learns with his friends in a magical lighthouse. As well as the animated adventures of Salty and his friends, the series also used live-action footage for various segments. The series aired on the TLC network, with 39 episodes produced.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Salty is a young boy who loves using his imagination. Every day, he goes to the lighthouse near his home to play with his seaside friends: Ocho, the octopus; Claude, the hermit crab; Sophie and Sadie, the seagull twins; a group of tiny Clams; Aurora, the light that shines over the ocean; and lighthouse owner Aunt Chovie. Through their adventures in each episode, they learn moral lessons that help them overcome their problems. Tied in to each story are other segments, told through live-action footage:

  • Through the eyes of Seymour (a walking pair of binoculars), the characters look out beyond the lighthouse to see what the tugboats in the harbour are doing. Their stories relate to the situations of the main characters. The tugboat footage is composed of live model animation, taken from the British television series TUGS (see below for more information).
  • Some episodes include a segment called 'Salty's Song Time' introduced by the lighthouse clock. These consist of original songs, which relate the moral of the episode. The songs are set to an arrangement of footage, mainly from stock libraries and silent films.

[edit] Cast

Casting/Voice Direction: Terry Klassen

Voice Talents Of:

[edit] Episode list

39 11-minute episodes of Salty's Lighthouse were produced:

  1. Mixed Signals
  2. Too Young to Be Included
  3. Who Took My Crayons
  4. High Spirits
  5. Taking My Turn
  6. Backwards Day
  7. Banana Splits
  8. Clearing the Decks
  9. Claude in Charge
  10. The Favorite
  11. Strike Up the Band
  12. Blankety Blank
  13. The Last of the Red Hot C Gulls
  14. Farley Frog
  15. Some Guys Have All the Luck
  16. Dream On
  17. The Treasure Hunt
  18. The Big Birthday Bash
  19. The Boss Man
  20. Sophie Comes Home
  21. Salty Comes Lately
  22. It's Magic
  23. No Strings Attached
  24. Sound Off
  25. If the Clue Fits...Wear It
  26. Let's Wing It
  27. The Bivalve Music
  28. Taking Off
  29. The Blackout
  30. Eight is Too Much
  31. One Bad Day
  32. Hands Off
  33. The Colossal Crab
  34. Who Turned Off the Lights
  35. Let's Party
  36. The Guilty Gull
  37. Count On Me
  38. Desperately Seeking Sadie
  39. Bivalve Blues

[edit] DVD release

In 2005, Metrodome Distribution (a distributor owned by Sunbow owners TV-Loonland) incuded the episodes 'Taking Off' and 'Let's Party' on a UK release called 'Toddler Time'.

[edit] Comparisons with TUGS

The segments featuring the tugboats in the harbour used footage from the British television series TUGS, a series produced in 1988 by Robert D. Cardona and David Mitton (who, along with Britt Allcroft, produced the popular series Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends). Whilst Allcroft drove the Thomas series to popularity among American audiences (through the PBS series Shining Time Station), TUGS did not spread far beyond its country of origin, lasting one season of 13 episodes (although it was aired and merchandised in the Japanese market).

As a result of this, Sunbow saw fit to use the series' animation as a part of Salty's Lighthouse, licensing the use of the footage from Cardona: however, they repurposed the footage drastically to suit the needs of Salty's Lighthouse - a programme intended for the preschool American market. (Cardona was not involved in the show's production; however, he was credited as creator of the model footage.)

The original episodes of TUGS centered around two rival fleets of tugboats, working in 'Bigg City Port' during the 1920s, with its plotlines involving action and drama intended for an older audience of children. Due to the difference in intended demographic, the original plotlines (as well as the premise of rival tug fleets) were not used. Instead, the producers of Salty's Lighthouse wrote entirely new stories of the boats in 'Snugboat Harbour', relating to the theme of the main animated segment, with footage from the series edited and redubbed to tell these stories.

(This creates an interesting comparison to the Thomas segments of Shining Time Station; as Britt Allcroft intended to introduce Thomas to America through that series, its stories were redubbed and slightly rewritten, but still faithful to their source. In the case of Salty's Lighthouse, the show was completely repurposed for a new market, instead of attempting to create a faithful 'equivalent' of TUGS.)

Along with the newly-created stories, various changes were made to the characters featured in them. The characters of Sunshine, Captain Star (the narrator), and Little Ditcher were made female, presumably to appeal to a wider audience of children. (Sunshine was referred to in some episodes as fellow switcher Ten Cents' sister.)

The American accents of the new voiceover replaced a range of British accents from the original characters (for example, the Glaswegian Scottish of Big Mac, or the Cockney accents of Ten Cents and Zorran.

Some character names were also changed: Of the main characters, Big Mac became 'Big Stack' (possibly to avoid legal trouble from McDonald's over the name of their famous product, but also possibly the meaning of the 'Mac' name being lost along with the original accent); O.J. became 'Otis'; while Zebedee became 'Zeebee'.

Many supporting and incidental characters were also repurposed, to fit particular Salty's Lighthouse stories:

  • Johnny Cuba, a smuggler, was written as 'Steamer', a friendly but shy character.
  • Sea Rogue was used as a villain, stealing cargo.
  • Two different characters, Coast Guard and the Coast Guard's Messenger, were merged into a single character named 'Cappy'.
  • Puffa had different names in different stories: 'Stanley', and later 'Chooch'.
  • Big Mickey became 'Bigg Basil'.
  • Jack the Grappler became 'Scoop'.
  • The Fire Tug was known as 'Red Fin'.
  • The scrap dealers Burke and Blair became movie producers named 'Mr. Boffo' and 'Mr. Socko'.
  • The tramper Nantucket also went under different names, sometimes in speaking parts, sometime only communicating through a foghorn.

[edit] See also

[edit] Funding

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bailey, Jeff Lenburg ; foreword by Chris (2009). The encyclopedia of animated cartoons (3rd ed. ed.). New York, NY: Facts on File/Checkmark Books. pp. 614. ISBN 978-0-8160-6599-8. 
  2. ^ Bailey, Jeff Lenburg ; foreword by Chris (2009). The encyclopedia of animated cartoons (3rd ed. ed.). New York, NY: Facts on File/Checkmark Books. pp. 614. ISBN 978-0-8160-6599-8. 
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