Tugs: The Nightmare Thomas & Friends Spin-Off

this video is sponsored by surfsharkvpn fine I'll do a video on tugs what what is what is Tugs tugs.com oh this is [ __ ] porn so I'm just gonna assume that by tugs you mean this show about talking boats that looks suspiciously like that other show about talking trains but maybe this one would be full of death destruction and nightmarish implications oh God not again this is tugs so tugs what is it it's the late 1980s and we'll slap dab in the middle of the five-year gap between Thomas and Friends season 2 and season three and crewmate's Robert D Cardona and David Minton have said yeah well I'm gonna go make my own talking vehicle show with Blackjack and hookers or was it boats set in 1920s America in the harbor of big city we meet Starfleet not that one this one I said we've got 10 cents are Plucky every man what Captain star who also makes up one-fifth of 50 Cent that's not a good joke there's Sunshine who somehow manages to whistle through one two oh yeah it's very annoying ah Top Hat who definitely votes Tori I resent that Warrior who would later go on to become yellow guy and don't hug me I'm scared me I won't have no accidents promise wow what a Twist Big Mac who is a bugger son I'm killing it OJ who definitely did it and Hercules who definitely [ __ ] I know I really hate to disappoint The Duchess there's Lily Lighthouse who also [ __ ] Hercules specifically nice to be appreciated boys Billy shupak the inbred lovely big bad Izzy Gomez the hate crime what would you know about it you South American apron Krampus the squirter follow me who's gonna follow you Grandpa's [ __ ] Aquaman lastly we've got our mobster inspired not that really bad guys the Zed Stacks featuring Zoran my name's not Zoran waluigi's illegitimate Love Boat child one ZIP Zack Zug and Zebedee who are also there all right looking so what are all these wild and wacky boats get up to well mostly compete to secure job contracts it looks like I've managed to land the ocean liner contract no really this show ran for 13 episodes and yet they somehow say the word contract 37 exciting times contract contract contract it's kind of like how the phantom menace kicks off with that enthralling line about the taxation of trade routes wow I love labor dispute shut up son but in all seriousness tugs is a somewhat Charming show about boats boating about the place getting into situations about as wacky as boats can get into and also one time they meet God also the theme tune has this sultry little sax riff if I want to end the video right here I'd say that tugs is fine it's clear that a lot of love skill and passion was put into it before the franchise holder went bust and the show got axed but I can also see why it was so short-lived and soon forgotten being as comparatively dark and dreary as it is I will I saw something falling just short of the same Timeless charm and Whimsy of something like Thomas and friends but it also meant a lot to a lot of people and at the end of the day that's all that really matters and I would never want to take that away from anyone but I'm not going to end the video here because I have questions questions that quite frankly need answers questions like where are all the humans are the boat slaves do they have lungs can they die do they [ __ ] and why does this keep happening every time I hear the first note of the credit song stop that and now a word from our sponsor I'm walking down the street that is what I am doing give me your day uh oh no a cyber mugger if only there was someone or something that could protect me like a like a VPN or something stop huh this advert is forbidden wait you're a surf shark Firearms are inappropriate change it yeah but we're gonna do like an allegory for how surf shark protects your data even on public Wi-Fi [Music] oh no a cyber mugger stop knives are forbidden change it this is [ __ ] swearing is also forbidden this is bullfrog surf shark was gonna protect me from getting hacked get it from like hackers but also from getting hacked with it fine give me your data oh no stop this advert is still too scary for children it is forbidden what children man no one number 13 should even be on YouTube would you like a banana sure also did you know that surf Shockers of a 3200 service across more than 95. it's over 100 countries now okay that's still over 95 countries surf shark has more than 3 200 servers in over a hundred countries so please for the love of God click the link in the description use the code TomSka friends and you'll get 85 off your subscription and three months extra for free are you happy now well I would have preferred you didn't mention God but yes finally who is that hey what's up we just totally demonetized today's restricted this video yeah why look we ain't gonna tell you but don't do it again laughs [Music] chapter one are the bugs alive so before I can begin over analyzing yet another kid show like the underachieving burnout that I am we first need to establish the rules of its universe as they clearly differ from ours because I don't know if you've noticed this but boats don't normally have faces even boaty mcboatface doesn't have a face waiting both face is a sub oh kinky a lot of things are sentient in the world of tugs there's the face having boats of course but also planes smash crane grapples Smash and boys smash look the little bell boy is a Bellboy that's adorable but also it's kind of [ __ ] up that when this one sinks they just replace him with a new one you better go fetch another marker boy [ __ ] that guy I guess smash but not all boats and vehicles have faces though and it's genuinely unclear if they're even alive a lot of the larger ships we meet are completely silent and seemingly unsentient so are they dead have they just not been granted the curse of life or is it a city of Truro situation where we the audience just don't get to hear them maybe because they're shy or deeply racist what makes this weird though is that throughout the show the tugs are in constant awe of these larger ships holding them in extreme reverence in the episode of regatta they even put on a whole last parade for the Princess Alice so are they their gods would that make the sinking of the Titanic kind of like that 911 however it's worth noting that the Princess Alice never actually responds to the tug's parade and it's just some unseen human on board that says the Princess Alice what's that about best case scenario the ocean liners are simply on a higher plane of Consciousness than the tugs worst case scenario though it's kind of a Goofy and Pluto situation where they're both the same species but the ocean liners are you know a few lumps of coal short of a full boiler but most likely the ocean liners are just regular boats with no sentience but that begs the question then what are the tugs unlike in Thomas and Friends there's no implication that our main characters have any human beings on board they genuinely seem to be fully autonomous piloting themselves but also performing all of their tuggy duties Dougie duties oh no but also performing all of their duties completely independent of human interaction speaking of which where are all the humans in a lot of ways it seems the world of tugs is very similar to our own down to the Casual racism we even know that we share a history as in the episode quarantine they reference Sir Francis Drake I do believe they see themselves but Sir Francis Drake meaning that slavery happened oh God I hope the slave ship didn't also have a face but the two major differences between our realities are that one yes some Vehicles can indeed talk but also two the humans all seem to be hiding from them in Thomas and Friends we see humans all over the place sometimes even deep inside the engines but in targets humans are seemingly exclusively represented as megaphones sticking out of Windows like Captain star who sounds suspiciously like the live at the Apollo announcer ladies and gentlemen we see the little human megaphones coming from the shrimpers in ghosts the trawler in quarantine and all of the cranes and we know these aren't just sentient buildings and vehicles because in the episode pirate Captain zero visits Captain star at his office presumably for a little kiss and they're both now seen speaking from the same building God this is such a waste of my time however it's not clear if the tugs are aware they're even speaking to humans or even if they know what humans are there's a train that Warrior calls a good friend that they all address as puffer which definitely sounds more like a train soda than a human name but sure enough whenever it responds it's a human speaking out of a megaphone stupid tugs don't they know that trains can't talk but why don't the tug seem to realize they're talking to humans is that by Design are the humans hiding from them behind tinted glass desperately trying to convince them that they too are sentient Vehicles why why what is the reason I used to be in Mensa there's genuinely only one living Flesh and Blood life form we see in this show and it's this seagull are they the dominant species here what do they want oh what chippies one trivia time multiple props from tugs were repurposed and used for Thomas and Friends and by repurposed I of course mean their faces were ripped off and their lifeless corpses can be seen floating around the docks of Sodor speaking of Sodor when I made my video on Thomas and Friends earlier this year the mere suggestion that the engines went anything less than free and willing participants in their own labor efforts was met with a pretty intense outrage and I got dangerously close to making a whole second video all about the definition of slavery and since I'm here chapter two are the boats slaves the Target Universe operates very similarly to that of Thomas and Friends in that all of the boats seemingly have owners Captain star for example owns all of Starfleet mind tags and we know that the ships have owners because in the episode jinxed everyone is very scandalized when they meet Boomer who is owner free have you always been lately similarly in the episode Regatta grandpas is owned by the Navy until he is sold to Captain star the Navy sold me to Captain star kinda like property and in the episode quarantine Captain star almost sells OJ and threatens to sell 10 cents and sunshine 2 Scrappers which is a kind of a big yikes that we will definitely be coming back to you wouldn't really challenge for scrap no not to get all baby's first video essay but a slave is defined as someone forbidden to quit their service for an enslaver and who is treated by the enslaver as their property slavery typically involves the enslaved person being made to perform some form of work while also having their location or residence dictated by the enslaver similarly forced labor is when an individual is forced to work against their own will under the threat of violence or another punishment and their ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person and yeah I got those definitions on Wikipedia okay what about it this isn't bread tube but this is a bread tube that's pretty good I'm so sorry one thing that separates tugs from Thomas and Friends is that the boats do seem to get paid in Regatta Zoran says they'll be daylight robbery out of your pay packets and in Munitions Top Hat says do I have to own a living with this Motley Crew this all begs the question what do they need money for what do they do with it do they pay for their own repairs well seemingly not because in quarantine OJ says he needs Captain star to replace his engines I need a new one I have to assume they either get paid in script an exploitative alternative to legal tender or Worse they're paying off some sort of Life debt to earn their freedom Yep this is a kid show about talking boats what am I doing with my life either way they are treated as legal property and forbidden to quit Escape or stop working under the explicit threat of scrapping or reselling and that my friends sounds an awful lot like slavery boom fun trivia time the 13 episodes of tugs would later be cut up Rewritten redubbed and somehow stretched across 40 episodes of the American kids show Salty's Lighthouse the following footage is genuinely unedited and garbage to toe gonna blow the old horn just like so so give the boat a minute and blow Man chapter three do the boats have sex so the boats definitely [ __ ] and I can prove it without even mentioning this nasty hole Lily all this or this oh I'm all right Ah that's so gross aren't you glad I didn't mention it first of all the sexual tension between Hercules and Lily lightboat is unreal you're gonna tell me this Errol Flynn Clark Gable son of a [ __ ] isn't regularly docking his court nozzle in Lily light boat's porn site please these two are seen bumping holes together way too often for the Sleep platonic and in the original script for the episode Regatta Lily actively calls Hercules delicious these boats are [ __ ] I'm actually shipping the ships oh what am I doing but even more conclusively in the episode pirate we meet sea Rogue who is trying to save his uncle don't do it not a boat called Uncle but his uncle which means he has both parents that have boat siblings now in Thomas and Friends siblings are a thing trains that are made in the same Factory or of the same type are often referred to as brothers Donald and Douglas are twins but again to have a boat Uncle you have to have boat parents which means the boats breed the boats [ __ ] Krampus is submersed and breedable I used to have potential fun trivia time hey did you know they kept live goldfish in the giant water tank they filmed in how cute that was until the die and general toxicity of their environment finished them off speaking of death chapter 4 can we kill the boats please do you know how much Thomas and Friends I had to watch to catch even the smallest hints at death so much tugs however who baby they cannot get enough of the stuff once again Toggs operates very similarly to Thomas and Friends in that boats that are no longer useful get scrapped ripped apart and melted down in the episode trapped Zug is tugging a rusty old boat to The Breakers yard to get and in quarantine we meet bug and Blair two scrap dealer boats who want to buy the tug so they can sell them for parts which I guess in this context would be their organs I wonder if those are in any way related to the real life serial killers buck and hair who would sell their victims bodies for medical study probably just a coincidence right this is a show about talking boats for children much like Thomas and Friends we know that the vehicles breathe and assumedly have lungs whenever grandpas resurfaces he spits out water in upriver sunshine inhales Smoke and begins coughing so I guess they can drown and burn to death great news and in quarantine Zarin is forced to self-isolate after being potentially exposed to the Airborne microbonic plague aboard now I don't know about you but that all seems like long having behavior to me furthermore sinking and logically therefore drowning seems to be a genuine fear for these boats sunshine and Lily are scared of sinking I'm sinking Grandpa thinking please help me please Uncle is threatened by crimeboats which exist with a trip to Davey Jones Locker on the seabed the fabled resting place of those who die at sea and Zebedee in another episode with other crimeboats is threatened with having his Hull filled with cement and sunk or you'll find yourself at the bottom of the harbor Summit on your whole I can't hold Johnny Cuba the authorities did hold Johnny Cuba also we know that sinking kills the boats because in the episode Ghost the tugs are afraid they're being haunted by the spirits of ships that sunk during the great storm of 1912 so not only are they aware of death and their own mortality but they also grapple with concepts of Souls and the afterlife funny boat show for children now admittedly The Fulton fairy sinks and is resurfaced without harm in quarantine but again I'm not super convinced that that boat was ever alive to begin with now not all of our Maritime friends share the same fear of death or will to live Grandpa's well a little disappointed is surprisingly chill when the Navy Grant him his retirement in the form of being blown up for target practice although no joke that is how I would like to go I suppose ideally I'd like to be dead first but just wheel me out to a bomb testing range and let her rip bye bye -bye also in Jinxed we meet Boomer who explicitly wants to be left to sink and presumably die I'm thinking just what I wanted okay so great news the boats can also have severe depression luckily Boomer does finally find his will to live when he's converted into a strange looking floating house and docked next to a sign reading done tugging so I guess you could say puma got a happy ending also I'm not sure but I think there's a possibility that the boats can die of old age the faces and mannerisms of older boats like OJ old rusty and Uncle do seem to indicate that they age in a conventional manner so maybe the faceless boats are just they're just dead but overall the boats seem to take a fairly indifferent approach to death in Regatta when a Traver steamer crashes and promptly sings no one even finds it worth mentioning in Warrior we get a brief limits of old rusty who has been moored for years and is seemingly just waiting to get scrapped but at least he seems to be at peace with it over here for two years and entrapped when a rusty old boat gets ever given they just blow it up me when my boyfriend pulls out and don't even get me started on Munitions a tramper explodes big Mickey drowns 10 cents explodes you Smithereens and all the characters just react like what a day yeah have some empathy people so to recap the boat can die of drowning disease dismemberment smoke inhalation and old age and if all of those fail to get you there's also a decent chance that you might just explode because Big City Harbor seems to be about as full of explosives as it is of water but very relieved to see the keysights undamaged fun trivia time the episode's big freeze was released on June 27 1989 exactly one year before I was born and exactly 145 years after Mormonism founder Joseph Smith was shot repeatedly fell out of a window died and then was shot some more chapter five the horrifying truth now so far we've learned a lot of fun stuff about the world of tugs it's quirks and eccentricities but it's time to get serious deadly serious because all of my research has seemingly been leading me somewhere towards a conclusion that I didn't want to be true but when presented with this much evidence I can deny no longer the dark terrifying truth of Tugs are you ready the boats are on a cut telekinetic species created by a vengeful God to kill humans on site don't believe me Fact one Neptune god of the sea exists in this universe and the 1920s we're hot off the heels of both the Industrial Revolution and the start of offshore drilling now I don't know about you but if I were a sea God and all of a sudden my domain started falling victim to mass plundering and pollution I'd probably want some retribution too maybe by oh I don't know unleashing plagues but why stop there you're a God why not also [ __ ] with the human world by turning our own tools against us and having anything that touches the water come to life and hey why not also give those boats magical powers and an insatiable bloodlust fact 2 the boats have telekinesis and maybe even pyrokinesis we already know that they have no humans on board and therefore operate fully autonomously but how else can we explain all the other [ __ ] they get up to they throw ropes they throw blankets they tie knots they light Dynamite yes their strength seems to be limited to that of an average human being but that's all it would take to pull you under the water as you stare up at them at their gigantic glaring faces also I'm pretty sure they shoot a Lighthouse Keeper at one point Uber fact three the humans understandably live in fear they hide behind tinted windows and role play as vehicles to avoid detection from these lethal albeit gullible murder machines but Tom I hear you ask why would they put themselves at such great risk well if there's anything we've learned in the past few years it's that no matter how dangerous or deadly a workplace gets the working class will still be expected to put themselves at Great risk for the good of the economy I'm getting political fact four the tugs can breed this doesn't really impact my theory but I just wanted to remind you that the boats definitely [ __ ] damn it people open your eyes this is a show about the hubris of man and the price that must be paid for meddling with the Unstoppable force of the Sea and the unknowable horrors that lie beneath its surface or maybe it's just a show about talking boats it's probably just that isn't it yeah fun trivia time artichokes was canceled co-creator David Minton returned to Thomas and Friends whereas Robert D Cardona moved to Canada and soon found himself directing another show about talking tugboats hey wait a minute chapter six Theodore tugboat yes if you're one of the Canadians that has been screaming at your screen this entire video that the tugboat show from my childhood looks an awful lot like the tugboat show from your childhood please stop you are so loud while the world may not have been ready to get his tug on in 1989 just four years later Canadian producer Andrew Cochran would work with Robert D Cardona to do it all over again and where togs only ran for 13 episodes Theodore talk about slapped a big old zero on the end of that number so it's safe to say it had a little more staying power and it achieved this partly by playing it safe and relying on more tried and tested methods such as having one narrator voice all the characters storybook style good work said Emily to the two tugs you saved today Your Heroes shouted Hank also has a character called for dark for dark yeah tugs looked better watching the models bounce around weightlessly with harsh Studio Lighting in Theodore really draws extra attention to the craft that went into tugs which used the same Clearwater Periscope lens system that gave the model such a sense of scale and life in Thomas and Friends although in Theodore the Aesthetics are less grim and brutal and the faces are less off-putting and harsh although on the other hand they do also just end up all looking the same so it kind of balances itself out I guess and that's all I have to say on Theodore Tugboat please do not make me make a video on it almost everything in that show has a face like it's [ __ ] Banjo-Kazooie and I am not emotionally prepared to figure out the connotations of what that might mean chapter 7 conclusion so overanalyzing the show has been fun but let me try and give this video somewhat of a purpose and ask the question why didn't tugs ride the same wave as a show like Thomas and Friends why did it sink Into Obscurity yes the financiers went under causing the money to dry up but why would the show die in the water beyond that well I think that's because in my opinion the show doesn't really work at least not in its intended purpose of being for kids yes it's totally and aesthetically darker than its cousin but I think the real issue is deeper than that and it wasn't until I was watching the mini making of documentary for Theodore Tugboat that I figured out what it is that's wrong with tugs when I heard writer Jeff Rosen say these characters for everybody involved our children the stories are about children these tugs are like kids to us see the same is also true for Thomas and Friends with the engines and their story seemingly being allegories for things like the importance of listening to your parents behaving and all the other kind of stuff you'd expect to find in the kids show that would benefit a developing young minds stuff like hey you gotta eat your veggies and do your homework or else your parents might break you up into a [ __ ] tunnel sorry I just still a bit raw you know tugs however while it does have some kid-friendly messaging is mostly about working class adults worrying about their paychecks and struggling to secure work contracts before the episode Munitions has a very intense line about respecting fire always respect fire if you don't it will destroy you your surroundings and your friends [Music] okay it Rambles about the importance of using common sense and not blindly following orders in the workplace now I'm all for questioning Authority but that might be a slightly Advanced concept for a show with an infant friendly Universal rating tax exemption hell even the theme song which does admittedly [ __ ] is a baffling choice for a kid show I can't imagine something that would get kids less hyped up to watch something than smooth jazz Thomas and Friends Theodore Tugboat even the weird U.S Port Salty's Lighthouse all have an air of childlike fun and Whimsy and then you have [ __ ] tugs over here sounding like the freeze frame ending of your Grandma's favorite Romance movie oh I do love this movie okay and while I don't think this would have necessarily contributed to his struggles I do think it's pretty clear that tugs was intended to be for an American audience not only is it set in America but it's also Rife with American values and imagery even down to its more problematic elements I mean you have The Stereotype of a lazy Mexican immigrant who's trying to sneak in illegally in a show for British children what do you want to be when you grow up gynecologist right yeah see you've got archetypal 1920s gangsters speaking with Cockney actions a dynamite loving redneck from the West country and some sort of a southern Ragtime Welshman there's a leaked American dub of the pilot allegedly featuring Jaco Warner voice actor Rob Paulson that just sounds right as if that's what the show was meant to be all along all these things combined create a show that just doesn't feel synergized like a kid's book that isn't suitable for two children and I would know I made one but it's still got charm and it's definitely worth a gander if you ever find yourself watching CI TV in 1989 or you can just watch it all on YouTube or you can empty your bank account buying all the original vhs's you can't have these ones though no one can it's over one trivia time in 2017 after 28 years Toggs finally officially crossed over with Thomas and Friends when the crane big Mickey shows his face quite literally on the island of Sodor what meaning he either faked his death in Munitions or since he's definitely dead it confirms my theory that Sodor is literally hell you've been standing there silent All These Years big Mickey and you've never said a single word I want to give a big thanks to Lucky Leo and Milan my on-called tugs and Thomas enthusiasts for helping me with this video and I want to blame you the audience for the fact that I made this to begin with you know what you did it was all your fault you did this to me you thank you for the money hey you thank you for the money money hey you thank you for the money hey you thank you for the money money hey you thank you for the money hey you thank you for the money money hey you thank you for the money hey you thank you for the money money Spanky bedrooms we appreciate it thank you bye [Music]

Channel: TomSka & Friends

Views: 518,353

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Id: pACKniM6NO8

Length: 30min 21sec (1821 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/cheesyshagsfan]

Tugs will kill us all

[u/OkOil8994]

Now do a deep dive into Jay Jay the Jet plane to complete the trilogy