Jay Jay the Jet Plane
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Jay Jay the Jet Plane is a CGI children's television cartoon fiction series. It has about 60 episodes. The characters are talking aeroplanes, and a helicopter, and some humans, based at a fictional Tarrytown Airport in the USA. The episodes are commonly distributed in pairs, with one header sequence and one end credits for each pair, and each pair is 25 minutes long. The series tries to be educational and teach life and sometimes moral lessons to children (and sometimes also to parents).
The series premiered originally on November 2, 1999 on TLC, but later moved to PBS Kids on June 11, 2001 with the same episodes plus new episodes in 2001 and in 2005.
Contents
Cast
Note:- Relationship words for the aeroplane characters refer to being in loco parentis for purposes of upbringing and education, not to biological parenthood.
- The story says that the aeroplane characters were made in factories.
- The aeroplanes depict a typical family. Information from the makers of the series says that their (mental) ages are as stated; but Jay Jay and Tracy act more as if they were around the beginning of teenage.
- Jay Jay. Male. 6 years old. Small jet airliner. Mary Kay Bergman made his voice.
- Tracy. Female. 6 years old. Small jet airliner. Normal hearing, but understands American Sign Language.
- Snuffy. Male. 4 years old. Small propeller monoplane. Is equipped for skywriting
- Herky. Male. 5 years old. Helicopter. Has skids instead of wheels and cannot taxi on the ground.
- Big Jake. Male. Adult. Father figure. Cargo carrier.
- Savannah. Female. Adult. Mother figure. Supersonic airliner. She was made at Savannah, Georgia (USA), hence (in the story) her name. In the episode "Switcharound Day", she (probably temporarily) has a VTOL mode.
- Oscar. Male. Old adult. Grandfather-like figure. Old biplane.
- Revvin' Evan. Male. Teenager. Friend figure. Fire engine.
- Tuffy. Female. Child. Friend figure. Towtruck.
- Brenda Blue. Woman in bib-and-brace overall. In charge of the airport. She does not use the airport's control tower but communicates with the planes by a portable two-way radio from the ground. Played by actress / child psychologist Eve Keller.
- Miss Jones, librarian at Tarrytown library. Woman. Deaf, knows American Sign Language.
- Easy O'Malley. He founded EZ Airlines. He has relatives Grumpy O'Malley (cousin, lives nearby at Dewdrop Farm), Pierre O'Malley (lives in France), Tex O'Malley (lives in Texas).
- There are other human characters who appear from time to time.
- Tarrytown Airport is run by a small firm called EZ Airlines.
Animal characters that occur more than once are:
- The monarch butterfly Breezy. One episode shows Jay Jay following Breezy's long autumn migration from Tarrytown to a hibernation site in a mountaintop forest in Michoacan state in central Mexico.
- The two bees Bobby Bee and Billy Bee. They first appear in the episode "Catch the Buzz" where they accidentally get into the electronics of Big Jake and Herky (in that order) causing locomotor ataxia forcing Big Jake and Herky to land until Brenda Blue goes inside them and investigates.
- The lightning bugs at Lightning Bug Lake.
Trivia
- Consistency between some of the episodes depends on the order of the episodes. For example, one episode says that Snuffy has not flown further away from Tarrytown than Lightning Bug Lake, but other episodes show him flying much further; in "Catch the Buzz" Snuffy still has not got rid of his original shyness, but in many other episodes he shows no sign of shyness.
- Sometimes the planes taxi on the town streets.
- Going into places impossible for planes (outer space and underwater) happens only in dreams that some of the characters have. A few episodes have a geographical fault and show an airstrip on land at the North Pole. One pair of episodes shows Santa Claus as existing.
- Tarrytown is in a hilly area with enough rain to keep the land green. There are forested mountains and desert near.
- Other places in the story are:-
- * Tarrytown National Park.
- * Smiling Meadow.
- * Sandy Landing: a small seaport.
- * Pangabula Island: a small remote tropical island.
- * Tarrytown Quarry, and a big building site. Both are represented by the same scenery set, which seems to be a real miniature which was photographed and used as a background; or it may be a painting.
- * Sunshine Desert.
- * Tippy Toppy Peak: the highest mountain in the area round Tarrytown.
- * Frosty Pines.
- * Echo Canyon.
- * Cherry Tree Lake.
- Each of the plane characters seems to have a biological part including a stomach, that needs the same food as humans eat, and a mechanical part that needs fuel and engine oil. Some of the things that the planes are reported as doing off-camera, would need them to have foldaway arms to handle items with, but those arms are never seen on camera.
- Each episode contains one or more songs. Each song only seems to occur in one episode.
- There is a song in the introduction sequence which includes the unexpected wording: "Never been another legal guy like this ...". The boldfaced word is clearly not "little".
- Tarrytown town and airport are never seen in moving-camera shots, and therefore are likely real miniature sets which were photographed and those photographs were used as backgrounds in the CGI images. The airport runway may be a CGI ground plane texture mapped with a photograph of real fullsize or miniature tarmac.
- The end credits say that the series was produced by "Compaq Alpha Powered Rendering". In the episode "Supersonic Jay Jay" Savannah has to carry Jay Jay on her back, and Jay Jay wavers about somewhat compared to Savannah: this seems to show that in the CGI package used, one character could not be parented to another character as can be done in Poser.
New episodes and characters
After the above was written, 10 more episodes called [Jay Jay's Mysteries] have been published. They are educational:-- The Mystery of Plants
- The Mystery of Weather
- The Mystery of Size and Shape
- The Mystery of Flight
- The Mystery of the Five Senses
- The Mystery of Water
- The Mystery of Bugs
- The Mystery of Time
- The Mystery of Stars and Planets
- The Mystery of Dinosaurs
- Lina: red, yellow undercarriage and engine casings; 2 propeller engines. Mental age young female. Described as "Jay Jay's new friend". She [speaks Spanish] and English.
- Montana: Safari plane. Mental age adult female. Largely green, has cowboy hat, 2 propeller engines, skids or floats instead of wheels.
- Captain Bob: Firefighting plane. Mental age adult male. Red and yellow. Has floats on legs at ends of wings. Undercarriage missing or retractable. Probably can land on water and take off from water. Has a firefighting water scoop.
- Solar: Mental age young male. Yellow. Long wide wings. 6 propellers driven by electricity from solar panels covering the tops of his wings.
- Truckee: Dump truck. Mental age "boy".
Broadcasting
The series is broadcast over many of the 379 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service of the United States.The series has been broadcast in Britain.
Episode list
Series 1
- Picture Day
- Tracy's Song: Tracy's plan to sing at a concert is spoilt by laryngitis.
External link
- Wonderwings.com (now called [Jay Jay the Jet Plane Productions]) published the series. This is a new site and it needs Macromedia Flash.
Current PBS Kids Shows (as of May 2006)
| Barney & Friends | The Berenstain Bears *| Between the Lions | Boohbah | Caillou | Clifford the Big Red Dog* | Clifford's Puppy Days | Curious George | Dragon Tales | George Shrinks* | It's a Big Big World | Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks | Jay Jay: The Jet Plane | Mister Rogers' Neighborhood* | Reading Rainbow | Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat* | Sesame Street | Teletubbies* | Zoboomafoo* | |
| PBS Kids GO! programs: Arthur* | Cyberchase | Dragonfly TV | FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman¹ | Maya & Miguel | Postcards from Buster* | ZOOM¹ | |
|
* No new episodes are being produced, yet many major PBS stations televise air reruns
List does not include shows from networks airing PBS Kids shows but not funded directly from PBS such as KLCS shows. |
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