Dinosaur Train
Season 1 SABC2 (*192) 09:30 Edutainment
Dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years but they still captivate kids. So who better to teach your toddlers than Buddy the animated T-Rex and his prehistoric pals on edutainment series Dinosaur Train (2009-2017)! But it’s not just any show – it’s backed by The Jim Henson Company, the people who created The Muppets back in 1955, so they know a thing or two about entertaining and educating.
1 Dinosaur Train is a multi-national project. The animation is done at Sparky Studios in Singapore, the voiceovers are recorded at Kozmic Sound in Vancouver, Canada and then produced and mastered at the Jim Henson headquarters in Los Angeles.
2 The series was so successful during season 2 that a live-action show was produced and toured Canada and the US in 2013 and 2014.
3 The voice-over artists give life to multiple characters except Buddy – his voice is the “sole job of a very special artist”, says an insider, adding that “Buddy is central to every episode, so we don’t want to wear out their vocals”.
4 Despite being an animation, reallife dinosaur experts helped create the characters. Show boss Richard Goldsmith explains that “we wanted to keep the dinos entertaining and realistic but they’re not going to eat each other”.
5 The four seasons are split into six DVD boxsets. Seasons 1 and 2 are 40 and 26 episodes long respectively, with seasons 3 and 4 having a much shorter episode count: 13 and 10.
6 And Dr Scott Sampson isn’t an actor hired to present the live-action segment at the end of each episode. He’s a palaeontologist, runs the Science World exhibition in Vancouver and digs up fossils in Madagascar.