Games - TUGS

	Games - TUGS

TUGS was a show made in 1989 by the producers of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends
, Robert D. Cardona and David Mitton.

Tugs is all about two anthromorphized tug fleets (Star Fleet and Z Stacks) who are always competing against each other, around Bigg City Port, towing in ships like the ocean liners: Duchess, Princess Alice and Vienna along with freighters (Tramp Steamers) like Izzy Gomez, a ship who likes to get into port for free, from Mexico and Johnny Cuba, a notorious smuggler, possibly from Australia.

The Star Fleet is owned by Captain Star, a strong-willed and strict - but lovable boss. He has seven Star Tugs: three harbour tugs - O.J., who is the oldest and wisest of all the tugs, Warrior, who is strong but not too bright, and Big Mac, the strongest and roughest tug.

He has a Railway tug: Top Hat, who is very stuck up and hates doing dirty work. There are also two young, unexperienced switchers: Ten Cents the central character, and Sunshine, who is the newcomer to the fleet; they always work side-by-side.

The remaining tug is Hercules: a vain, and very rarely ever seen (in the series) Ocean Going tug - who fancies himself as a ladies' man! They are a good crew, the best in the port.

The Z Stacks are owned by Captain Zero. It contains: Zorran: who is the crucial antagonist of the series, Zebedee: who has hidden kind and helpful mannerisms - revealed in High Winds, Zak: a devious and revolting tug, and the two switchers: Zug, and Zip - who are often caught in farcical situations.

They tend to use devious, underhanded methods (Such as pushing them onto sand banks) to try and stop the Star Tugs from being successful. They are rather cunning, but not too bright as seen in several episodes - mainly Trapped, Bigg Freeze and High Tide.

There are also several other characters, such as Grampus, a midget navy submarine who later becomes a Star Tug, Bluenose the bossy naval tug, Lord Stinker the garbage barge, and Lillie Lightship who is responsible for guiding ships into port (and also Hercules' girlfriend).

Even though the Star Tugs and Z Stacks compete for jobs and contracts, they sometimes join together to save each other or help each other out, most notably in the episode Munitions were a naval transport, Krakatoa, goes up in flames, causing a horrific dockyard inferno and both fleets work together to stop the fire.

TUGS has thirteen episodes (4 were 20 minutes long, the remaining 9 were 15 minutes) and a rather large fanbase for such a relativily obscure children's show.

There is currently a campaign to get TUGS onto DVD.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for TUGS ]

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