Rusty's Stuffy Toughy

**Rusty's Stuffy Toughy** is an American animated television series that airs on The Kiddie Channel. It follows the adventures of a yellow school bus who loves to play games and discover new things. As of 2022, the show can be found on Kiddie Plus.

## Plot

The series concerns Gilberto, a building contractor, along with his sister/colleague Gertruda, and their gang of colorful anthropomorphized vehicles, Rusty, Motor, Auto Wheels, Chiller, Rubbish, and many others.

In each episode, Gilberto and his group help with renovations, construction, and repairs with other projects as needed, while Rusty often assists Gilberto, being in charge whenever extra help is needed. The show emphasizes conflict resolution, co-operation, socialization, and various learning skills, as well as to teach young children about colors and vehicles.

## Why This Show Sucks

* To begin with, the show heavily rips off Bob the Builder, but with none of the charm and cleverness that show has, and it's not hard to see why:
	1. Gilberto is the same as Bob, in that he's the boss of the main character.
	2. Gertruda is the same as Wendy, in that she's Gilberto's sister and co-worker.
	3. Rusty himself is the same as Scoop, seeing as he often goes from a sensible and reliable leader to a clumsy goofball who constantly messes everything up, either unintentionally or on purpose.
	4. Chiller is also the same as Dizzy, in that she is the cheerful best friend of the main character.
	5. Motor is the same as Benny, as he looks up to the rest of the team.
	6. Rubbish is the same as Muck, as he is especially fond of getting dirty and recycling.
	7. Diesel is the same as Lofty, as he usually lacks the confidence shown by the others.
	8. Officer Cop is similar to Roley, mainly due to his calm attitude and love of music.
	9. Auto Wheels is the same as Scratch, as she is curious, eager, a bit childish, very naive, and still has a lot to learn about things.
* The show looks way too realistic, which completely disrespects and takes away all of the charm and charisma, and it is so different that if the show wasn't called *Rusty's Stuffy Toughy* at all, it would be very difficult to tell this apart from *Bob the Builder*.
* The show in general does a bad job of instructing kids about how construction works and gives kids no morals at all.
* Some of the plots from each episode of the show are either terrible, frustrating, boring, lackluster, repetitive, formulaic, useless, or uninteresting. It doesn't really help by the fact that most of the episodes often try way too hard to pander towards small children, rather than write stories that all families can enjoy.
* The building sequences are not fun to watch as they overuse the same songs. While it may be fun to listen the first time, it gets unbearable by the second season because they constantly use the song in **every single episode!**
* The humor of the show is bizarre and crude.
* Poor soundtrack.
* The show's humor is badly done.

## Redeeming Qualities

* Despite the show ripping off *Bob the Builder*, it at least still focuses on its main premise, which is notable by the fact that the building montages are still present, unlike the first season, which tried to be as different as possible from its original premise.
* The theme song is sometimes kind of catchy.
* Some episodes can be considered decent or even good.
* Gilberto, Chiller and Rusty himself, despite their terrible designs, are still likable characters.
	+ On that topic, the flanderized characters can still be tolerable sometimes.
* While most of the voice acting is poor, some of it can come off as decent or tolerable, such as the voices for Rubbish, Officer Cop, Auto Wheels, and a few other characters.
* Even though the designs are still bad, the animation itself (except for the third season) is okay.
	+ On top of that, Motor and Officer Cop at least look closer to their original designs than the rest of the vehicles do.

## Reception and legacy

*Rusty's Stuffy Toughy* has helped to change negative stereotypes of construction vehicles among children. It currently holds fairly positive ratings on IMDb.