Tommy Pickles and The Great White Thing

Tommy Pickles and The Great White Thing is a 6 1/2 minute unaired pilot for the popular animated series Rugrats. It is one of three pilots to the series (two remain unaired). The production for this episode began in 1989 and ended in 1990. Nickelodeon had a choice of airing this or Tommy's First Birthday.

Apart from exhibitions at animation festivals and conventions, this episode was never seen by the public until August 2001, when it appeared on Volume 1 of the Rugrats: A Decade in Diapers video, which was released as part of Rugrats' 10th Anniversary on Nickelodeon.

Plot

An infant named Tommy Pickles sneaks into the bathroom, and is intrigued by the toilet, which he calls The Great White Thing. Before he gets very close to it, however, his grandad picks him up and carries him to the playpen. There, Tommy tells Phil and Lil that he'll be going back. Meanwhile, Stu and Didi, Tommy's parents, are having an couple of friends over for dinner. Later, Stu and Didi put Tommy to bed in his crib. Tommy escapes using what would become the old "screwdriver as crib opener" trick.

Tommy proceeds to the bathroom, where he makes a big mess, especially when it comes to toilet paper and the toilet plunger. Tommy leaves the bathroom, and enters the living room on Spike's back, with plunger in hand. After they get by Grandpa's side, Grandpa gets up to use the toilet during an chicken commercial on television, only to find out that the bathroom in shambles.

As Tommy heard Grandpa, Stu and Didi fight, moan, groan and panic, he fears that it will split their family relationship and switches the television channel, and dances with Spike to the 1980s-1990s dance-rock music and Stu abuses Tommy and Didi.

Trivia

• Tommy, Phil, Lil, Spike, Grandpa, Stu and Didi are featured in this pilot. The voices are the same as the TV series, except that Tami Holbrook was the voice of Tommy. E.G. Daily would not come on board until the series starts.
• Grandpa's character's name is "Stu Pickles, Sr.", though he'll later be called "Grandpa" and "Grandpa Lou". Conversely, Stu was listed as "Stu Pickles, Jr."
• Tommy wears an orange shirt. He won't begin to wear his trademark blue shirt until Barbecue Story.
• Peter Chung animated and directed the Rugrats introduction seen at the start of every episode through 2000.
• Stu, talking to his dinner guests, mentions that it would be a couple of months until Tommy starts talking. Of course, since the series started, he never talked to the grown-ups.
• A segment from this pilot was used in a station-ID for Nickelodeon (still seen to this day): using the television scene, the Nickelodeon logo pops up on the television screen, as Tommy turns on the television.
• Apart from the false TV Guide listing in the October 8, 1991 edition (as well as many newspaper television listings), there were actually plans to televise this episode in another format. In 1992, Klasky-Csupo had plans to expand this episode to the standard 11 minutes, and place it in normal rotation on Nickelodeon in 1993. However, due to unknown reasons, this episode never made it to television.^[1]
• Tommy's famous Star Ball was also seen for the first time in this series. According to "Helvetica Gold", the Star Ball was originally designed by Pixar for their short, Luxo, Jr.. The ball also appeared in Toy Story in a scene where Buzz Lightyear (voice of Tim Allen) bounces off of it after leaping from a bedpost. The Star Ball later appeared in Blue's Clues.

References