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Background Information[]
Sunshine first appeared in the first episode, and continued to appear in the rest of the series.
He's based off the 1920 San Francisco fleet of tugs.
Behind The Scenes[]
TUGS[]
Sunshine's model was scratch built with a fiberglass hull and a plastic upper deck, along with a brass smokestack. He was designed by Chris Tulloch. Sunshine (as well as all the other tugs) used specially-constructed wheeled trolley chassis clamped to the hulls to move on the set. An external tube was stuck inside his hull and connected to a fog generator, this is how his stack "produces" smoke. The model is roughly 17 inches long.
The eye mechanism had two servos, one for up and down movement and one for left and right movement. It was remote controlled and often controlled by David Mitton and Chris Tulloch.
14 different facial expressions were sculpted for Sunshine. The faces were first sculpted in clay and from that resin casts were made using a silicone mold.
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After production on TUGS ended, Sunshine's model was kept in storage at Shepperton Studios. After Series 12 of it’s sister show ended, the models were cleared out into a skip and later sold to an unknown man who sold them off on eBay. He is now owned by the Star Tugs Trust, an organization which showcases the models. He wears his scared face, which was the last face he was wearing at his previous sighting at TUGS Day. It is currently unknown if his other face masks still exist. The Exhibition made a new 3D printed happy face for the model, and was eventually painted.
In 2019, the Exhibition made an activity for visitors to pay to control the restored eye mechanisms of most of the models, including Sunshine. One day, Sunshine's eye disk jammed and then went beyond a full rotation. For example, his right pupil could now go into his left eye.
Salty's Lighthouse[]
In Salty's Lighthouse (which reused edited episodes of TUGS), Sunshine was portrayed as a female character (along with Captain Star and Little Ditcher) to balance out the genders for the environment of American kids television in the late 1990s. He was also Ten Cents' little sister.
Voice Actors[]
TUGS[]
- Shaun Prendergast
- Yūko Mita (Japan)
- Pauli Virta (Finland)
Salty's Lighthouse[]
- Lenore Zann
- Krystyna Kozanecka (Poland)