Little Red Tractor

Little Red Tractor is a British stop frame animated children's television series produced by the Little Entertainment Group. The ten minute episodes are usually broadcast in the UK by the BBC, usually on the CBeebies channel. It was now aired on Nick Jr. in 2013. The series is produced using stop motion model animation and features unusually detailed sets and models. It features the voices of Derek Griffiths and Stephen Tompkinson. The characters are based on the books by Colin Reeder, which were narrated for TV in the mid 1990s by Brian Glover. Despite apparent similarities to Tractor Tom, Little Red Tractor has a completely different style, with more realistic story-lines, a larger human cast and no surreal livestock behaviour. It is mainly aimed at an audience of two-to-three year olds. Tractor Tom was produced by Contender, the video distribution company for Little Red Tractor Projects Limited, owners of the original Little Red Tractor series. Despite not having television exposure, Little Red Tractor broke into the top ten children's videos and stayed there for several weeks. In total, the original series sold over 300,000 copies and Contender, the originator of Tractor Tom, wanted to duplicate that success. However, the television rights were sold to Keith Littler's Little Entertainment Group because Peter Tye, the director/writer of the series, preferred their expertise in stop frame animation and empathy with the original. Despite losing the television rights to Little Red Tractor, Contender went ahead and produced their unauthorized version.