The Fixies


The Fixies is a Russian animated children's television series based on The Little Warranty People by Eduard Uspensky. The series premiered on December 13, 2010 as a segment on the television show Good Night, Little Ones! on Russia-1 and Bibigon. The series was created by Alexander Tatarsky and is produced by Aeroplane Productions.

Premise

The Fixies centers around the adventures of little people called fixies who live inside various devices and keep them in order with their technical knowledge. Each episode focuses on a particular everyday device and involves the fixies explaining what it is, how it works, and how to safely use it.
One of the protagonists is Tom Thomas, who managed to make friends with fixies named Simka and Nolik. To learn more about different things, they are helped by older fixies—their parents Papus and Masiya, as well as Grandpus. At the same time, Tom Thomas is obliged to keep the fixies' existence a secret from everyone else and to protect them from his dog Chewsocka.
In the second season, new characters were introduced—four classmates of Simka and Nolik: Fire, Digit, Toola, and Verda, as well as Professor Eugenius and his secretary Elisa, whose laboratory houses a school of young fixies.

Characters

Fixies

  • Fixie-pochemushkin
  • Simka is a 9- to 10-year-old girl.
  • Nolik is Simka's younger brother.
  • Papus is Masiya's husband and father of Simka and Nolik.
  • Masiya is Papus's wife and mother of Simka and Nolik.
  • Grandpus is Simka and Nolik's grandfather.
  • Tweak and Geek are twin brothers.
  • Basiya is Tweak and Geek's foster grandmother.
  • Alt is Simka's best friend.
  • Markus
  • Mega is Nolik's best friend.

Students

  • Fire
  • Digit
  • Toola
  • '''Verda'''

Other characters

  • Tom Thomas is a 10-year-old boy.
  • Tom's Mom
  • Thomas Wearington is Tom Thomas's father.
  • Chewsocka is the Thomas family's pet chihuahua.
  • Professor Eugenius is Grandpus' colleague.
  • Elisa is Professor Eugenius's secretary.
  • Katya is Tom Thomas's friend.
  • Buggy is a spider. She is the Fixies' pet as seen in the episode "The Spider".

Aliens

  • Una
  • The Giants
  • Ampere
  • '''The most wise meteor'''

Production

In 2005, Aeroplane Studios was established. Before the characters were created, a logo was registered which was a hand with its thumb, index and middle fingers extended upwards, suggesting a gesture similar to the Schwurhand or the Serbian three-finger salute. In the show, the symbol appears on the fixies' clothes, tools and vehicles, and the gesture is used by fixies alongside the interjection "Tideesh!" as a greeting and to celebrate a job well done.
Later, Pronin finalized the fixies' appearances, having given them the following attributes; large hands, glowing hair and the idea to have the fixies be able to transform into screws. The artist decided to first draw a screw, then draw a fixie whose appearance is derived from that screw. The cartoons primarily used CGI animation with Flash animation being used for explanatory segments.

Broadcast

In 2014, Aeroplane Productions and Nickelodeon signed a license agreement under which the series would begin airing on Nickelodeon's Russian offshoot for a period of two years starting in January 2015.
The series has also been broadcast on Carousel and Dietski. It also aired on Russia-K between July and December 2014 and has aired on Moult since June 2014. It also aired on Tloum HD in the summer of 2016, and on O! since 8 February 2017.

Films

On 28 October 2017, Aeroplane Productions and Petersburg Animation Studio released a full-length animated film called The Fixies: Top Secret, which has been shown in many countries around the world. Even before the release of Top Secret, it was announced that work was underway on a continuation.
On 29 March 2019, a teaser for the second full-length film Fixies vs. Crabots, in which a confrontation takes place between fixies and crab-like robots called Crabots, was released. The film was released on 21 December 2019.