Tickety Toc - TV Tropes
- ️Sun Jan 11 2015
Tickety Toc is a Korean-British CGI animated childrens' show following the adventures of Tommy and Tallulah, two kids who live in the world that exists behind the clock in an old shop. Every hour they must make it back to the clock for 'Chime Time' so they can take their place as the drummer boy and trumpeter of the clock's platform, or else, as the theme song says, "the clock will never chime."
It aired on Nick Jr. from 2012 to 2015.
Tickety-tockety tropes include:
- Alliterative Title: Tickety Toc repeats the letter "T".
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Tommy and Tallulah's parents are nowhere to be seen.
- Ambiguously Brown: Tommy is noticeably more tan than his more obviously white sister, but his ethnicity is never specified (though he looks to be of partial British-Arab or Indian descent).
- Animal-Vehicle Hybrid: Pufferty, the train/dog hybrid.
- Bigger on the Inside: Apparently there's a whole village of living toys that's large enough to require commute by train inside that one cuckoo clock.
- Butt-Monkey: Tooteroo, an owl character that appears in brief segments. He's always the victim of some misfortune.
- Ditzy Genius: McCoggins is quite slow-witted despite being the mechanic.
- Dog Stereotype: Pufferty, the dog train, is excited by any toy balls that he can play with.
- Edutainment Show: The show teaches moral lessons.
- Every Episode Ending: Every episode ends with Tommy and Tallulah making it to Chime Time and taking part in the proceedings.
- Expository Theme Tune: "In a very special shop, there's a very special clock..."
- Fake Interactivity: Averted. The characters don't talk to the viewers watching them or ask them to answer something clearly obvious.
- Forgettable Character: The cast don't acknowledge Tooteroo much since he's always off on his own. Tooteroo does encounter Lopsiloo at times.
- Hollywood Genetics: Tommy has brown skin and brown hair. Tallulah has white skin and red hair. They are twins. And since their parents are never shown, it's unknown if their family is multiracial.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The series uses the pattern of "_____ Time" to reference the characters living in a clock.
- Kid-Appeal Character: Hopparoo in spades. He's an energetic bunny who loves hopping around and having fun.
- The Kiddie Ride: There's apparently one for Pufferty, the dog-train hybrid who carries Tallulah and Tommy to Chime Time.
- Leitmotif:
- Pufferty has an energetic signature tune play whenever he's operating inside of the land within the clock.
- Tootero has a goofy-sounding song with owl hoots as some of the main instrumentation when he is on-screen.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Humans live among owls, snails, chickens, bats, cows, hyenas, and a bunny-human thing.
- Little Bit Beastly: Hopperoo is some sort of rabbit-human hybrid.
- Living Toys: Naturally, given all of the characters live inside a clock, they're all toys in some form.
- Mr. Fixit: McCoggins is the maintenance hyena.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between:
- Nice: Lopsiloo is a peaceful snail, Madame Au Lait is the Team Mom, and McCoggins is a bumbling, but friendly inventor.
- Mean: Chickadee is very vain and prideful, though she is naturally nice.
- In Between: Battersby is polite, but can doze off a lot and be cranky at times and Hopparoo is energetic, but can get into mischief.
- Out of Focus: With the exception of the titular duo, Pufferty, Tooteroo, and the Spring Chicks, every character has been absent in an episode at least once.
- Battersby isn't in "Bounce Time".
- Chickadee isn't in "Itchy Time".
- Hopparoo isn't in "Nature Trail Time".
- Lopsiloo isn't in "Dino Time".
- Madame Au Lait isn't in "Robot Time".
- McCoggins isn't in "Jelly Sandwich Time".
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Tallulah wears pink and Tommy wears blue.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Inverted. Tallulah is the savvy one and Tommy is the energetic one.
- Sentient Vehicle: Pufferty, who is a hybrid dog-train.
- Short Screentime for Reality: The majority of the series is set within the Tickety Toc world behind the clock, with the exterior of the clock shop and the interior of the wall display where the clock hangs being all we see of the real world.
- Sliding Scale of Living Toys: The "Seem So Real and Living" variety. The toys are fully sentient and have lives like their human counterparts, and yet are still clearly toys in their world. Interaction with humans are not observed because they only come out for a brief period during chime time.
- Theme Tune Roll Call: For Tommy and Tallulah.
- The Friends Who Never Hang:
- Hopparoo and Madame Au Lait don't talk to each other as much, despite Hopparoo having significant interactions with the other characters. Same goes for Battersby and Chickadee and Lopsiloo and McCoggins.
- Tooteroo only hang out with the Spring Chicks and never with the main characters.
- Vagueness Is Coming: Something bad will happen if Tallulah and Tommy don't make it to Chime Time, but it's never specified what. The theme song says that the clock won't chime anymore if they miss Chime Time, but we don't know what happens to the inhabitants of the clock.
- Water-Geyser Volley: In "Bake a Cake Time", while trying to take a bath in the town fountain that McCoggins is fixing, Tootero ends up being blasted by a water geyser that comes out of the fountain.