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Jay Jay the Jet Plane is an American children's television series based at the fictional Tarrytown Airport. The series has 73 episodes and is centered on a group of aircraft who live in the fictional city of Tarrytown. The episodes are commonly distributed in 25-minute-long (as without commercials) pairs, with one header sequence and one end credits for each pair. Each episode contains one or more songs.

Characters[]

The planes and ground vehicles are CGI characters, while the humans are live-action actors.

Relationship words for the airplane characters refer to being in loco parentis for purposes of upbringing, and education, not to biological parenthood. The story says that (some of) the airplane characters were made in factories.

Some of the stories describe characters as doing actions off-screen that would need foldaway arms (e.g. Big Jake digging holes), but those arms are never seen on-screen.

Young planes[]

  • Jay Jay (voiced by Mary Kay Bergman in the TLC era and Debi Derryberry in the PBS Kids era) is a small blue (originally brown in the pilot series) jet airliner. He is the titular character and main protagonist of the series.
  • Tracy (voiced by Gina Ribisi in the TLC era and Sandy Fox in the PBS Kids era) is a small pink jet airliner who is Jay Jay's best friend forever. She has normal hearing, but understands American Sign Language.
  • Snuffy (voiced by Gina Ribisi in the TLC era and Sandy Fox in the PBS Kids era) is a small green propeller-driven monoplane who is a good friend of Jay Jay and Tracy. He is equipped for skywriting. In episode consistency, one episode says that he has not flown further away from Tarrytown than Lightning Bug Lake, but other episodes show him flying much further. In "Grumpy O'Malley", Snuffy still has not got rid of his initial shyness, but in many other episodes he shows no sign of shyness.
  • Herky (voiced by Mary Kay Bergman in the TLC era and Julie Renick in the PBS Kids era) is a small fluent Mexican yellow helicopter. In the pilot series, he spoke with an Italian accent and a stutter, provided by John William Galt, who voiced all the other characters. In the CGI series, he speaks in a German accent which rolls his "R"s whenever he speaks, and often pronounces stressed "er" as long vocalic "r" ([ɹ̩]), e.g. "I'm Herky" as [aɪm hɹ̩ːˈkǐ], with a strong high-rising pitch accent on the last "-y". He has skids instead of wheels, and cannot taxi on the ground.

Adult planes[]

  • Big Jake (voiced by Chuck Morgan in the TLC era and Michael Donovan in the PBS Kids era) is a silver propeller-driven transport plane who acts as a father figure.
  • Savannah (voiced by Mary Kay Bergman in the TLC era and Debi Derryberry in the PBS Kids era) is a silver supersonic airliner who acts as a mother figure. She was made at Savannah, Georgia, hence her name and Southern accent.
  • Old Oscar (voiced by Chuck Morgan in the TLC era and Michael Donovan in the PBS Kids era) is an old green biplane (gray in the pilot series) who acts as a grandfather figure.

Ground vehicles[]

  • Revvin' Evan (voiced by Mary Kay Bergman in the TLC era and Debi Derryberry in the PBS Kids era) is a red fire engine and the cousin of Tuffy.
  • Tuffy (voiced by Sandy Fox) is a confidential blue and orange tow truck and the cousin of Revvin' Evan. She has a speech impediment.

Humans[]

  • Brenda Blue (played by Eve Whittle in the US version and Vanessa Stacey in the UK version) is a woman in blue clothing and usually wears a red cap or a blue cap. She is in charge of the airport, and is the ace mechanic. She does not use the airport's control tower but communicates with the planes by a portable two-way radio from the ground.
  • Miss Lee is a deaf and silent librarian at Tarrytown Library who knows American Sign Language.
  • E.Z. O'Malley (played by Brian Nahas) is the founder of E.Z. Airlines, and his cousins are Grumpy O'Malley (lives at Dewdrop Farm), Pierre O'Malley (lives in France), and Tex O'Malley (lives in Texas). (Note: here the letter 'Z' is pronounced 'zee', not 'zed'.
  • Mrs. Blue is Brenda Blue's mother, who sometimes visits Tarrytown Airport.

External links[]

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