Budgie the Little Helicopter

Budgie the Little Helicopter is a British animated television series, relating to a fictional helicopter and his friends, based on a series of children's books. The characters were based on the books by Sarah Ferguson. The show was co-produced by Fred Wolf Films Dublin, The Sleepy Kids Company and Sarah Ferguson, then Duchess of York, for HTV West and Scottish Television, and originally aired on British television in 1994 on CITV, where it ran for 39 episodes. A range of books, toys, videos and other merchandise were released under the Budgie label. The show aired in the United States on FOX as part of the Fox Cubhouse programming block from 1995 to 1996, and moved to the Fox Family Channel in 1999 as part of It's Itsy Bitsy Time. The series was redubbed with North American voices for It's Itsy Bitsy Time. In Canada, it also aired on Family Channel from 1994 to 1997 and on Treehouse TV from 1999 to 2003. On release of the first book, Ferguson was accused by the media of copying the idea for the series from an out-of-print 1960 book called Hector the Helicopter, by A.W. Baldwin, which she denied. The series is legally available on Ferguson's official YouTube channel.