The Machines (Bob the Builder, 1998)

Scoop, Muck, Dizzy, Roley and Lofty are all main characters from Bob the Builder. They are machines owned by Bob and Wendy, they used to live in Bobsville, before moving to Sunflower Valley in Project Build It so they could build the city there, they currently live in Fixham Harbour starting with Ready Steady Build.

They are sometimes known as The Machines or The Can-Do Crew when being referred to all of them.

In the UK version, Lofty and Roley are voiced by Neil Morrissey, Scoop and Muck are voiced by Rob Rackstraw and Dizzy is voiced by Kate Harbour.

General

 * 1) Despite their designs being the overused Sentient Vehicle trope, they are designed in a unique way compared to most shows that have sentient vehicles in them by having the machines' eyes on their headlights as opposed to their windshields like most shows with sentient vehicles in them.
 * 2) *Their designs are also admittedly cute to look at, especially Dizzy.
 * 3) *The designs also create a strong appeal to toddlers and young children.
 * 4) They are all beautifully animated with fluent stop-motion.
 * 5) * In addition, their CGI designs in Ready Steady Build are great and stay true to the original stop-motion designs.
 * 6) They are a fantastic team and they all get along with each other for the most part.
 * 7) Their characters are super expressive when it comes to their emotions, when they are feeling happy, angry or sad, it is always easy to tell just by looking at their facial expressions.
 * 8) Their UK voice actors, Rob Rackstraw, Neil Morrissey and Kate Harbour all do great jobs at voicing them.
 * 9) *Despite not being as amazing as their UK voices, their US voice actors mostly do decent jobs as well.
 * 10) Their character designs stay true to the vehicles that they are based on.
 * 11) Each character has their own distinct personality with their own traits, and they are all different and unique from each other.
 * 12) *Scoop is portrayed as a sensible and reliable digger who is sometimes left in charge by Bob and Wendy.
 * 13) *Muck is portrayed as a silly but reliable dump truck who loves getting dirty.
 * 14) *Dizzy is portrayed as an energetic and crazy know-it-all cement mixer who loves listening to music and playing with her football.
 * 15) *Roley is portrayed as a smooth and calm steam roller who loves making up his own songs.
 * 16) *Lofty is portrayed as a shy but friendly crane who has a fear of heights and mice.
 * 17) They make the building sequences very enjoyable to watch.
 * 18) Many of the episodes that focus on them are all enjoyable and unique every time.
 * 19) Whilst they do make mistakes from time to time, they always learn from their mistakes and make sure to never do them again, therefore creating character development.
 * 20) They all are caring towards Bob and Wendy and they all know when to tell the truth if they did anything wrong.

Scoop

 * 1) Compared to the other machines, he is the most passionate when it comes to getting building jobs done.
 * 2) He is a great leader to the machines and manages to avoid coming across as completely cocky or egotistical when being one.
 * 3) He has a good relationship with the other machines and is willing to give help to others whether something is wrong.
 * He, along with Bob, Wendy, Spud and Pilchard contributed to The Official BBC Children In Need program in The Official BBC Children in Need Medley in 2009.

Muck

 * 1) While he has a silly personality, he is generally enjoyable whenever he is acting silly.
 * 2) Much like Scoop, he has a great relationship with the other machines, most notably Dizzy.

Dizzy

 * 1) Her excitable, energetic, and know-it-all personality is rather enjoyable and she is admittedly pretty cute when she gets excited about certain things.
 * 2) Her design and her voice are adorable.
 * 3) Although all the machines create an appeal to kids, Dizzy in particular actually creates an even stronger appeal to children thanks to her cute design and her energetic personality.
 * 4) Even though she was terribly redesigned in the 2015 reboot, she still remains as a likeable and enjoyable character.

Roley

 * 1) He is pretty chill and calm compared to all the other machines.
 * 2) What makes him unique compared to the other machines is the fact he has a strong love for music and singing.

Lofty

 * 1) He is shown to be friendly to the other machines and he also has a soft side to him.
 * 2) His voice is pretty cute.
 * 3) He has relatability too, as his shy personality could make people who have problems with socialising with other people relate to him.
 * 4) He has moments in the show where you do feel sorry for him and hope that he feels better about himself.
 * 5) Even though is a coward, he is shown to stand up for himself at certain moments in the show.
 * 6) He gets quite a lot of character development in the series compared to the rest of machines, the most notable example is when he used to have a rivalry with Spud the Scarecrow, but in "Scoop Has Some Fun", he and Spud eventually become friends.
 * 7) *Another example is when he starts to tackle his fears of heights in "Lofty To The Rescue", he is also shown to completely lose his fears of heights too as seen in "Lofty's Comet".
 * 8) He is the most well-behaved machine in the whole show and he never causes trouble (although he does make mistakes sometimes).

General

 * 1) All of the machines (with the exception of Dizzy) were all flanderized beginning with the 2015 reboot.
 * 2) Since Ready Steady Build, the machines' grill mouthes now move when they talk which looks jarring and rather unsettling (with the exception of Lofty, since he actually has a human-like mouth, so his is the least jarring out of the machines).
 * 3) Because most of the machines were voiced by females in the US dub, most of the male machines (with the exception of Scoop, who was voiced by a male in all of the US dubs) can sound way too feminine or too much like children.
 * 4) *Lofty in the first US dub sounds way too much like a woman, however, his replacement voice actor in Project Build It and Ready Steady Build does a better job at making him sound a little bit more boyish.
 * 5) *Roley's US voice makes him sound a lot younger than in the UK dub, he also sounds way too much like Cubert Farnsworth from mh:besttvshows:Futurama in the first US dub.

Scoop

 * 1) He can have a fair amount moments where he is unlikable, the best example where he is pretty unlikable is in the special "Snowed Under", where he would get extremely angry and fussy at the other machines all because he thought they were "acting like they were on holiday", although he is a bit sympathetic at times in the special, the moments where he is rude to the machines might make the viewer lose sympathy towards him, such as when he even went as far as to insult Roley for accidentally crushing a small hill, calling him a "Clumsy Lump", and also called Muck a "show-off" when Muck and Dizzy claimed that everyone in the Can-Do crew is good at their own things and that he is not better than everyone else. Fortunately, Scoop realises in the end that he was being horrible to the crew and apologises for being rude to everyone.

Muck

 * 1) He does have a fair share of moments where he is unlikable, much like Scoop.
 * 2) While not as bad as in the 2015 reboot, he can have moments where he completely screws everything up and sometimes does things without realising and therefore getting into trouble, like when he accidentally destroyed an entire western town in "Built to be Wild".
 * 3) He does not like having washed and generally loves getting muddy, which is not good because that's basically self-neglect on personal hygiene.
 * 4) *Though to be fair, he does occasionally like getting washed from time to time, so he doesn't completely hate getting washed.
 * 5) Similar to Lofty, he suffers from some fears, for example, he has nyctophobia, meaning that he is afraid of the dark.
 * 6) For some reason, he was changed to a female in the US dub, which is confusing for fans of the show and is also unnecessary since no one was complaining about the lack of females in the show (though, the reboot changed him back to a male).

Dizzy

 * 1) Even it's adorable when Dizzy gets excited about everything, it could make her character come across as a typical Genki Girl trope.
 * 2) Along with Roley, she was pushed over as a side character in the 2015 reboot for no apparent reason and barely even gets any spotlight anymore.
 * 3) She sometimes gets so excited that she ends up rushing out the building job that she is doing and therefore making mistakes.
 * 4) Even though she is still likeable in the reboot, she arguably has the worst design out of all of the machines in the 2015 reboot.

Roley

 * 1) Despite being pretty likeable for the most part, much like Scoop and Muck, he has a few moments where he is unlikable, most notably in "Roley Brings The House Down", where he would blame Muck for "making him" do a skitzy and to completely destroy the machine shed, even though it was technically Roley's fault because he was the one who did, although he and Muck do apologise in the end.
 * 2) Along with Dizzy, he was pushed to a side character in the 2015 reboot and he never gets the spotlight, as mentioned earlier.
 * 3) Even before he became a side character in the reboot, he is generally not really focused that much in the original show and there is quite a lack of episodes where he gets the spotlight.

Lofty

 * 1) He is obviously shown to be a coward in lots of episodes he is presented in, similar to how Muck is afraid of the dark, Lofty is afraid of mice, heights and Spud (prior to "Scoop Has Some Fun"), he also forgets that he is most likely the strongest of all the machines in The Can-Do Crew, making him slightly dumber than the rest of the machines.
 * 2) His UK voice, while cute, can be somewhat annoying depending on your view.
 * 3) He is a bit of a pessimist at times due to the fact he lacks confidence and even goes as far as to doubt that he can do the things he obviously can do.

Trivia

 * Scoop's original name was going to be Digger, the name was only used in the pilot episode.
 * Some of the machines have different genders in different dubs of the show:
 * Scoop is female in the Polish and Swedish dubs of the show.
 * Muck is female in the American, Greek, Brazilian and Korean dubs of the show.
 * Dizzy is male in the Romanian and Slovenian dubs of the show.
 * Roley is female in the Swedish dub of the show.
 * The coin-operated ride company Jolly Roger Amusement Rides LTD made a kiddie ride out of Scoop in 1999, which featured 2 rectangular buttons, a green one to start the ride and a red one for sound effects and phrases. Later on, one was made with Roley in 2003.
 * Both Dizzy and Scoop's stop-motion models are currently on display at the Portsmouth City Museum.
 * Lofty is the only machine in the show that is the same gender worldwide.
 * Some of the machines resemble specific real-life models of machines:
 * Scoop resembles a JCB 3CX backhoe loader.
 * Muck appears to be based on a Shantui SD-22 bulldozer with an added dump bed.
 * Roley resembles a Zettelmeyer diesel road roller.
 * Lofty resembles a Liebherr LTM 1200-5.1 mobile crane.
 * Dizzy is the only machine that was never ridden by Bob or Wendy due to her small size.
 * Muck is the only machine to not be based on or around real-world construction vehicles, as almost no vehicle in real life features his combination of features.
 * Along with Bob and Pilchard, Scoop was made into a balloon in the form of a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in 2001, it was eventually expanded to include Wendy and Muck in 2002. The float has been retired since 2004.