Rex the Runt is a live-action stop-motion adult animated claymation pixilation comedy series, primarily consisting of a television show and two short films produced by Aardman Animations and Egmont Imagination for BBC Bristol, with EVA Entertainment co-producing the first series. Its main characters are four plasticine dogs: Rex, Wendy, Bad Bob and Vince.^[1]

Rex was first introduced as a minor character in Ident (1989), a short film directed by Richard Starzak for the Lip Synch series.^[2] During the seven years of development of the characters, Starzak produced three pilots, subtitled How Dinosaurs Became Extinct (1991), Dreams (1991) and North by North Pole (1996).^[2][3][4] The 1991 pilots were unknown to the Aardman crew at the time, as Starzak created them during his free time. Because of this, the series wasn't pitched until the discovery of these shorts a year later, as the team found potential to turn these shorts into a full-fledged series.^[5]

Thirteen ten-minute episodes of the series aired over two weeks on BBC Two from December 1998.^[6] A second, thirteen-episode series aired from September 2001 on the same channel. As well as the core cast, guest voices included Paul Merton, Morwenna Banks, Judith Chalmers, Antoine de Caunes, Bob Holness, Simon Day, Bob Monkhouse, Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton, Arthur Smith, June Whitfield, Kathy Burke, Pam Ayres and Eddie Izzard.

The animation is unusual in that the models are almost two-dimensional and are animated to exaggerate this - they are flattened in appearance and animated on a sheet of glass with the backgrounds behind the sheet. This would be altered in the second series, as the models would become more three-dimensional.

Several episodes of Rex the Runt contain inside references to other projects created by Aardman Animations:

• In the episode "Adventures on Telly Part I", Wallace (from the Wallace and Gromit series) is washing the windows on Rex's house, until Bad Bob pushes his ladder over (in the film A Close Shave, Wallace operates a window washing business).
• Pib and Pog, two of Aardman's lesser known creations, are present in the spectator gallery during the courtroom scene from "The Trials of Wendy" and are also present in the audience watching Rex's band in "Stinky's Search for a Star".
• In the episode "Johnny Saveloy's Undoing", two of the jars containing the chemical essences of various stars are labelled "Wallace" and "Gromit". Another jar on the top shelf reads "Nick Park".
• The exorcist called upon in "Patio" is actually Morph, a character from an Aardman children's show, wearing a trench coat, hat, and large moustache.
• There are two references in the episode "Wayne the Zebra": A Chicken Run-style chicken (Edwina) is rejected during the auditions (with Bad Bob making a comment regarding the recent popularity of chickens, referring to the film's success), and Bad Bob consults the Aardman book Cracking Animation (ISBN 0-500-28168-8, published in the US as Creating 3-D Animation).
• The episode entitled "A Crap Day Out" may be a pun on the Wallace and Gromit short film A Grand Day Out.
• Both Wallace from Wallace and Gromit and Rex live on streets that sound similar to their names: whereas Wallace and Gromit live on "West Wallaby Street", it can be seen from the various post that arrives for the household that Rex and company live at "7, Marsupial Way, Rexford"
• In the 2000 animated film Chicken Run, Nick and Fetcher can be seen eating Chuffy dog food.
• In the 2003 animated TV series Creature Comforts: in the episode Is Anyone Out There? a blue alien wears a T-shirt with Vince on it.
• In the 2006 film Flushed Away: young rat named Maximillian "Shocky" Malone wears a green T-shirt with Rex on it.
• In the 2015 film Shaun the Sheep Movie: Vince is one of the photographed animals marked as 'contained' by Trumper.

All Airdates are sourced from the BBC Genome. ^[7]

As previously mentioned, Rex the Runt consisted mainly of two short films that were entirely animated by Richard Starzak during his free time. The animation from these shorts were very crude and bizarre, and featured different designs for the gang. At the time, the team at Aardman had never known about these films, and didn't discover them until a year later, as they found potential to turn these shorts into a series.^[5]

The show was originally going to be on Saturday Zoo as comedy skits for the show, the main idea being that it was "like a cartoon strip". Soon after, the BBC got interested in the series. From here, the episodes slowly got longer, until the 10-minute episodes that it eventually used.^[5]

With help from the crew, a third pilot (North by North Pole) was produced as a pitch for the BBC in 1996, this time with much smoother animation and a plotline that would later define how the series was going to be. Parts of this pilot were incorporated into the episode "The Adventures On Telly, Part 2" due to the footage being expensive to reshoot. Unfortunately, other than a screenshot of the title card, the full pilot has yet to be released to the public as it is lost media.

The production of Series 1 began between late 1997 and early 1998. It was produced at Wetherell Place, Aardman's smallest studio space. The production office was on-site. A storyboard artist continually sketched boards for episodes to be shot later in the schedule, and there was a model-shop attached to the studio (where the models and props would be made). The unusual animation technique was laying the characters on top of a sheet of glass with the backgrounds behind the sheet (with the backgrounds being below the sheet, to show depth) angled away from the animators at 45 degrees. At any point, two to three episodes could be in production at any time, with each episode taking around four to six weeks to make. Some scenes, such as most of "The Adventures On Telly, Part 3" were filmed in front of a blue-screen to show a different background, such as space. The animation of Series 1 took 10 months, then went into post-production, and finally aired in December 1998.

The models did not use armatures due to of the strange form of animation, making them much easier to move around.

Underdog is an advertising character (voiced by Joe Pasquale), first appearing in 2010, animated by Aardman Animations, in the same style as the Rex the Runt figures, but wearing bandages, promoting the personal injury claims company National Accident Helpline.^[9][10]

Underdog also has a friend named Cindy

On IMDb, Rex the Runt received a rating of 7.9/10 from 367 users.

Rex the Runt was eventually popular enough to have its own merchandise. Some known items of merchandise include:

• Rex the Runt's Rainy Day Companion, a book written by Kevin Wrench and Andrew Franks
• Five Rex the Runt plushies, the characters being Rex, Wendy, Bad Bob, Vince and also Vince wearing his chicken bib and holding cutlery (as he is seen in Carbonara)
• Several DVDs released in different countries (with a few episodes from Season 2 being featured on "Aardman's Darkside", a DVD containing some of Aardman's "darker" material)
• A bag in the shape of Vince
• Limited edition Rex the Runt-themed "Starburst Juicy Gums"
• A T-shirt with the logo and main cast on it
• A video game named Rex the Runt: Lost Marbles, based on the episode "A Holiday in Vince", in which Rex, Wendy and Bad Bob must go inside Vince's body to collect marbles and cure his "Random Pavarotti Disease".
• Several toys exclusive to Japan such as a figurine of Wendy and a keychain of Rex wearing a crown.

There were many things that never happened, due to the series ending so quickly. The series’ creator, Richard Starzak, hoped to be able to do the following:^[5]

• A possible Series 3.
• More backstory for the characters, including an implied history between Wendy and Bad Bob.
• Expansion of episodes into 30-minutes.