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“I can lift it. and Er/Uh, yeah, I think so!”
―Lofty's original catchphrases


Lofty is a blue mobile crane who lacks the confidence shown by the others.

Biography

As shown in When Bob Became a Builder, he was the fourth machine to join Bob's team, to help lift a steel beam (in which Scoop and Muck failed getting out of the yard). At first, he was very shy to come into the yard, but all the machines at the time wanted to see him.

Personality

Lofty is the tallest machine in Bob's team. He is kindhearted and friendly, but sometimes shy. Lofty is probably the strongest among the Can-Do Crew, since he is a crane. Although, Lofty often forgets how strong he is. He never causes trouble but does make some mistakes. He takes his work both seriously and relaxingly. Deep down inside, he has a strict feeling (as shown in a couple of episodes). Lofty once had acrophobia (a fear of heights), which he does not anymore. Quite notably, Lofty is well renowned for his deep-rooted fear of mice, though this seems to have faded with time. Additionally, he has shown to like rabbits.

Lofty is timid, shy and nervous and often needs extra encouragement to acknowledge the amazing things he can do, but always rises to the occasion and holds up his end of the job.

In later episodes (including the 2015 reboot series), Lofty seems to have become more confident and less cowardly.

Technical Details

Basis

Lofty resembles a Liebherr LTM 1200-5.1 mobile crane.

Livery

Lofty is painted blue with black tyres. He has a sky blue bumper-shaped mouth.

Appearances

Original Series:

Specials

Project: Build It:

Specials

Trivia

  • Lofty has six detachable tools:
    • A crane hook
    • A grabber
    • A wrecking ball
    • A magnet
    • A drill
    • A suction device
  • Lofty has mostly used his crane hook and grabber for the majority in the series.
  • While Lofty is a crane he did pour cement using a drum barrel in Roley's New Friend.
  • In Project: Build It, Lofty speaks with a female sounding voice, but is still a male character.
  • Lofty retains his English name in the following dubs: Italian, European Spanish, Latin Spanish, Thai, and Slovak.
  • In the International versions:
    • In the German version, Lofty is called “Heppo”.
    • In the Finnish version, Lofty is called "Nosse".
    • In the Dutch version, unlike the other main machines, his name is pronounced "Liftie".
    • In the Czech version, Lofty has two names: “Váša” and “Lůďa”.
    • In the Brazilian Portuguese version, Lofty is called "Guindo", derived from the word guindaste (crane).
    • In the French version, Lofty is called "Coccigrue".
    • In the Hungarian version, Lofty is called "Colos".
    • In the Italian version, Lofty has two names: "Gru", and his English name.
    • In the Norweigan version, Lofty is called "Løfte", which is Norweigan for "lift".
    • In the Polish version, Lofty is called "Dźwig", which is Polish for "crane".
    • In the European Portuguese version, Lofty is called "Alturas", which is Portuguese for "heights", one of the things he fears.
    • In the Swedish version, Lofty is called "Kranis", which is Swedish for "crane".
    • In the Slovenian version, Lofty is called "Maksi".
    • In the Turkish version, Lofty is called "Kanka".
  • Most of the objects Lofty lifted with his hook had rope tied into the object.
  • Lofty fears heights, mice, loud noises, and formerly Spud the Scarecrow.
  • Lofty's UK voice sounds very similar to the famous Disney character Mickey Mouse, except in a British accent.
  • Lofty says "er" ("uh" in the US dub) every time he talks and usually uses it once or twice per sentence.
  • Lofty, along with Bob and Mr. Beasley, has had the most voice actors over the span of the series.
  • Lofty was one of two machines with a bumper-shaped mouth rather than a grille mouth, the other being Skip. Because of this, he has a mouth interior darker than his mouth. This makes him diffierent of the other machines rendered in CGI, whose mouth interiors are simply the grill structures within the frames.
  • Lofty is the only of Bob's main machines in Bob the Builder who has the same gender worldwide. Despite this, however, in the US, Swiss German, Bulgarian, Bosnian, and Romanian versions of the original show, he was voiced by a female, presumably due to Neil Morrisey giving Lofty a very high-pitched voice. His 2015 series counterpart is voiced by male actors in both English dubs, both giving the same counterpart of him a more distinctively male voice than the original Lofty himself.
  • He is the only machine to have fallen onto his side.
  • Lofty's CGI render in Ready, Steady, Build! was a bit smaller than his stop-motion counterpart (it could be possible Sabella-Dern wasn't given a reference of Lofty's model prior to working on the renders).
  • On rare occasions, Lofty says "Yes we can!" before saying his own catchphrase. The first time this happened was in the episode Bob's Barnraising.
  • Lofty is the first vehicle that Pilchard rode on in Scoop Saves the Day.
  • Lofty was the first vehicle that Spud had a ride on.
  • From Scoop Saves the Day to Lofty's Shelter, Lofty slept outside.
  • Lofty sings in the episodes Lofty the Star and Lofty's Comet.
  • Lofty's wheels deform whenever he tilts them, though his most obvious deforming part is his crane arm, in which the skinniest segment bends at times when he flings or pulls.
  • While Lofty's crane arm features 3 extending sections, most of his merchandise has the outermost sections fused together. In Ready, Steady, Build!, his boom extensions are often exaggerated in proportions as in Scoop's Sea Rescue, the outermost extensions are twice as long as his main boom.
  • It's implied in "Pilchard's Pets" that Lofty knows what a chinchilla is. The minute he saw Charlie, he got scared and almost mistook him for a mouse only to realize that Charlie is really a chinchilla.
  • Lofty is the only machine on Bob's team to not get angry at Scoop or argue with him.
  • Some online sources incorrectly state that Emma Tate still voiced him in Ready, Steady, Build! (despite his voice sounding different) when it was actually Lizzie Waterworth.
  • He also has the same name as the Oompa Loompa from Wonka and the chocolate factory
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