Alliance Atlantis Communications and Ottawa’s Amberwood Productions are teaming up to produce the 13 x half-hour, animated preschool series Pumper Pups. Treehouse tv has licensed the $2-million (us$1.3-million) series for Canada, to begin airing in February 2000, and the coproducers will launch the series to the international market at MIPCOM Jr.

Pumper Pups features a talking fire truck (voiced by The Naked Gun’s Leslie Nielsen) and a team of pups that provides viewers ages three to five with a wacky series of misadventures as they put out fires. Each episode will feature three shorts and two 30-second intervals.