execrable children's programming pox

I saw an episode of Doodlebops and holy shit wtf I don't even. I don't have a child but goddam if I did she wouldn't be watching this. Why is this sick stuff legal?

and don't get me started on Dora the Explorer, good Lord!

I like the Backyardigans.

Peppa Pig is quite often the best thing on telly.

can't stand kids' shows like waybuloo where the characters talk in gibberish. kids are supposed to be learning how to TALK, not how to go "FEEEEmooooo eeeewennn!" - they can do that already quite nicely thanks#

waybuloo also promotes a distinctly pro crystal vibes mystical bullshit ethos imo

The show features four whimsical characters called Piplings who live in Nara and play with real children, referred to as ‘cheebies’. It encourages children to get interested in exercise by showing them a simple version of yoga.

i mean

kids programmes are for kids tbh

http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lgPP32337.jpg

the Wiggles/Doodlebops continuum is just abominable

my kid primarily watches two shows: Yo Gabba Gabba and Sesame Street. She's seen Thomas the Train on occasion, and a bunch of episodes of the old Muppet Show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Wf9vixP80

NO, wait! This one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS2hhVHFJrw

Horns and dance moves!!

Really like Backyardigans. Music director is John Lurie's brother! Also, great dancing, fun stories, low pandering factor.

I'd never seen Thomas until recently, but from what I've picked up, each episode seems to be about how one of the trains acts like a total asshole?

Saw an episode of Lazytown a few weeks ago. That was weird. Not certain if I like it.

Spongebob obviously supposed to skew a little older, but more than half the time, I want to set my TV on fire after watching it.

My favorite thing on earth right now is Chica on the Sunny-Side Up Show. I was home sick for a week with my daughter recently and she got so happy about that little chicken puppet. It brings tears to my eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz1i4exvVMA

My son was into Doodlebops briefly when he was a lot younger. I don't impose my tastes on the kids, because they can attach so much personal significance to the stuff they like. You know, they're like "Doodlebops are awesome! I want to be a Doodlebop!" And you can't be all like "No son, Doodlebops are LAME." I was really glad when he moved on to something else, though.

Fresh Beat Band is more tolerable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8RYs2iEgvg

I don't impose my tastes on the kids

how old is your kid...?

cuz I mean before a certain age they're incapable of making media choices on their own

Well, on the older one. He's almost 8. I've been his parent since he was 4. I've never asked him to turn something off for the sole reason that I didn't like it. There would have to be some kind of content issue, and there usually isn't.

ah okay that makes sense. Yeah once my daughter can figure out how to turn on the TV and play music on the stereo by herself I expect to limit my role to one of establishing ground rules for how much she can watch and monitoring questionable/adult content. But at this point (she's 4) she pretty much is only exposed to the music and the TV shows that I choose for her, so I'm always surprised when people complain about the tastes of toddlers or whatever - like, if you're annoyed that they love a particular Disney song so much, maybe you shouldn't have taken them to the movie etc.

they learn it from their friends, child minders, etc. it's sick. my three year old is intimately acquainted with the entire cast of peppa pig despite us having never played it to him, ever.

Johnny Test is so awful. I didn't even realize it until tonight when I was consciously trying to decide how much I really liked my son's tv shows. It dawned on me: every time this show comes on, I completely tune out or wander off to do the dishes or something.

It may be the noisiest show I've ever heard. It's completely reliant on repetitive soundtrack motifs the way that shitty sitcoms were completely reliant on laughtracks to let you know when the jokes happened. It's just wall-to-wall clanging.

haha, otm. that is one of the few shows we make the kids turn off.

I saw Harvey Feierstein on Sesame Street the other day. Everything was coming up noses.

guys so i'm guessing your kids are pretty young you should watch yo gabba gabba while it's still not weird. it's the best show!

my kid is almost 13 now and he likes icarly.

I heard pre-K kids talking about Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. For the first time, I was all "those two better not fuck up like Brittany and Miley."

Add Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu to this list, please.

Annoying Orange ftw

Will the children of the future remember Annoying Orange with the same fondness that we remember Bugs Bunny or whatever?

"my kid is almost 13 now and he likes icarly.

― hhhhhh Bill I juste like ertronic thinges (NZA), Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:57 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

hell, I like iCarly

My fav shows beats watches are fairly oddparents, danny phantom and spiderman and his amazing friends (the series with firestar and iceman). Henry is strictly yo gabba. Before gabba he just wasn't interested in tv. what a weirdo.

my toddler's super into Twisted Whiskers. It's a whole TV series designed, I guess, to promote a line of greeting cards from American Greetings? Well, here"

)

Twisted Whiskers is a childrens series developed in 2010 for entertainment and American Greeting has used some information for greeting cardsTwisted Whiskers is a design for greeting cards developed and licensed by American Greetings and created by Terrill Bohlar since 2001. It includes digitally modified photos of animals, creating a caricature. The series includes greeting cards, gift items, wrapping paper, notepads and holiday items. Animated e-cards and instant messenger products have been produced as well. In 2011, American Greetings relaunched the line with the release of greeting cards featuring lenticular designs, showing a pet turning into a trademark character of the Twisted Whiskers line.

Oh, here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4IGomyth9U&feature=c4-overview&list=UUWTogLTWpjItvnLSKJJUtLA

There's a fuckton of it on Netflix.

Beatrice loves twisted whiskers too. I was amazed they made a series based off of greeting cards. I mean they must be selling a shit ton of those cards to make a tv show cost prohibitive.

We dont watch "TV" much anymore. Its all Netflix. Henry is mad into Oscars Oasis and Pingu. To us these are interesting choices as they have no real dialogue and Henry has delayed speech development. The weird thing about that being he can understand everything he hears but cant say much back too clearly.

fuckton shit ton. what charming parents we are.

Been having total bummer-thoughts about animal cartoons with mixed-species casts and poorly-matched life expectancies. Take Wonder Pets for example. You have a guinea pig (life expectancy 4-5 years), a duck (life expectancy 10-20 years*), and a turtle (life expectancy decades). Realize this is not the programs fault and is really more indicative of my own mental state. Not exclusive to the Wonder Pets, obvs. Could easily transpose to Looney Tunes or whatever. Had to share this with someone though and I'm just adding to my list of things I'm sure as hell not gonna bring up in front of the kids.

*Presuming with the name Ming Ming that she is a Mandarin Duck.

Beatrice loves twisted whiskers too. I was amazed they made a series based off of greeting cards. I mean they must be selling a shit ton of those cards to make a tv show cost prohibitive.

― educate yourself to this reality (sunny successor), Thursday, June 20, 2013 10:03 AM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just learned recently that American Greetings was also responsible for Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, and (my favorite when I was 4) The Get Along Gang.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Get-Along_Gang_cartoon_group.jpg

Anyway, lately my youngest has been into H20: Mermaid Adventures on Netflix, a cartoon reboot of an Australian live-action show. It's corny as hell but I'm actually enjoying it and try to subtly hint for it instead of another round of Octonauts or whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNa_fMQO8R4

i would take the shittiest cheapest narrative cartoon over the youtube videos my kids now watch of people just opening and describing toys

I want to find the guy who came up with this series, lock him up in a room somewhere....

http://i.imgur.com/FnrbFzU.png

hate shimmer & shine, littlest pet shop, the new strawberry shortcake, shopkins, mlp: equestria girls, paw patrol, lalaloopsy, lalaloopsy, i really cannot state enough how much i hate lalaloopsy, bubble guppies, mickey's clubhouse

all of these shows my children love

lazy town is super creepy. luckily my kids don't like it.

We Bare Bears, on the other hand, see also Adventure Time, and to a lesser extent Regular Show, I happily watch them without the kids there.

steven universe and adventure time are both a++ shows that my kids are not half as interested in as i am

i would take the shittiest cheapest narrative cartoon over the youtube videos my kids now watch of people just opening and describing toys

omfg these are THE WORST

there's one of a dude ordering his wife to play with a Thomas toy set a certain way that my kids were playing on repeat for a while that is unberable and had me on the verge of going full Luddite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNaTZV8qS1I

^^^ this OTOH made me laugh really, really loudly

i can't believe how much Thomas i've watched. i think that phase is maybe over. i think we've talked about this before DJP but i feel like the creepy dictatorship of Sodor seems to indicate to me a nazi victory on the mainland and there's sort of "Train in the High Castle" shit that's going on. basing this entirely on my theory of topham hatt being a former Gestapo with sadistic methods, cf walling up Henry as punishment and what not, the constant terror the trains live in of being turned into scrap, etc.

I am 100% down with a "Life Is Beautiful And Really Useful" reading of Thomas and Friends

Bing is sweet, but the impression it gives is of some far-future post-human utopia where genetically engineered "human" animal children are cared for by AIs in the bodies of toys

Bernard, about an accident-prone and bad-tempered polar bear, is quite good, but occasionally horrifyingly sadistic

pic.twitter.com/knHwe2dIPt

— webding (@WINDuckyQuaCKer) June 2, 2020

My kids are now big into Peppa Pig and....I have to say it’s actually pretty funny. It’s made me laugh out loud several times. Kinda reminds me of The Fuccons.

Bluey is good for similar reasons

i will swear to Bluey being one of the best shows on television on every thread if i can

Peppa Pig is fine, when we lived in China I had a couple of DVDs of UK kids TV for my son to watch, mostly downloaded from UKNova, including a single episode of Peppa Pig where the family go to a theme park called Potato City based around a character called Mr Potato, and there is a section with dinosaurs for no reason. We must have watched this episode 20 times and imagined this was a surreal flight of fancy, however last year I found out that this is a real place, with a slightly different name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tayto_Park

Peppa Pig is decent but Ben & Holly is even better. Not watched either for a long time now. (They grow up so fast etc...)

Massive Archibald phase in our family right now. It is quite funny. Also saw We Bare Bears for the first time last week and us grown-ups had actual lols.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtmnO9-GD3M

some of these crack me up

we had a big peppa pig phase like a year and half ago to the point that my kid started saying some words with a british accent and was saying 'petrol' and 'ready steady go' instead of the american equivalents

My daughter has been a Wild Kratts super fan for like 2 years and will drop words like 'subnivean zone' into casual conversation

lol my son used this phrase like a week ago while watching a video of a fox hunting for mice under the snow. he loves wild kratts now and will store up what we call KRATT FACTS that get dumped on you frequently, often right after hearing it on the show (which I can also hear cause I'm in the other room).

my kids have recently gotten into a new show called Wolfoo. it is basically an evil version of Peppa Pig. I don't really know how else to describe it. the look is so similar, but it sucks. it's incredibly loud, stuffed stupid with sound effects, and the voice actors sound like they've never spoken a word of English in their lives. characters will randomly repeat the same phrase over and over again. it also steals a bunch of IP in ways that are kind of jarring to see in another show. like there will just be Spongebobs laying around. it also plays part of the Spongebob theme song at random intervals?? it's so weird. it also seems really bad for them...characters are constantly crying and getting hurt and a bunch of episodes seem to be about one character getting fat. it's really creepy!

on the plus side, they did recently discover a show called Bluey, which is really charming and good. it is maybe the first kid's show I've ever seen that accurately depicts how kids actually play with each other. plus the soundtrack sounds like Penguin Cafe Orchestra!! show damn near made me cry at one point. its really cute.

oh, I see Bluey was mentioned upthread

also here: Bluey - Spectacular Australian kids cartoon (in the US on Disney +)

Grebt children’s programming: Schoolhouse Rock, which had a birthday/anniversary yesterday, I think.

First air date: Jan 6, 1973.

A whole thread with no mention of the fever-dream horror of BOOHBAH?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myhMnljOC10

In my former jobless life I used to see bit of this sometimes and it almost felt like some kind psychedelic mind-control programming. Truly unsettling

that at least looks like it might be fun while extremely high

Back in the 90s yr artsy types liked to get high and binge-watch Teletubbies

Wolof seems to be just a YouTube thing? Definitely a candidate for the Kideodrome thread from a couple years back.

Wolfoo lol

there's a lot of copyright infringement going on

at first I dismissed it as a cheap attempt at piggybacking off of Peppa but the plotlines are like...actively harmful. characters are constantly getting hurt or sick, stealing things, getting locked up in jail or otherwise trapped in a small space, everyone is always either angry or crying, and there's never a good lesson anywhere. I get overwhelmingly bad vibes from it and wouldn't be surprised to find there's some sinister element of child psychology they're exploiting to get kids to click on it.

i haven't seen this show you're describing and really don't want to but your description is making me think of this article which made me lose sleep

https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2

Yeah, reading about all that Peppa Pig Gets An Abortion and Spiderman Gets Tortured stuff is basically why our kid isn’t allowed to watch YouTube on his own. Even on Kids YouTube he once came across an instructional video for How To Build An Electric Chair in Minecraft.

This is from 2017 but it’s clearly still going on.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39381889.amp

ugh just the screencaps in that bbc article are churning my stomach all over again.

i so don't want to be a helicopter parent but it's really hard to let kids explore the world independently when so much of the world they want to explore is online and it's so easy to stumble into this shit

i have this idea for what seems like it would be a very profitable youtube channel:

the fred rogers crayon video https://www.pbs.org/video/mister-rogers-neighborhood-how-people-make-crayons-1/ but about new/more stuff.

that's the idea. if this channel exists please tell me.

kind of like this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=captainrani but a bit more accessible to younger kids and done with library footage (but crucially with the with the same "i just took 6 benedryl" narration style as that guy and fred rogers).

library footage like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twentytruck.

feel like you could put these together pretty cheaply, and parents would be OK with them because they would be chill, and kids would like them (or at least not hate them relative to pj masks or some shit). i know my kids would go for them.

ah links to youtube channels don't work.

first link

second link

Here's the Kideodrome thread, I think it was prompted by that Medium article Lavator posted: KIDEODROME: scary "Kid's Youtube" algorithms, fringe programming, insert conspiracy theory here

thanks but i posted here on the basis that my idea is execrable!

things are definitely much better than they were 2017 - I remember taking a nap w/ my 3 year old as YouTube was playing Cocomelon (called ABC Kids TV back then) and when I woke up it was some really bizarre live action thing with adults dressed as Elsa and Spiderman eating a gigantic gummy worm. it was so fucking weird, too gross to be sexual but the camera swung around like a porno, idk it really gave me the creeps. Most of it is gone but it does occur to me now that Wolfoo is maybe an attempt to do those sorts of videos without immediately getting copystruck. The whole thing is like creepypasta for kids.

also found the whole Bounce Patrol thing unsettling, I know it's just knockoff Wiggles but clearly the videos they are making are attempting to take advantage of The Algorithm. so despite being kind of wholesome on the surface there's some real creepiness behind it.

thanks but i posted here on the basis that my idea is execrable!

ah right! there's also the kids should see this which is just where i dump youtubes my kids get into.

everyone is always either angry or crying, and there's never a good lesson anywhere. I get overwhelmingly bad vibes from it

the makers of Wolfoo seem to feel obliged to at least pretend it's good for kids (article is sponsored by SCONNECT, a "Vietnam-based entertainment company" which produces Wolfoo:

At Wolfoo, each episode is more than just entertainment. All the videos impart positive social life lessons and focus on the development of 12 personality traits and skills for children: courage, gratitude, compassion, empathy, humility, integrity, persistence, creativity, curiosity, self-control, teamwork and communication.

https://www.list.co.uk/article/124851-wolfoo-is-dominating-youtube-for-kids/

I think I've figured out what bothers me so much about Wolfoo: it's utterly soulless. Nearly all kids' programming has *some* level of emotional involvement in its characters - it's why the good shows, like Bluey, work so well for the parents (because the emotions and attitudes are so familiar), but even the bad ones have this to some degree. In Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, if a character is frustrated or excited, I can at least understand why - there's a plot, or the dialogue is delivered a certain way. In Wolfoo there are plots, I guess, but the characters themselves have no uhh...emotional continuity. The voice actors deliver their lines as though they have no idea what the plot is. I mean I surmised that the actors probably don't speak English, but they don't even seem to understand a single thing about what the episodes is about. It's as though they just have all their lines written down on a sheet of paper and given to them to record in one take. So you have things like the Mom laughing when her kids get hurt, or characters getting mad at each other and then becoming best friends 5 seconds later. The characters don't register as anything. Like, I probably would not enjoy watching Donald Duck get stabbed to death, but when bad things happen to the Wolfoo characters it's like watching someone drop a GI Joe down the stairs. I get this strange cognitive dissonance watching it. Like it's slowly eating away at your soul.

It's as though they just have all their lines written down on a sheet of paper and given to them to record in one take.

i guarantee you this is what happens

Bing you little shit.

it astonishes me that on netflix alone there are approximately 800 pre school team based cheap cgi shows worse than paw patrol. rainbow rangers this means you.

But low-budget children's media has always been cheap and souless.

Fingerbobs begs to differ!

My toddler is 2. My overton window for what is and isn't crap keeps expanding. Lately she's been into videos where adults play with toys of her favourite characters (Night Garden, Frozen, Peppa, etc) -- in fact she'd rather watch the toy videos than the original cartoons. But! They also seem kinda harmless and maybe even encourage imaginative play, even though I find them infuriatingly dull. I guess the Bluey marathons might have to wait to next year.

Daughter just turned two and a half. Her media diet is probably 80% Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, which, while it basically never winks to adults to offer them something for themselves, is about as unobjectionable as can be. However, there is a battle for her soul going on in the remaining 20%. This morning I gave in and let her watch Peppa Pig -- I know it could be a lot worse but all I can say is WHY WHY WHY do they have to pepper every few seconds of the show with those snorts? It's like nails on a chalkboard to me. Was there some market research or some shit that said kids would like that?! Hard for me to imagine...

We watched Daniel Tigers neighbourhood yesterday, after you mentioned it here – I never would’ve noticed it amongst the thousands of other identikit shows on Netflix otherwise. I wouldn’t say it’s a great show – but I’m glad she’s watching it instead of Peppa Pig toy videos on YouTube now.

I like the snorts! It makes it easier to do impressions. Don’t mind it as much as Morty’s repulsive belches which render that show unwatchable to me

Haha good connection - Rick and Morty definitely took the mantle from Peppa Pig on the curious choice to intersperse bodily noises with dialogue as part of your core aural aesthetic.

Daniel Tiger is not very high on the artistry/creativity scale but the characters all model kindness and are never annoying (ok, the repetitive songs can get annoying). More than a few of the lessons have been great tools in teaching things in our home from emotion regulation to trying new foods to toileting.

“Grownups come back” is a banger.

You’re telling me, i sing it as a bedtime song most nights (by request ofc)

I do like the piano flourish before the final verse.

My kids prefer the extended dance remix

Oh man Daniel Tiger was like a third parent for my kid. Def not meant for adults, but surprisingly effected. Grownups come back for sure. And one about going to the bathroom was big for us.

I still have those songs in my head, "You've got to try new foods cause they might taste good!"

Goo-oo-oo-ood!