execrable children's programming pox

Yeah, what the fuck, mama kangaroo? YOU EVEN HAVE A HANDY POUCH TO KEEP YOUR YOUNG IN.

But the "...Save the Beetles" ep was choice.

I like the Boinga song from Backyardigans' "Mission to Mars." Bubble Guppies brought some clever lyric writing (like the internal rhymes in "all of the bones that everyone owns / underneath the skin they're in").

Is this 'baby shark' song an actual thing or just something my son has picked up from somewhere?

this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR2o6k8aPlI

this is the one I know and am doomed to have in my head forever:
http://youtu.be/XqZsoesa55w

I'm not actually sure which version he was trying to tell me about ...

1.3 BILLION views

jesus christ

they teach it in day care. its got its own coordinated hand movements and everything

I saw the vid sleeve posted, thought "ahh that's where it comes from". later came to realize that every cheapo kiddie animation factory does this song. so who knows.

we spent some time in Mexico and found out that they do this stuff way better than us

there are a lot of really catchy ones. and not in the same way as "Baby Shark, doo doo doo doo". plus the videos are actually kind of funny. these two crack me up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_c-HVfe4VM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGFOXpgsw1M

My 8yo son mentioned last night about some terrible catchy song kids in his class were singing and asked me to look it up so I found it, or a version of it, on YouTube. It is indeed a terrible catchy song with ok animation but then 55 seconds in a cartoon boy pops up with a handgun, wearing a tshirt that says "Jerk":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xWhG4UU_Y

wtf is that all about? Have I stumbled across one of those sinister kids youtube channels that people were talking about a few months ago?

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...