what the hell happened to kids shows?
Being a parent, I've started to get reacquainted with kids shows. I noticed however that kids shows being made today kinda blow. Especially when compared to the kids shows from when I was younger.
When I was about my daughter's age, we had shows like Blue's Clues (hosted by the legend Steve Burns), The Wiggles (with Greg, Anthony, Murray, and Jeff), Bear in the Big Blue House, Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, etc. All of these shows had a variety of art styles, communication styles to children, and production qualities.
Nowadays, we have seemingly have the same cookie-cutter, low-effort, 3D animated kids shows which all seem to copy off each other. They all seem to have the same big-eyed, tiny body art styles that are either a kidified version of various IPs like Spiderman or other Disney Properties, or anthropomorphized house pets doing.... something. And don't even get me fucking started on that baby crack that is Cocomelon.
The only ones that stray from this formula are ones that have been around for generations like Sesame Street. However many of these rehashings of old kids shows are basically bastardizations of what these kids shows used to be (seriously what the fuck did they do to Barney?).
Using The Wiggles as an example, they are a completely different cast now. They rely on a lot of nursery rhymes or songs that were written during the time of the OG 4, rather than actual new songs. They all have talent oozing out of their ears don't get me wrong (with one of them, Tsehay Hawkins, being a 4x Salsa champion), but I feel like they lost the plot a bit. The OG Wiggles weren't dancers, so the dancing was simple, which made it A LOT easier for uncoordinated children to follow along. This is a criticism I've seen a lot of online. My daughter far and away prefers original wiggles to the new one. Always yelling "NO! NO! NO!" when they come up.
Looking at Bear in the Big Blue House, this was a show produced by the Jim Henson company. Which you can always guarantee great puppeteering. The music, with lots of big band/jazz elements in it, feels like it actually had put effort into it.
You might think I'm just nostalgia blind, but a lot of these shows I didn't really grow up with, especially not the OG Wiggles. So, understand this isn't just some aging zoomer looking at his childhood through rose-tinted goggles.
It really seems that shows made for kids these days treat them like idiots and put the bare minimum effort into it, just try and make them as addicted to the show as possible, or (in the case of Cocomelon) both.
I also feel like kids shows are at their best when both parents and kids get into it. That's why shows like Bluey is such a huge hit. They're also at their best when they don't talk down to kids like they're bumbling morons. That last point isn't exclusive to modern kids shows, I feel like Dora fell into this camp too. It's just now every show is this sorta dumbed-down iSpy.
Speaking of iSpy, I grew up watching the show as a kid too. When was the last time you saw a kids show being produced that was stop motion? Or hell any show/movie? The most recent one I can think of is Fantastic Mr Fox.
I feel like there is so much that can be done with 3D animation, but we are stuck with the same regurgitated BS being shoveled out. Bluey is technically 3D animated, so why the hell are we stuck with every show looking like those bug-eyed Ty toys.
The songs are so low effort too, it's just "Show Name! Show Name! Something something something Show Name!". They're uninteresting both rhythmically and lyrically. You wanna know what song my daughter asks me to sing to her all the time? The Goodnight Song from Bear in the Big Blue House, and "6 Months in a Leaky Boat" from It's a Wiggly Wiggly World. She also memorized the dance and lyrics to "Blow Me Down" from the same special.
I'm just saying, kids deserve better.
This is a criticism that has long been harbored against kids games even from when I was a kid. You had a grab bag of really fun kids games that even adults could get behind or you had whatever popular IP shovelware the parent company passed off.
So, my daughter is mostly watching older shows. Bear in the Big Blue House is her current favorite next to the OG Wiggles. She used to dig Pupstruction, but she dropped that one like a bag of hammers when she got introduced to the Wiggles. I'll try to introduce her to more shows as she gets older, but for now these are her favorite 2.
Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com
as of writing this...
I'm watching Bear in the Big Blue House with my daughter on the couch in the living room. I spent some time trying to find the entire show's run online since my family and I aren't paying for Disney+ anymore. I'll be putting her down for a nap soon and then going and playing some Skyrim.