Oh, I forgot the Bear in the BigBlue House. The CD was in constant rotation in our car. Some of the tracks had me almost in tears. Then the actor who voiced Luna died, Too sad.
Fascinating topics.
I’m in an odd situation. I’m 61 years old, which means my kid’s television watching years would have been, I guess, in the sixties.
But I grew up without television. Probably a good thing, but when I was a kid, I was the kid with weird parents.
And now I have three small children. The oldest is seven, the youngest twenty months.
And we have a television in our home, and kids naturally will want to watch television shows.
And I have no frame of reference, no experience with kid’s TV. I’m happy letting them watch selected movies (although I have one ironclad rule – no princess crap). But I have a hard time figuring out what television shows are okay for them. I can’t just say “none,” because my wife, who grew up in a normal home ( 
) has no particular issue with kid’s TV, but I’m not that comfortable with some shows she thinks are fine.
But where’s the line? I tend to defer to her, because, as I said, I have no real frame of reference for kid’s TV. Alone among everyone I know, for example, I’ve never seen Sesame Street. Actually, I guess I’m a bit too old for Sesame Street, but you see my point. And I’ve never see Mr. Rogers.
So I don’t have any experience of how children experience television.
My daughter is a mama herself now, but when she was little, I remember watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with new eyes. When my little sister watched it, I thought it was annoying and lame, but with my own daughter, I found it really was an amazing show.
Now, with my granddaughter, there are sooooooo many options, what with all the streaming channels available. Her current favorite is Blaze, and while the idea of talking monster trucks is just a little inane, it actually makes an effort to teach kids, and she interacts with it eagerly. So I can tolerate it, which is still a step away from “like” but way better than “OMG, must you watch that again???”
Bluey is fantastic. Parents of little ones should absolutely check it out.
I think my son must’ve grown up in a golden age of kid’s cartoons. Many of them had quite grown-up themes and dramatic plot lines. They didn’t nerf it all down for kids. By the time my daughter was watching cartoons a few years later, they had all been softened quite a bit.
Some favourites:
- Jimmy Neutron
- CatDog
- Powderpuff Girls
- Fairly Odd Parents
We always loved figuring out Blues Clues!
I suspect there are stoner animators that make kid shows, but really they’re shout outs to stoner college students. Examples include:
Teen Titans Go!
The Amazing World of Gumball
Phineas and Ferb
The Angry Beavers
All fun to watch with plenty of subtle adult humor.
VeggieTales. The songs are really good, and funny.
Zoboomafoo. Awesome show.
I grew up in the 90s and primarily watched Nickelodeon. Watched all the Nicktoons - Doug, Rugrats, Rocko’s Modern Life, The Angry Beavers, CatDog. I also always watched All That every week.
Maybe my favorite show was The Adventures of Pete & Pete. Quite possibly the best show Nick ever made; the episodes are still funny to me as an adult, thanks to all of the subtle jokes they worked in that I never got as a kid.
I also loved watching the DCAU on Fox and the WB; mainly Batman the Animated Series.
This is a YouTube thing, not a TV show proper, but we watch this thing called Hermitcraft as a family and I love it. It’s like this group of people that play Minecraft together. We started watching it because my son was (is) watching all these painfully stupid Minecraft videos, but it’s really different. Most of them are “old” (adult), they are super nice, family friendly, and really, really good at what they do.
I used to make fun of the idea of watching strangers play video games!
I my kids are currently 2 and 5.
The best show from the 5 year old is Princess Elana of Avalore which is a fun action adventure show with a plot that continues though entire seasons. It’s basically like watching Clone Wars.
After that she’s got normal stuff I like: Wild Krats, the Ledgend of the Three Caballeros, and Odd Squad is becoming a favorite.
The two year old mainly watches Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Mick Mouse and the Roadster Racers. The second of which is mildly entertaining. I’ve banned a lot of the shorts that she likes like Mini’s Bow-tique because of long annoying intros that are almost as long as the show.
In general I prefer a lot of the PBS kids stuff to the Disney+ stuff but the kids are the reverse.
My kids grew up in the late 90s / first decade of the 2000s.
There was a Nickelodeon Show called the Backyardigans that was aimed at very young children, but had enough older humor and references that anyone could enjoy it. Also it had a lot of very catchy music.
There was a PBS show called Wishbone which involved a dog who daydreamed about being the lead character in famous works of literature. It was quite well done.
And Arthur on PBS wasn’t too bad either.
Zoboomafoo is great! Weird confession here - I don’t know if there is a thread somewhere for stuff you know isn’t correct but believe it anyway - I somehow got it in my head that the Kratt brothers of Zoboomafoo are related to the Stouffer brothers of Wild America. They aren’t, but every time I see Zoboomafoo, I believe it for about 30 seconds. It should be true.
I couldn’t stand that show. Hated it to the point where I wouldn’t let me kid watch it (because I hated it, not because I was protecting her from something). Every episode seemed to revolve around Ruby being an asshole and then taking credit for something Max did. I’m sure I’m misremembering, it was a long time ago and I rarely watched it.
Anyway, as for what I liked. I was always happy to watch Spongebob (still am, sometimes). I didn’t mind iCarly and I actually kinda liked Kickin’ It and Bunk’d.
And I really liked Lab Rats, specifically the original one with Hal Sparks, but the spin offs were good too (Elite Force and Mighty Med).
If you want to include Girl Meets World in this category, that was another good one.
And The Thundermans, that was a pretty entertaining show.
I…I, um…I sort of own the Christmas specials on DVD. I’ve also never watched them with a child.
Ogh gawd. I did a thread a couple of years ago about how much I hate that little bastard. Luckily my grandson, now 11, outgrew watching him.
Funny thing. This morning my wife and I, for no freaking reason, watched 2 episodes of Full House, which I believe was on prime-time back in the 90’s on ABC(?). It plays just like the teen/pre-teen shows they play on Nickelodeon and NetFlix…
Today’s Special, Mr. Rogers
Anyone remember " The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack"? Utterly demented. I think the creator of the show must have gotten high and watched a lot of Ren and Stimpy when he was younger.
Adventure Time was another wtf cartoon that my kids liked that I’d watch sporadically with them. I was impressed with the sheer nutty imagination involved in coming up with the storylines. I didn’t realize until much later that the kid and his dog were actually supposed to be in a post-apocalyptic world- I thought the kid was just imagining it, like Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh.
We watch Hermitcraft too! My 5 year old wanted to learn about Minecraft, and I stumbled upon it. He doesn’t have nearly enough screen time to watch much, but he loves it. We’re big fans of Scar and StressMonster.
We all have our favorites. I like BDubs and Scar; my son likes the Brits more. I’m vaguely embarrassed how many I follow.