When I was a kid my favourite show was Mr Rogers. I get the sense that Bluey is the closest we have to that level of energy in a kids show these days. I don’t have children yet but I look after my niece after school and we watch Bluey now and again. Even Bluey completely absorbs her. I can wave my hands in front of her face and she doesn’t notice. I’d like to think that that wasn’t the case with me and Mr Rogers but who knows…
This morning my daughter walked into the living room and started telling me about something that happened to her. She stopped talking mid-sentence when her eye fell on the television that I had forgotten to turn off.
Only after calling her name three times and considerably raising my voice I got her attention again.
The show that was on was... the cooking channel! So the bar for television completely absorbing a child's attention seems quite low :-)
Not an entertaining show to a parent, but Wonderoos is another kids show that has had a positive impact on my 2 children. In each episode a wonderoo identifies a choice has to be made, makes the choice that leads to a worse outcome, and then rewinds to make the right choice. While making the choice they always say, "let's chalk it out", and I've heard my kids say this and then state two choices in their own activities. There is also an episode where a lonely wonderoo at the playground decides between trying to make friends with the other kids or just waiting to see what happens. First they wait, and nothing happens, and then they rewind and go introduce themselves and become friends. One day at the park my shy 4 year old asked me to help her introduce herself to another kiddo. Def she got that from the show!
I don't know about how that show is made, but my guess is that it is more like cocomelon, scientifically tested for efficacy, but with the right intentions set by child development experts.
Bluey is next-level. S-tier television. It’s wholesome, calm, and entertaining. Episodes like Camping, Baby Race, Cricket, and Onesies are all emotional sucker-punches to the adults watching. (My pet theory, which my wife first suggested: Camping is essentially the Star Trek TNG episode Darmok.)
I moved across country and left all my friends behind at the age of 9, The Sign was a hard watch. I was those kids. I can still remember my reaction to being told we were moving (I would have been about 8).
Bluey is a certified work of perfection. My kids have stopped watching it now. I'm tempted to watch them all from the start by myself.
Bluey is much more wholesome than Miraculous. Not a judgement thing, my eldest watches Miraculous too and I don't really have a problem with it. It's just not on the same level as Bluey. A huge plus for parents is also that Bluey is WAY more engaging for adults. Far and away my favourite program to watch with my kids. Some episodes really pull at the heart strings.
Personally, I'm convinced Bluey is covertly a wholesome show for parents, dressed up as a kids' show, but ultimately still for the sake of children by way of 1) encouraging watching together, 2) improving parents' mental health and well-being, which has positive outcomes for their kids, 3) getting parents to be more engaged and imaginative.
Miraculous changes a lot in the later seasons. I'm saying this because while our kids were very much into the first 2 seasons, it was me and my wife who got hooked for the other 3 seasons.
The first 2 seasons are also full of fillers if you want, I don't shy away from skipping them when I'm alone, but we did watch it all with our kids.
We had a good time with it. Not sure if you watched it all, I'm looking forward the next season to see how the plot unravels.
But I'll definitely check Bluey :)
That being said, I wish there was a genre tagged as "engaging for adults, fun for kids": there are a bunch of movies and shows along these lines, but they aren't tagged in any other way.
Another genre that exists but I can't find is "boring for kids but child-friendly", basically any tv show that says stuff they can't properly follow, doesn't have action scenes, but has a convoluted plot for adults. On the top of my mind I can think of Shrinking (my kids still don't understand cursing in english, only italian, so this is great), but I remember there was an even better one that I can't think of right now.
Usually creative work and the arts are judged by their ability to move something inside of us to which you can say that crying is a proxy for that. It's effectively saying it's good art.
I understand your question, and it is hard to describe. Our brains are pattern generators, and it "feels good" to resonate with patterns we've already experienced. Neural circuits create patterns by strengthening connections upon our experience. This is particularly true as we get older and our brains become less plastic. Lesser used patterns become harder to access as they are no longer reinforced as frequently. However, this feels less good for our brains, and we value novelty.
So in the same way that riding a bike after a long time is much harder than it is to ride one when you use it every day, you can generalize this to something like emotions. It is bad to only experience one type of feeling all the time, and variety is good. Having a controlled, relatable medium lead you to experience a less commonly-felt emotion feels good. I don't know if I can explain why--maybe we have mechanisms in our brain for encouraging this novelty--but this is likely why we seek out these emotional experiences.
All emotional reactions are "manipulated" - we choose to expose ourselves to situations wherein we might feel emotional reactions of various sorts. Why is art, "negative" reactions or not, any different?
As another commenter points out, it's a good way of learning - about yourself, how you feel, about other perspectives. It's also, hopefully, a chance to grow - reflect on your past, your mistakes, how you've treated others.
I understand it's very ingrained in our culture at this point that this is a thing people do. But, if I decontextualize enough mentally, it starts to feel quite strange: manipulating one's brain into having a negative emotional reaction.
You’re not being well understood here, but I do this too, and have done — with everything — all my life.
The answer is ultimately that if you deconstruct and logically analyse any particular human activity it either ruins the fun and/or makes you realise how primitive and dark most forms of entertainment are. People like being emotional, for whatever reason.
I like the explanation that says it’s about learning, though. Learning somehow feels intrinsically good.
Bluey is excellence, but I’ve always said Bluey is a kids show for parents.
It’s representation of how the parents behave around, and communicate with, their kids, and the numerous examples of ideas for how to play with your children make the show invaluable to parents.
The fact that kids love it too only reinforces its clever brilliance.
It’s designed by a parent, specifically a dad, and it shows in so many subtle ways.
The way each episode tells you the name of the episode, for example. My kids can name the episode they want by name, which I can search. For other shows, you get a toddler’s description that can itself be a puzzle to interpret.
They’re also short enough that they don’t have to add filler.
> (OJ obviously did it and the other memory I had of that period was this wild Tim Meadows SNL opening bit about the trial).
This is from further down the page, but it reminded me: when the not guilty news broke, Norm MacDonald, who hosted SNL's fake news bit at the time, and had been constantly making OJ jokes about how obviously guilty he was, opened with the line, "Murder is legal in the state of California."[0] Perfect.
Other than cuts every 2-3 seconds to keep engaged in Cocomelon, also notice that CAMERA NEVER STOPS, ever. Every scene you see it's moving. It could be a slight movement or exaggerated one, but it's never stationary.
Blueys great, my kid loses his shit when the shows on. Its also interesting seeing a female character marketed to kids as a segment rather than just young girls which isnt that common.
My son is still under 2, so he prefers other low intensity shows like Mini Kids and Night Garden. The way he gets into Mini Kids is insane, I havent seen cocomelon but I am betting he would get drawn too far into that. Mini Kids sounds like the antidote to cocomelon, no fast cuts, slow music, and mostly just toddlers interacting with toys and each other on television.
Cocomelon just phones it in. Almost all of their songs have some similar catchy intro leading into the song. Sometimes the intro is the same across different songs. Recently, my kid got into the song "Bicycle Built for Two (Daisy Bell)". I grew up listening to Disney Children's Favorites sung by Larry Groce, who sings it expressively and dynamically. Cocomelon's interpretation is just flat and conservative, as if it's a chore to get through.
The Rain episode is pretty cool too. It has almost no words apart from the goodbye at start. The good thing about bluey is that it teaches kids to do mischievous things and gives you ideas to do fun activities with kids.
My wife and I have a daughter in the demographic of these shows, though she's a little young for Bluey. There's a YouTube (and now Netflix) show called Ms. Rachel for a younger audience that I'd put in the same positive category as Bluey.
We probably watch one or two hours of Ms. Rachel videos a day with our daughter. We've got several family friends with a household rule of "no screens at all for kids" who would scoff at that but their rule seems both draconian and technophobic to me. Our daughter has picked up many words and concepts from the show and we've learned a lot of the songs as a family and sing them when the context comes up (ex: "baby put your pants on..."). Ms. Rachel has been a hugely positive parenting tool for us.
Every once in a while, though, YouTube will try to autoplay some Cocomelon after a Ms. Rachel video and wow it's just absolute garbage. I think this article captures it well: it feels like slop engineered to keep young eyeballs glued to the screen with no higher purpose than increasing the number of engaged minutes.
Instead of "no screens," the more granular "you can choose from this menu of approved content on your screen for a reasonable amount of time per day" is the better parenting move for our family.
I gave that a test viewing when my child was at that show's age bracket, but I instantly hated it. Over the top slapstick humour, where destroying someone else's things is seen as OK. Not Cocomelon bad, but nothing much to redeem it either.
Great article. Insane that this kind of anti-social kid-numbing garbage production line is not only allowed to exist in our society but also very well rewarded. This is another symptom of our deeply sick world, in which financial success is completely decorrelated from having any kind of positive impact on the world.
I like Bluey but couldn't get my young one to sit through it for a nebulizer. Cocomelon did the trick and I'm very thankful for them for that. Honestly, I don't think it's as garbage as everyone makes it out to be. It's hard trying to find video-form nursery rhymes that aren't weird out there. They have that done well. I really like Bluey but I feel like it's for a much older crowd.
"I won’t pretend like I haven’t stuck an iPad in front of my son and let him watch Cocomelon or Blippi so I could get some work done. Guilty as charged.„
So far we've managed to keep our 2 and a bit year old's tv diet to Bluey, Hey Duggee (a bit crack-y but he loves it and it is still crafted and quite tounge-cheek-funny), Trash Truck (a very calm, sedate one on Netflix, useful if you're travelling and can't get CBeebies) and Down on the Farm (a Cbeebies show where kids do stuff on a farm). Occasionally Kiri and Lou too. And some sports sometimes (football, rugby, cycling, F1). I love the sports as it's distracting but he also doesn't care that much and loses interest. Can be enough to get a break but he won't binge like Duggee or Bluey.
Yes, lucky we're in the UK so have CBeebies available, but there's no reason to not screen and curate your kids media diet. I don't understand people who just let their toddlers consume crap on YT.
Hey Duggee is lovely. The imagery is on the vivid and trippy side, but the voice acting is top-notch with creative stories. Most importantly, it lacks the deliberate tweaking for engagement Cocomelon does.
At six my son currently has one Bluey episode (in English, simply to emerse him in another language he will pick up in any case later on) and one Shaun the Sheep after school (that's a combined twenty minutes or so). Shaun hits the exact spot in terms of humour for six year olds, and is brilliant with none of the characters actually speaking.
I don’t understand the negative talk about Cocomelon. Kids learn a lot through songs. Cocomelon is full of songs. My son enjoys singing many of them. I’m happy with this.
I’ve never let my kids watch cocomelon (or much screen time at all).
But we do listen to cocomelon. It has some legitimately well done music IMO. For example “over the river and through the woods”.
The show’s popularity has led to some people buying Blue Heelers as a pet for their kids… which will probably backfire because they aren’t meant to be house dogs
(Blue Heelers need an insane amount of exercise and can be pretty aggressive)
Heelers will demand four hours of an aerodynamic throwing stick tossed the length of a football field and back and then want a 5km run to the beach to cool down.
Failure to deliver can result in the destruction of everything you love.
Yeah, owned one for 12 years and she was potentially nippy to anyone she didn't know from puppyhood. Was ball-obsessed, broke a lot of stuff and hated anyone wearing hi-vis.
Her destructiveness though was nothing on a German Shepherd.
My 3 legged heeler can still run laps around me. But if you can keep them busy, they are very loyal and can understand a crazy amount of words/signs. My previous heeler went deaf and still obeyed perfectly by watching signs and body language. Incredible dogs.
I found Ezra Klein's chat with Jia Tolentino about Cocomelon and Bluey ... and parenting, zen, hallucinogens, attention and more ... one of the most deeply interesting things I have heard in the last year.
I've been in the bluey house. It is approximately 8600ft (800m sq). The work-life balance that the family has doesn't seem particularly odd when it comes to Australian households.
I've noticed that the best shows usually have two layers, allowing two otherwise incompatible audiences to share the same experience. This is also why old South Park episodes were so fun: it was fart and poop jokes, but it was also some societal commentary.
why bluey or cocomelon? mister rogers is chronically untalked about for kids content in 2025.
its an incredible show and deeply enriching for both me and my little one. we’ve given our two year old very limited screen time with mister rogers and, since, they’ve taken up great fondness to making believe, we talk about characters and situations on the show regularly, and they naturally separate themselves from the screen after a while.
I’ve been very strict about exposure and screen time but mister rogers has been a blessing and provided me great relief for an hour a day.
The jazz aspect of the show
completely flew over my head when i was a child but it’s brilliance shines now that i listen as an adult. No two shows are played the same. Costa and his band are constantly riffing. The show is honestly a f-ing incredible work of art.
I think the author chose these two shows as a comparison because they were created in roughly the same time period, so they're more directly comparable. Mister Rogers was created in a different era, with different media environment, funding and monetization strategy, and functionally in a different medium.
Daniel Tiger (Mr Rogers spinoff/remake/???) is really quite good as well. They did well at preserving the idea of the original in a very different format.
There is no need for explicit, spelled out lessons. Also conflicts can arise externally, and flawless people can solve them. That still can be an example, can't it.
Also Bluey indeed bullies their father. He acts like he hates it every time, but based on how Chilli escapes most of the time, they must really hate it. I don't remember Bluey called out for that, only rewarded.
Once you realize that 70% of the shows are basically “Dad distracts the kids after work so Mom can get dinner ready” or similar, it makes sense. Bandit lays down the law when he needs to, but most of the time he’s just playing.
You’ll notice that he’s much more concerned with how Bluey plays with Bingo than he is with how she plays with him. He’s big, he can take it.
Faceytime is a good example of “kid is naughty and gets in actual trouble”.
When I was a kid my favourite show was Mr Rogers. I get the sense that Bluey is the closest we have to that level of energy in a kids show these days. I don’t have children yet but I look after my niece after school and we watch Bluey now and again. Even Bluey completely absorbs her. I can wave my hands in front of her face and she doesn’t notice. I’d like to think that that wasn’t the case with me and Mr Rogers but who knows…
This morning my daughter walked into the living room and started telling me about something that happened to her. She stopped talking mid-sentence when her eye fell on the television that I had forgotten to turn off.
Only after calling her name three times and considerably raising my voice I got her attention again.
The show that was on was... the cooking channel! So the bar for television completely absorbing a child's attention seems quite low :-)
Not an entertaining show to a parent, but Wonderoos is another kids show that has had a positive impact on my 2 children. In each episode a wonderoo identifies a choice has to be made, makes the choice that leads to a worse outcome, and then rewinds to make the right choice. While making the choice they always say, "let's chalk it out", and I've heard my kids say this and then state two choices in their own activities. There is also an episode where a lonely wonderoo at the playground decides between trying to make friends with the other kids or just waiting to see what happens. First they wait, and nothing happens, and then they rewind and go introduce themselves and become friends. One day at the park my shy 4 year old asked me to help her introduce herself to another kiddo. Def she got that from the show!
I don't know about how that show is made, but my guess is that it is more like cocomelon, scientifically tested for efficacy, but with the right intentions set by child development experts.
Well, I was horrified the first time I saw the Cocomelon and was unsettled as a dad. This article explains why.
I need to check Bluey, we watched Miraculous, tales of Ladybug with our kids and enjoyed it (the plot is for adults).
There is a whole bunch of "junk food" in both tv and videogames (those were you win no matter what). I'm hoping things get better.
Bluey is next-level. S-tier television. It’s wholesome, calm, and entertaining. Episodes like Camping, Baby Race, Cricket, and Onesies are all emotional sucker-punches to the adults watching. (My pet theory, which my wife first suggested: Camping is essentially the Star Trek TNG episode Darmok.)
The newer Bluey episode "The Sign" made me ugly cry.
I moved across country and left all my friends behind at the age of 9, The Sign was a hard watch. I was those kids. I can still remember my reaction to being told we were moving (I would have been about 8).
Bluey is a certified work of perfection. My kids have stopped watching it now. I'm tempted to watch them all from the start by myself.
I felt a lump in my throat as it came to mind while I drove around today with my 4yo son in the back, thinking about how to give him a “good life”.
Let's not even mention Rug Island, the device in reading on is not nearly waterproof enough for the rain of tears it provokes!
Bluey is much more wholesome than Miraculous. Not a judgement thing, my eldest watches Miraculous too and I don't really have a problem with it. It's just not on the same level as Bluey. A huge plus for parents is also that Bluey is WAY more engaging for adults. Far and away my favourite program to watch with my kids. Some episodes really pull at the heart strings.
Going into parenthood I never thought I'd say it about a kids show but Bluey has damn near made me cry and Bandit makes me strive to be a better dad
Personally, I'm convinced Bluey is covertly a wholesome show for parents, dressed up as a kids' show, but ultimately still for the sake of children by way of 1) encouraging watching together, 2) improving parents' mental health and well-being, which has positive outcomes for their kids, 3) getting parents to be more engaged and imaginative.
Miraculous changes a lot in the later seasons. I'm saying this because while our kids were very much into the first 2 seasons, it was me and my wife who got hooked for the other 3 seasons. The first 2 seasons are also full of fillers if you want, I don't shy away from skipping them when I'm alone, but we did watch it all with our kids.
We had a good time with it. Not sure if you watched it all, I'm looking forward the next season to see how the plot unravels.
But I'll definitely check Bluey :)
That being said, I wish there was a genre tagged as "engaging for adults, fun for kids": there are a bunch of movies and shows along these lines, but they aren't tagged in any other way.
Another genre that exists but I can't find is "boring for kids but child-friendly", basically any tv show that says stuff they can't properly follow, doesn't have action scenes, but has a convoluted plot for adults. On the top of my mind I can think of Shrinking (my kids still don't understand cursing in english, only italian, so this is great), but I remember there was an even better one that I can't think of right now.
I cannot recommend Bluey enough. It’s made me, a 40 year old father of one, ugly cry. And I’m not one to cry from watching a show.
If you hate Cocomelon like me, you’ll love Bluey. It’s like the polar opposite of it.
Can you help me understand why you feel that a show inducing ugly crying is desirable?
Better to point you to the vast corpus out there rather than try to rehash it:
https://www.britannica.com/art/catharsis-criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1965_num_43_1_2556
Usually creative work and the arts are judged by their ability to move something inside of us to which you can say that crying is a proxy for that. It's effectively saying it's good art.
Right, that's a bit circular though. It isn't a law of nature that humans should do anything that is considered "good art".
Why do we want to synthetically manipulate our brains into an emotional reaction, especially in the case of a negative emotion?
I understand your question, and it is hard to describe. Our brains are pattern generators, and it "feels good" to resonate with patterns we've already experienced. Neural circuits create patterns by strengthening connections upon our experience. This is particularly true as we get older and our brains become less plastic. Lesser used patterns become harder to access as they are no longer reinforced as frequently. However, this feels less good for our brains, and we value novelty.
So in the same way that riding a bike after a long time is much harder than it is to ride one when you use it every day, you can generalize this to something like emotions. It is bad to only experience one type of feeling all the time, and variety is good. Having a controlled, relatable medium lead you to experience a less commonly-felt emotion feels good. I don't know if I can explain why--maybe we have mechanisms in our brain for encouraging this novelty--but this is likely why we seek out these emotional experiences.
there are many things in life which cause crying which are not negative.
crying is absolutely not limited to “a negative emotion.”
if you’re struggling to imagine a crying situation that isn’t negative, i would heavily encourage you to indulge in more art.
Because it is a form of learning.
Also ugly crying is not always a negative reaction. It's empathy which is important to our survival (and also wonderful).
All emotional reactions are "manipulated" - we choose to expose ourselves to situations wherein we might feel emotional reactions of various sorts. Why is art, "negative" reactions or not, any different?
As another commenter points out, it's a good way of learning - about yourself, how you feel, about other perspectives. It's also, hopefully, a chance to grow - reflect on your past, your mistakes, how you've treated others.
The appeal is in the strong emotions which it induces. The crying is a side effect of this, not the appealing factor in itself.
Is this a serious question?
Completely serious.
I understand it's very ingrained in our culture at this point that this is a thing people do. But, if I decontextualize enough mentally, it starts to feel quite strange: manipulating one's brain into having a negative emotional reaction.
You’re not being well understood here, but I do this too, and have done — with everything — all my life.
The answer is ultimately that if you deconstruct and logically analyse any particular human activity it either ruins the fun and/or makes you realise how primitive and dark most forms of entertainment are. People like being emotional, for whatever reason.
I like the explanation that says it’s about learning, though. Learning somehow feels intrinsically good.
That’s where the confusion is; it’s not a negative reaction. It’s an intense emotional reaction, sure, but not inherently negative or bad.
Bluey is phenomenally good. Dance mode? Tears.
Along with Bluey, Gabby's Dollhouse is pretty good. It’s not over stimulating and it’s interactive.
If you're in Australia, there's a live Gabby's Dollhouse theatre show on at the moment that's also very good: https://gabbysdollhouselive.com/
Tumble Leaf. Slumberkins.
Bluey is excellence, but I’ve always said Bluey is a kids show for parents.
It’s representation of how the parents behave around, and communicate with, their kids, and the numerous examples of ideas for how to play with your children make the show invaluable to parents.
The fact that kids love it too only reinforces its clever brilliance.
It’s designed by a parent, specifically a dad, and it shows in so many subtle ways.
The way each episode tells you the name of the episode, for example. My kids can name the episode they want by name, which I can search. For other shows, you get a toddler’s description that can itself be a puzzle to interpret.
They’re also short enough that they don’t have to add filler.
> (OJ obviously did it and the other memory I had of that period was this wild Tim Meadows SNL opening bit about the trial).
This is from further down the page, but it reminded me: when the not guilty news broke, Norm MacDonald, who hosted SNL's fake news bit at the time, and had been constantly making OJ jokes about how obviously guilty he was, opened with the line, "Murder is legal in the state of California."[0] Perfect.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CR8u-2TKb0
Other than cuts every 2-3 seconds to keep engaged in Cocomelon, also notice that CAMERA NEVER STOPS, ever. Every scene you see it's moving. It could be a slight movement or exaggerated one, but it's never stationary.
Blueys great, my kid loses his shit when the shows on. Its also interesting seeing a female character marketed to kids as a segment rather than just young girls which isnt that common.
My son is still under 2, so he prefers other low intensity shows like Mini Kids and Night Garden. The way he gets into Mini Kids is insane, I havent seen cocomelon but I am betting he would get drawn too far into that. Mini Kids sounds like the antidote to cocomelon, no fast cuts, slow music, and mostly just toddlers interacting with toys and each other on television.
Bluey has the advantages of being dogs - Bandit and Bluey are identical except in size.
They’re also short episodes so they don’t feel too involved.
Cocomelon just phones it in. Almost all of their songs have some similar catchy intro leading into the song. Sometimes the intro is the same across different songs. Recently, my kid got into the song "Bicycle Built for Two (Daisy Bell)". I grew up listening to Disney Children's Favorites sung by Larry Groce, who sings it expressively and dynamically. Cocomelon's interpretation is just flat and conservative, as if it's a chore to get through.
It's crack for kids.
Watching the Cricket episode made me tear up. https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-3/cricket/
The Rain episode is pretty cool too. It has almost no words apart from the goodbye at start. The good thing about bluey is that it teaches kids to do mischievous things and gives you ideas to do fun activities with kids.
https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-3/rain/
Cricket took out Sleepytime as my favorite.
> The confusion stemmed from the fact that Brumm had originally planned to create an R-rated version of Peppa Pig.
I’m scared. Very scared.
My wife and I have a daughter in the demographic of these shows, though she's a little young for Bluey. There's a YouTube (and now Netflix) show called Ms. Rachel for a younger audience that I'd put in the same positive category as Bluey.
We probably watch one or two hours of Ms. Rachel videos a day with our daughter. We've got several family friends with a household rule of "no screens at all for kids" who would scoff at that but their rule seems both draconian and technophobic to me. Our daughter has picked up many words and concepts from the show and we've learned a lot of the songs as a family and sing them when the context comes up (ex: "baby put your pants on..."). Ms. Rachel has been a hugely positive parenting tool for us.
Every once in a while, though, YouTube will try to autoplay some Cocomelon after a Ms. Rachel video and wow it's just absolute garbage. I think this article captures it well: it feels like slop engineered to keep young eyeballs glued to the screen with no higher purpose than increasing the number of engaged minutes.
Instead of "no screens," the more granular "you can choose from this menu of approved content on your screen for a reasonable amount of time per day" is the better parenting move for our family.
When your daughter gets a little older I’d recommend checking out Gabby’s Dollhouse.
I heard awful things about Cocomelon. My 17-months-old doesn't watch TV much, but when she does it's usually old Soviet cartoons lol.
Not exactly Soviet, but Marsha and the Bear is awesome… and wholesome.
I gave that a test viewing when my child was at that show's age bracket, but I instantly hated it. Over the top slapstick humour, where destroying someone else's things is seen as OK. Not Cocomelon bad, but nothing much to redeem it either.
My children both love nupogodi and the animated Hungarian folk tales
https://youtu.be/nEQHiJVH79o?si=9jYbM6ZSDEQ7QHSq
This quote:
The 153rd episode is scheduled for April 14 and many believe that it will be the end of the show in its current form (more on this later).
Measurably increased my stress level ... :(
The article is from the past, all three series are available on DVD.
The last episode is great on an almost Pixar level - there’s three separate stories happening and kids will only really pick up on one and a half.
Great article. Insane that this kind of anti-social kid-numbing garbage production line is not only allowed to exist in our society but also very well rewarded. This is another symptom of our deeply sick world, in which financial success is completely decorrelated from having any kind of positive impact on the world.
I like Bluey but couldn't get my young one to sit through it for a nebulizer. Cocomelon did the trick and I'm very thankful for them for that. Honestly, I don't think it's as garbage as everyone makes it out to be. It's hard trying to find video-form nursery rhymes that aren't weird out there. They have that done well. I really like Bluey but I feel like it's for a much older crowd.
Young children don't sit still naturally. Your observation tells me that Cocomelon is overly stimulating, and I think that's what makes it garbage.
I want to be clear that I'm not blaming you, you needed a tool to get your child to sit still for an important reason, and I've done the same.
Correct. Try Ms Rachel for your younger child instead of Cocomelon. The very young ones tend to love her.
I watched a few episode of Bluey and I feel they are really great for parents. So great that I think they are meant for parents, not children...
Healthy, emotionally secure parents raise good kids. "Put your own mask on before helping others..."
"I won’t pretend like I haven’t stuck an iPad in front of my son and let him watch Cocomelon or Blippi so I could get some work done. Guilty as charged.„
So far we've managed to keep our 2 and a bit year old's tv diet to Bluey, Hey Duggee (a bit crack-y but he loves it and it is still crafted and quite tounge-cheek-funny), Trash Truck (a very calm, sedate one on Netflix, useful if you're travelling and can't get CBeebies) and Down on the Farm (a Cbeebies show where kids do stuff on a farm). Occasionally Kiri and Lou too. And some sports sometimes (football, rugby, cycling, F1). I love the sports as it's distracting but he also doesn't care that much and loses interest. Can be enough to get a break but he won't binge like Duggee or Bluey.
Yes, lucky we're in the UK so have CBeebies available, but there's no reason to not screen and curate your kids media diet. I don't understand people who just let their toddlers consume crap on YT.
Hey Duggee is lovely. The imagery is on the vivid and trippy side, but the voice acting is top-notch with creative stories. Most importantly, it lacks the deliberate tweaking for engagement Cocomelon does.
At six my son currently has one Bluey episode (in English, simply to emerse him in another language he will pick up in any case later on) and one Shaun the Sheep after school (that's a combined twenty minutes or so). Shaun hits the exact spot in terms of humour for six year olds, and is brilliant with none of the characters actually speaking.
He rags on the Distractatron but that’s the exact method that Sesame Street started out using early on (if Malcolm Gladwell is to be believed).
Yes Sesame Street was a blend of care and craftsmanship along with research & testing.
I don’t understand the negative talk about Cocomelon. Kids learn a lot through songs. Cocomelon is full of songs. My son enjoys singing many of them. I’m happy with this.
Pretty sure that's why the author wrote that blog post
I’ve never let my kids watch cocomelon (or much screen time at all). But we do listen to cocomelon. It has some legitimately well done music IMO. For example “over the river and through the woods”.
I recommend the band They Might Be Giant's kids songs (some with great animated videos). Super catchy, fun and vaguely educational.
Especially the albums Here come the 1, 2, 3s and Here Comes Science.
Note _Well_
Heelers will demand four hours of an aerodynamic throwing stick tossed the length of a football field and back and then want a 5km run to the beach to cool down.Failure to deliver can result in the destruction of everything you love.
Yeah, owned one for 12 years and she was potentially nippy to anyone she didn't know from puppyhood. Was ball-obsessed, broke a lot of stuff and hated anyone wearing hi-vis.
Her destructiveness though was nothing on a German Shepherd.
My 3 legged heeler can still run laps around me. But if you can keep them busy, they are very loyal and can understand a crazy amount of words/signs. My previous heeler went deaf and still obeyed perfectly by watching signs and body language. Incredible dogs.
Let's not forget the musical side of Bluey.
And I don't mean just the OST (there are 3 albums), Bluey can also serve to introduction your kids to a wide range of classical music.
https://blueypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Classical_Music_in_Bluey
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lXnsxg2AOj6QASadNBYcN (Spotify's Bluey classical music playlist.
Burger dog! Bur-Bur-Burger dog! He has Pickles and he has cheese!
I found Ezra Klein's chat with Jia Tolentino about Cocomelon and Bluey ... and parenting, zen, hallucinogens, attention and more ... one of the most deeply interesting things I have heard in the last year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
It's available "where you get your podcasts" (though might be old enough now to not be after the NYT added a paywall for old audio material)
Bluey is about a family living in a 8000 ft mansion, with lots of spare time.
I think it is influenced by the Flintstones, a little bit.
The house size seems to be more “tv magic” than an actual defined house of infinite size.
The upstairs hallway is sometimes a normal short one, and other times is long enough to land a space shuttle.
I've been in the bluey house. It is approximately 8600ft (800m sq). The work-life balance that the family has doesn't seem particularly odd when it comes to Australian households.
I've noticed that the best shows usually have two layers, allowing two otherwise incompatible audiences to share the same experience. This is also why old South Park episodes were so fun: it was fart and poop jokes, but it was also some societal commentary.
why bluey or cocomelon? mister rogers is chronically untalked about for kids content in 2025.
its an incredible show and deeply enriching for both me and my little one. we’ve given our two year old very limited screen time with mister rogers and, since, they’ve taken up great fondness to making believe, we talk about characters and situations on the show regularly, and they naturally separate themselves from the screen after a while.
I’ve been very strict about exposure and screen time but mister rogers has been a blessing and provided me great relief for an hour a day.
The jazz aspect of the show completely flew over my head when i was a child but it’s brilliance shines now that i listen as an adult. No two shows are played the same. Costa and his band are constantly riffing. The show is honestly a f-ing incredible work of art.
I think the author chose these two shows as a comparison because they were created in roughly the same time period, so they're more directly comparable. Mister Rogers was created in a different era, with different media environment, funding and monetization strategy, and functionally in a different medium.
Daniel Tiger (Mr Rogers spinoff/remake/???) is really quite good as well. They did well at preserving the idea of the original in a very different format.
I had to block this one in my house. Daniel is whiny and my kid started mimicking it, otherwise I think it's good
Nobody is as whiny as Caillou.
Lol, yeah I had been pre-warned about that one and have avoided it entirely for my kid's >6 years
Mr Rogers was a different show for sure.
And he had a specific use of language that was incredibly deep and mindful unlike Daniel Tiger.
cocomelon i like
Bluey is a little brat to her parents that is totally unnecessary.
Bluey is flawed and often in the wrong, that is kind of the point of her character.
It’s an OK show for children, but a really good show for parents.
If you want children shows that are actually educational and fun, I usually recommend PBS Kids.
I’d wager you don’t have children, at least not high-energy ones. Or maybe you’re thinking of Muffin.
How do you model the character learning lessons if they’re already perfect?
There is no need for explicit, spelled out lessons. Also conflicts can arise externally, and flawless people can solve them. That still can be an example, can't it.
Also Bluey indeed bullies their father. He acts like he hates it every time, but based on how Chilli escapes most of the time, they must really hate it. I don't remember Bluey called out for that, only rewarded.
Once you realize that 70% of the shows are basically “Dad distracts the kids after work so Mom can get dinner ready” or similar, it makes sense. Bandit lays down the law when he needs to, but most of the time he’s just playing.
You’ll notice that he’s much more concerned with how Bluey plays with Bingo than he is with how she plays with him. He’s big, he can take it.
Faceytime is a good example of “kid is naughty and gets in actual trouble”.
You're getting a lot of downvotes, but you're right, Bluey can be quite cruel when playing with her dad.