Child's Play

As a parent of two young boys, and a fledgling teenager, I've seen a lot of kids TV over the last few years, to tell you the truth, probably way too much! In fact, I consider myself somewhat of an afficionado on the subject. The state of media in general, and television in particular, in our society at the present time is so abysmal in my opinion that I find that many kids shows are actually more interesting to watch than a lot of the drivel intended for adults. While I understand that it is recommended that young kids not watch all that much TV, it's pretty tough to be overly restrictive about it, and, I also watched my fair share of TV when I was a kid, and I don't think it ruined me completely (although others might want to debate that)!

I think one of the better kids cable channels is Noggin. There are relatively few ads (almost none), and many of their shows are both entertaining, educational, and just more wholesome than your standard cartoon fare (think Power Rangers). A couple of my favorites on Noggin are "The Backyardigans," and the "Wonder Pets." The Wonder Pets features three classroom pets; a guinea pig (Linny), turtle (Tuck), and duckling (Ming-Ming), who go on adventures saving other animals in trouble. The animation style, "photo-puppetry" is really unique and engaging. There's music, humor, and good lessons for life, but it's done in such a fun and humorous way that it doesn't seem preachy at all. I highly recommend it for pre-schoolers, and be careful, you might like it as much as your kids!

Turning to more "conventional" cartoons, I have to confess to being a Spongebob Squarepants fan. It's gotten an enormous amount of media hype, and the commercialization of the Spongebob 'franchise' has been done to death. In the interests of full disclosure I will here reveal that my trash can at work features a Spongebob basketball hoop! But, the amazing animation and mad-cap nature of the characters still shines through, and for me it captures the best possibilities in cartoon humor. My favorite character in terms of the animation, and overall voice characterization is Mr. Krabs, the middle-aged, cheap-skate, capitalist-pig owner of the Krusty Krab. The eye stalks, stubby little legs, triangular carapace, huge claw/hands, it's all just genius, and the range of wild emotion swings in the voice character just cracks me up. In one particular episode, Krabs falls hard for Mrs. Puff, Songebob's driving instructor. It's a battle between his two great loves, money and Mrs. Puff. "OH Ho Ho, I couldn't help but spend every last cent of me money on her... OH ho ho." If you don't laugh out loud at least once during that episode, then you need to have your funny bone checked. A close second to Krabs is his arch nemesis, Plankton, a one-eyed, pill-shaped, well, piece of plankton, bent on world domination, and the secret Krabby Patty formula. One of his funnier schemes to acquire the formula is his attempt to use a "robot Krabs" to trick Spongebob into giving him the formula. Plankton is finally defeated by the coin-operated self destruct he built into the robot. "Not one of my better ideas." Now there's an understatement.