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PAW Patrol
2013 · TV series · 14 seasons
Created by Keith Chapman
Marshall, Rocky, Rubble, Zuma and Skye are doing their best to protect the people of their town. Led by Ryder, a tech-savvy 10-year-old boy, each of them is equipped with special equipment and together they help anyone who finds themselves in trouble. No task is too big for them and no puppy is too small.
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48 comments on Hacker News
It's actually quite good for a publication that rarely publishes good content. I'd rate it near the top of everything I've ever seen in The Economist.
Near the end of the article, there's this blurb:
To understand the deep meaning of “Paw Patrol”, the best tool may not be ideology but psychoanalysis. One of its tenets is that many children want desperately to heal their parents, partly for their own well-being, sometimes taking on parental roles themselves.
In plain text, Paw_Patrol's main feature is depicting adults (and all parents) as astonishingly dumb, they have no intelligence whatsoever, they behave like helpless toddlers to be saved and directed by the all-knowing children.
This setup destroys children's minds, turns them against their parents, removes any semblance of parental authority and makes the child an easy prey of scams and propaganda.
90% of movies aren't shown at cinemas. 90% of movies are for home consumption. 90% of movies are Paw Patrol or some low rent action filler for Primes catalogue.
> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones.
I think this is not the right explanation.
If you look say 500 years in the past, people definitely could not guarantee their children's lives would be good ones. In many (most?) cases, it was almost certain the children's lives would not be very good. Yet people had lots of kids.
Perhaps people just have better things to do these days than incessantly change the nappies, suffer from lack of sleep and time for basic self-care, constantly argue about how the cheese was cut the wrong way and whether we're watching another episode of paw patrol?
> And to say nothing of the shoddy quality of their TV shows. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse's lazy CG animation and unimaginative storytelling is shocking given Mickey is supposed to be their signature character.
≤4-year-olds do not care: there's bright colours and motion, and some semblance of story. The point is not to give some kind of lesson, but to distract/entertain (and probably release dopamine). See also Paw Patrol, Spidey Amazing Friends, PJ Masks, etc. None of these seem to have made any attempt at having a 'layer' that appeals to adults.
In some ways I equate this animation style with the algorithmic social media system: meant for 'quick hits'.
Contrast with (e.g.) Bluey.
If Disney could throw concepts at their properties like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or Paw Patrol or any of their other CG shovel content (which my kid loves, of course) and have a new episode every day of the year, they would, and this lets them do that without employing the staff to make that happen. If all it took was a writer to put a pitch together and Sora to turn out an episode, that'd be a steal for $1B.
"My son Levi, much to my frustration, has never been a big TV kid. For years, I’d put on an episode of Paw Patrol or a newish Disney movie, but nothing seemed to stick. Either he’d come to me halfway through to report he was bored or he’d be entertained enough to finish but would never request a second viewing or talk about it afterward."
I wonder if in 30 years people will say the same about their kids and social media.
"My son Levi, much to my frustration, has never been a big TikTok kid"
Sounds strange, doesn't it. It is also strange how fast we forget. Forget how TV used to be demonized in a similar fashion than social media is today.
While I agree to an extent, I also just think it's also documenting life as we all know it as both parents and children. Albeit in it's own clever storytelling and excellent animation way. The fact this is somewhat novel should probably be odd, but just points to the fact that adults have been "creating children shows" instead of just showing them what childhood looks like, stuff they can relate with, stuff parents can related with, it's all relatable because it's so - real. It's basically animated reality TV in a way and we all know how novel that seemed when it started.
When I learned that some of my favorite TV shows of my childhood were only made to sell toys, it was kind of shattering, but then I see it in everything now. Paw Patrol find a dinosaur land - aka - you need to buy your kid 8 new vehicles and the new dino characters, up next, Paw Patrol goes to space! Adults making TV shows always have a weird ulterior motive and the programming tends to reflect it.
Bluey is easily the best children's TV. I mean I'd barely class it as children's TV; it's good by adult standards.
It's a bit annoying really because there isn't anything else like it at all. I would say the closest things are Pixar films which manage to appeal to adults and children. I'm not aware of any TV like that though. Apart from Bluey we're stuck with trash like Paw Patrol, Bing, Blippi, etc.
There are a small number that are not extremely annoying, but you still wouldn't actually want to watch them: Gabby's Dollhouse, Puffin Island, maybe Hey Duggee.
Related:
PAW Patrol's Dark Secret, Explained - Skip Intro
> PAW Patrol is a TV show for kids. It's very popular, so we might as well ask: "What vision of policing does it suggest?" PAW Patrol is also a very bad TV show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0
> I'm wondering if I should actually try watching a couple of the episodes mentioned here.
Yes you absolutely should. One of the things I really like about the show is it promotes imaginative play. It addresses things like how to deal with being bored. Shows like paw patrol and stuff have zero imaginative anything. It's one of the things I love about Bluey.
> Are cartoon physics insulting kids intelligence?
dclowd9901 already said the issue is when it's "just lazy storytelling". Pixar shows you can tell great stories with cartoon physics.
You don't eat only sugar. You don't eat only carbs. You don't eat only protein. Your body needs a mix.
Many people want their kids to have a healthy diet. Saying Nutella is a "sometimes food" is not the same as saying Nutella is "bad", or that it's a "never food."
Tom & Jerry is a sometimes food. Other shows exercise a different range of critical skills.
I was gobsmaked when I saw a clip from Mr. Rogers where Daniel Striped Tiger asks Lady Aberlin "What does assassination mean?", in a special episode created after the assassination of RFK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQv0ZtpRdNk And Mr. Rogers could tackle racism head-on, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4recJ6qXyk in an era when blacks were prohibited or physically attacked for trying to go to "white" pools.
Bluey could take on these sorts of topics for kids, in an age appropriate way. Tom&Jerry could not.
Nor could Blippi, so it's not just cartoon physics that's the issue.
But Mr. Rogers couldn't pull off the classic "coyote paints a picture in a wall, Road Runner enters the picture and speeds off into the distance, coyote tries and crashes into the wall" gag, nor should it. I don't think it's a good idea for kids to only watch Mr. Rogers-type shows either.
> kids are more interested in stuff which is surprising
Strange then that kids' cartoons are often so formulaic.
"The Animal Mechanicals are sent to a new floating island to resolve a problem. The team comes up with a plan, and each team member gets to use their special abilities to help out. There are problems along the way, but they are resolved and everyone is happy at the end."
"Something goes wrong. The Paw Patrol are called to help. Ryder comes up with a plan, the pups use their special abilities to help out. There are problems along the way, but they are resolved and everyone is happy at the end. Except for Mayor Humdinger."
I noticed that the watchtime of `You` was split half-and-half between the new season 4 and the prior seasons 1-3. I was curious about the total results by show, including all seasons. Here's the top 25:
TITLE TOTAL HRS WATCHED ----- ----------------- Ginny & Georgia 967,200,000 The Night Agent 812,100,000 You 766,300,000 Outer Banks 740,400,000 The Walking Dead 738,600,000 The Glory 622,800,000 La Reina del Sur 616,800,000 CoComelon 601,200,000 Suits (2011) 599,100,000 The Blacklist 596,900,000 Manifest 581,900,000 Grey's Anatomy 560,300,000 Wednesday 507,700,000 Gilmore Girls 505,800,000 Breaking Bad 505,000,000 Queen Charlotte 503,000,000 Friends (1994) 448,500,000 Love Is Blind 439,300,000 Lucifer 434,300,000 The Big Bang Theory 420,400,000 Shameless (U.S.) 392,600,000 PAW Patrol 392,300,000 New Amsterdam (2018) 375,500,000 Brooklyn Nine-Nine 358,900,000 Firefly Lane 342,700,000
Kids TV episode naming ESPECIALLY Paw Patrol is horribly inconsistent when sailing the seas, which leads to child revolt when they want to see a specific episode and the file names are all wrong.
When my son was younger he liked Paw Patrol, so we bought several season of Paw Patrol, I now have a duaghter that is the same age and likes Paw Patrol. I pulled up my handy Youtube subscription, went into my bought movies and found out that the Paw Patrol season I had bought and paid for was no longer available because it was now only available on KidsToons+ or PreimerParenting or some other bull hockey like that.
I decided at that point if they can yank away media I had already paid for on a whim, we no long had a contract. Now I am working on buying myself a fine sailing ship, and unfurling the jolly roger to sail the high seas seeking booty and plunder and buried treasure.
This article seems to be written by a religious zealot, and the fact that the article opens mentioning his concern of whether or not his friends at church nod in approval or not about what he does is very telling.
I have 2 young kids, and I select what they can watch. And I'm aware that when I was a kid I watched lots of violent shows like Tom and Jerry like someone else said, or even Dragon Ball which is a million times more violent, but I hesitate to let them watch other much more innocuous shows.
I'm an atheist, so I'm not burdened with religious prejudices, and I'm very open minded, I think everyone has a right to sleep with and love whoever they want, and to identify themselves as whoever they want, I also think no one should be discriminated against because of their skin tone, nationality, beliefs, identity, disabilities or anything else.
But I also understand the outrage against wokism. There is an episode in Ridley Jones which is a show for young kids, where there is a bison saying that it's non-binary and what are their preferred pronouns. This is completely unnecessary for the plot and those are subjects that go miles above the heads of the intended audience. Also in many of the latest Disney productions and other shows in Netflix there's been a lot of queer characters and gay/lesbian relationships, which is not necessarily a problem depending how it is treated, specially if the production is for teenagers and adults, but I think it's completely unnecessary and kind of force feeding to include that kind of topics in the shows for the youngest kids. That trend also brings us ludicrous contradictions like an upcoming version of Snow White and the 7 dwarves, which are not actually dwarves, I think there's maybe 1 dwarf only.
Having said that, there's so many examples of religious extremisms taking things to the, erm, well, extremes. And I'm not going to even mention Muslim Theocracies because I think those are ultimate level of autocratic religion fuelled fascist regimes. But for example in Catholic Poland, the children's show Teletubbies was banned because they said the purple teletubbie was gay.
I think there are lots of shows in Netflix that it would be wise to don't allow your kids to watch, depending on their age of course. But the concerns the article raises about Paw Patrol are honestly laughable. There's a lot of illogical things in kid's shows. Just look Spongebob Squarepants and you'll see that they're under the water but most of the time physics and everything else behaves as if they're not. In Paw Patrol I always asked myself how a 10 year old doesn't seem to have adult supervision and seems to have unlimited resources and money to fund his organization. But again, in this show puppies talk and can drive cars, so you can't expect it to be based on reality. Of course in this show there will always be some kind of trouble which the Paw Patrol will happily solve, but there wouldn't be much of a show if that wasn't the case, isn't it? I can think of many series I watched when I was a kid and teenager, that also show a different problem or villain in every episode, actually that's the case for a large number of series. Just think of those oldies Knight Rider, McGuiver, A Team... The same critiques applied to Paw Patrol in the article would applie to all of them.
Also it calls the Mayor in Paw Patrol tyrannical when there's no evidence of repression or autocracy in the show, and I find it funny that he fantasizes with a resistance composed of poets and religious types. As if religious types weren't on the oppressing end of autocracies most of the time along history.
- Bluey - Sarah & Duck - Kiri & Lou - Hey Duggee - Numberblocks - Little J & Big Cuz
There's also a few classics in Australia like "Little Ted's Big Adventures" and "Big Ted's Adventures" and "Little Joey's Big Adventures" or similar, about a dozen episodes each looking at vehicles/sports/animals.
Play school is great once kids get to about 3 or 4 years old, lots of variety, language, things to learn, playing with physical objects in interesting ways.
If you want more of an American style but don't like Paw Patrol, you could try Blaze (a monster truck show that teaches counting and light physics) or Bat Wheels (just Batman themes cars, but it's higher quality than PP).
> PAW Patrol is a Canadian computer-animated children's television series created by Keith Chapman and produced by Spin Master Entertainment, with animation provided by Guru Studio
> Spin Master Corp. is a Canadian multinational children's toy and entertainment company
Sorry, but in this case they are designed in concert: shitty toys and a cartoon to advert^W sell these shitty toys.
All jokes aside I also didn't like paw patrol and stopped showing it to daughter.
Here are my reasons
1. The episodes are mostly non stop action where, without any reflection/ or slow pace. Also 0 teachings for viewers
2. All primary decisions made by Rider. Paws have 0 agency.
----
There are lots of criticisms of other media in this thread. I will add my 2 cents
Superkitties. Every villain is justirier, just doesn't chose right approach. Even if they commit bad things one after another. And in the end of show moral of story is literally spelled out. Authors hammering it down too hard.
Brer Rabbit stories by Joel Harris (old books). I started reading aloud to kiddo and stopped, as some stories are too cruel and unfair. The world is unfair, but this is too early for kiddos age.
If you don't have kids, or none of your close family do, there's no reason you would be aware of the brand, but if you do they're astonishingly popular and almost impossible not to be aware of :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAW_Patrol
> PAW Patrol is a Canadian computer-animated children's television series
> The series has been sold to TV networks in over 160 countries.
> In 2016, the season two episode "Pups Save a Mer-Pup" was nominated for Best Animated Television/Broadcast Production for Preschool Children in the 43rd Annie Awards. As of 2023, PAW Patrol has received twenty five Canadian Screen Award nominations with twenty wins.
> And even when the episodes do focus on Chase it's barely police work, certainly he doesn't go around pointing his gun at immigrants.
If he did go around pointing is gun at immigrants that would be the opposite of police propaganda wouldn't it? Most young kids don't interact with police directly, so nearly everything they know about police comes from the media they consume. The question comes down to what kids need to learn about police and what role media plays in that education. Families in certain communities have been educating their children on how dangerous police are for a very long time.
Is it better to introduce an idealized version of police to kids and let them learn on their own that police are dangerous or is it better to present police in children's media realistically so that they're prepared when they see their 8 year old classmate thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested because they acted up in class or so they understand when they see protesters march past their house because police officers beat and murdered another person on camera without consequences?
I suspect that it's better to show kids what police are supposed to be like before introducing them to the harsher reality we live in, but I can't blame people for looking at shows like Paw Patrol and thinking that it's giving kids a very unrealistic view of policing at a time when they should be increasingly made aware of the issues and the risks they face.
My dude/person, it's beyond popular, we have an entire shelf in the toy cabinet dedicated to "paw patrol stuff"
There is a full feature paw patrol movie in which one of the characters breaks the fourth wall and says "How can we afford this? Licenced paw patrol merchandise!". And all the parents in the audience groan.
It's pure, unadulterated kiddy crack
My kids really love this show, coincidentally it's even on at this moment. Regarding the parenting lessons, they resonate with the kids as well. There was an episode after which one of our kids compared the story of an episode with something that happened in our household and it gave us a nice chance to talk about it on their level. The Bluey writers really do a terrific job. My kids never learned a lesson from Paw Patrol, except wanting to buy their merchandise.
There seems to be a weird popular misconception about Paw Patrol being some sort of police recruitment propaganda for toddlers. I've (unfortunately) had to sit through hundreds of episodes and it really isn't. The police dog is not particularly treated as a main character as all of them are given pretty equal screen time and storylines (out side the recent film, which does focus on him). And even when the episodes do focus on Chase it's barely police work, certainly he doesn't go around pointing his gun at immigrants. His main ability as a police officer seems to be that he has a megaphone.
Thank you, I clicked on the link because of your comment. It's actually more interesting than I'd expect. How does societal framing in kids shows affect children? The author takes a critical tone against things he doesnt like, but doesn't actually show there are any negative effects of this. He doesnt look into the developmental psychology of simplified ethical narratives, or how it compares with other children tv shows across times and countries.
He doesn't seem to consider analyses counter to his own. For example, framing authority figures as incompetent and promoting personal action to improve the world could be empowering and lead to better outcomes for children, and not to a neoliberal hell state in the real world.
Here is a quote from the discussion:
"PAW Patrol (re)produces common problematic narratives about crime and punishment as well as upholds major tenets of neoliberalism, primarily a faith in private enterprise, distrust in government, and emphasis on individual responsibility. In so doing, the television series encourages audiences to support the current global capitalist system that subjects an ever-increasing segment of the populace to invasive surveillance, causes environmental degradation, and harms non-human animals."
One thing that is noteworthy he brings up is the criminals are predominantly outsiders (migrants and visitors). Is this a malicious narrative, does it pander to childen's in built prejudices? Or does it follow from a structured rule to give children simple heroes (everyone in the main town is well behaved, you should be too if you want to belong!), and an excuse to the trouble makers (they don't know any better because they're not part of the club). How does this simplification of the world help or hinder children's development? The author appears to not interest himself too much in this area. It's not clear whether this article is a joke.
He does not look into whether any of these effects actually leads to those beliefs propagating in people who watch this stuff. Nor does he look into the intentions of the writers. He completely ignores that children have comparatively strange brains.
My take away is that I screwed up somewhere by not going into sociology. Those guys can have a good time.
I use Apple Shortcuts + VPN + seed box and the shortcut grabs the magnet link and hits my torrent boxes API. I shared the Shortcut with my wife and it has made pirating so dang convenient and easy we’ve filled up 20TB of space, whoops, time to delete some shows.
It’s also fantastic because I know -exactly- what my children are watching and if there’s some episode of Paw Patrol that’s particularly annoying it get deleted.
> the fact the mayor is an idiot, that obnoxious chicken
Man, for real. Literally every other episode this lady loses her chicken and the paw patrol have to risk life and limb to get it back. Like, at some point, maybe you shouldn't have a pet chicken?
I think you will enjoy this video breakdown from Skip Intro: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0
It’s a superb video essay and absolutely worth the watch! But to be clear, it’s also playing into the meme that paw patrol is copaganda, so take it as a mix of comedy and serious analysis :)
The gist of the video is that, while paw patrol is not copaganda, it is problematic for parallel reasons. It’s also a terrible tv show as you noted.
> any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol).
Listen dude there I have enough beef with paw patrol to make a texas ranchers BBQ look ill equipped, from the fact the mayor is an idiot, that obnoxious chicken the fact the town has outsourced all of it's emergency functions to what is basically the mafia, the fact that they sit on a money printer of toys and the fact that the song haunts my house day in and day out.
But to say that Paw Patrol is a problem because it has a police dog in it and that he helps people is equivalent to saying that Daniel Tiger is anti-Democracy because it has a Royal Family.
> Junk science is a huge problem in law enforcement. Treating lie detectors as canonical, the blood splatter analysis to recreate crime scenes, this kind of stuff.
I'm not sure what's the bigger problem. The use of junk science by law enforcement or how law enforcement and their methods are portrayed by popular media that ensure the use of junk science (and other harmful methods) can persist long-term. I'm sure everybody and their mother has seen Dexter (who works as a blood splatter analyst) or any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol).
My Alexa cannot even find the right episode of paw patrol no matter how hard I try to say episode 84...
Also I've never seen a stakeholder being able to expressing clearly what they want. To get a somewhat usefully specification it's an uphill battle. Programming is almost trivial after that
My toddler is unaware that there is a whole world of video content made just for him - as far as he knows, the only videos that exist are nature documentary clips, cooking shows, church services and tech conference talks.
I know that as soon as some of his daycare classmates can really start talking, the veil will be pierced and he'll be begging to see (judging by said classmates' t-shirts and backpacks) Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig and Frozen.
And I'm not sure how we're going to deal with that.
that is not unique to Netflix, and it probably has to do with pre-existing licensing rights.
For example, Primevideo in my country has 5 seasons of Inuyasha but not 6 and 7, can you imagine the frustration? :)
Likewise, my kids like to watch Paw Patrol, and amazon only has season 4, but not the first 3.
My conclusion from the article was the CNN writer was suggesting that Paw Patrol isn't "fascist".
The only time the text uses the term "fascist" is:
> Sa'iyda Shabazz, who is based in Los Angeles, said she has no qualms letting her 4-year-old watch "Thomas," which is "his favorite thing in the entire world."
I don't know why we are supposed to care what Shabazz thinks. From what I can tell, she's "a freelance writer who lives in Los Angeles. She mostly writes about the intersections of race, sexuality, class, gender and parenting, as well as other lifestyle topics", says Forbes.
More relevantly, Uhls, a research scientist, explained why "Rigidness and simplicity of narrative (in children's television shows) is really important ... Parents concerned with the unsavory elements in shows like "Thomas" and "Paw Patrol" should talk to their children about them, but "don't overthink it."
How do you get from that to "neo-Marxism"?
I thought Mayor Humdinger, in the feature-length movie, was a swipe at Trump.
The whole point of Paw Patrol is to make an amusing show for kids, and to make money selling merchandise. The whole reason why they keep making more of it is because it sells. The only agenda is to make money. (Which I happily spend.)
Paw Patrol is Canadian, so it's unlikely to be US pro-police propaganda. You might be mixing in details from this Onion article:
https://www.theonion.com/paw-patrol-writers-defend-episode-where-german-shephe-1828419524
> [...] would want stuff mixed at a level that was just ear-bleeding
I am Deaf. Whenever I start a Paw Patrol episode for my children I have to turn downward the sound. Even I can feel that someone cranked up the sound to 11. The table starts vibrating, the children cover their ears and the Yacker Tracker flashes red.
It's really annoying and as a Deaf person I don't know how to fix the sound level.
>When people write text they use it to represent ideas and objects and relations between ideas and objects.
That's not true, at least a lot of the time. Watch an episode of Paw Patrol, go see the latest Marvel movie or listen to number 6 or 7 on the top 40 charts.
A huge amount of what we consider "creative" endeavours that only a human can produce have nothing to do with meaning or experience and are simply a group of people trying to create something that "sounds right" or looks cool, or in the case of a lot of kid's content, merely inoffensive to the largest segment of society possible.
I'm not saying that GPT is going to win the Pulitzer Prize any time soon, but the line between "human text has meaning, machine text doesn't" is quite blurry and process-dependent.
Don't know about films but kids TV programs seem to do this.
Edit, father who has seen Paw Patrol in lots of different regional versions on different streaming service.
I think I saw an essay linked on HN once about how many popular kids' shows have fascist worldview (examples were Thomas the Tank Engine and Paw Patrol) Now before you roll your eyes, these shows have nothing to do with murdering the "wrong kind" of people or destroying democracy, but it had a point: there is a fixed world order, the moral of the story is that of you disobey authority or move out of your role, bad things will happen.
Kids also lap this up. They are be in a phase where they need a sense or order in a chaotic world. It's a developmental phase. At some point when they grow up some great books, movies or games will hopefully provide disruption.
I thought Paw Patrol had already covered this:
"‘Paw Patrol’ Writers Defend Episode Where German Shepherd Cop Shoots Unarmed Black Lab 17 Times In Back"[1]
[1]: https://entertainment.theonion.com/paw-patrol-writers-defend-episode-where-german-shephe-1828419524
I have a 3-year old, and he loves the Paw Patrol. When it comes to children's cartoons there are very few I can tolerate watching myself, but Paw Patrol isn't the worst.
As you say the themes are largely positive, there's a decent range of characters and locations, and usually he's happy to watch an episode a day.
But I do admit I find myself wondering far too much about the backstories! Where does all the technology come from? Who is Ryder? Is he a mad scientist? How did the Mayor get elected? Why does the other Mayor, of Foggy-Bottom, never actually spend time in his own town? And finally at what point (I guess I missed this episode) did the evil-cats become mirrors of the Paw Patrol?
(Also: Sea Patrol? What a crazy and impractial dock for the boat!)
Maybe I should take it less seriously.
I went to this discussion thread and am gratified to find the phrase 'Paw Patrol' in the top comment. Although I don't think its anything new, tv shows as insidious toy commercials has been around since I was a kid.
Yeah, that was apparent with Paw Patrol, but the show itself isn't bad. Every episode is centered around helping people and working as a team. "Hey team, there's a problem, let's go fix it!" That's the core focus and messaging. The stories aren't about buying things. When kids emulate Paw Patrol, they're going on missions to solve problems and using the associated vehicles as tools. Which is what the pups do.
Unboxing and "loot haul" videos are a whole other thing and are absolute garbage, totally agree. It's especially gross when it's little kids as the "talent", being pushed by their parents. Buy a bunch of those eggs. Film their kid(s) opening them. Slap on some wacky editing and SFX. Upload. Just gross.
> My kid is only two, so I'm not quite there yet, but most of this children's advertising makes my skin crawl. I'm glad to see that I was right about Paw Patrol, it's clearly modeled to be source for many lines of toys (wide cast of characters, each with their own theme and accompanying accessories that can be infinitely re purposed in different toy sets). Slap on "super hero" mode and you've added a whole other dimension to the matrix of possible toys.
That was always the case though. Star Wars isn't worth billions because of the movies, it's worth billions because of the branded products.
Never seen Transformers toys? GI Joe? TMNT? Childrens TV shows were always about selling toys, that was always the bread and butter.
I agree with everything else though, theses unboxing videos and theses "loot crate", they are quite new and play with the instant dopamine rush. They are quite dangerous and seriously need to be stopped. It's crazy that the FTC put so much effort with COPPA to stop "tracking kids" on Youtube, but did nothing against theses kind of videos.
I agree that it's an overrated feature, but there's plenty of use cases. Eg you want to play an evening of cool videos in a loop on a projector somewhere, your kids are allow to watch exactly two Paw Patrol episodes, etc.
Someone has to say it. If you’re letting your kid use YouTube or I’d even say the internet or smart phones unsupervised before their brain is well developed you are taking a tremendous risk on their mental development.
A few years back when my kids were toddlers I’d rather naively give them my phone with YouTube on it, and after ignoring them for just 15 mins they’d have switched from whatever edutainment programme I’d put on to a video of a burly pair of hands unwrapping toys - for 4 hours...there are no studies on the long term effects of YouTube on cognitive development in young brains but why wait? It’s not like it’s rocket science to infer that if you show growing minds poor quality content you’re going to get poor quality results.
I don’t feel comfortable leaving my kids to watch Netflix either. It’s too easy for them to binge watch a half season of Paw Patrol or Omizumi or other similarly lite content. As a kid I remember eagerly waiting for the next episode of He-Man or Ghostbusters but to have had several seasons of dozens of episodes on tap would have been too much to resist. With auto play on these services too it’s not like they have the interests of us or our kids at heart.
We need to be super careful here, this is new territory with early indicators showing declines in ability to concentrate in adults from these forms of distraction - god knows what it’s doing to our kids.
3.5 and 2 year old, we have Foxtel but it's only ever used for watching Paw Patrol, Blaze and the Monster Machines, and a cycle of Disney movies. Ah the days when my partner and I could just go on dates whenever!
I will admit I found it hard not to read this comment and wonder about your sense of entitlement in the face of the vastly privileged situation we live in now in terms of media consumption. You pay $10 per month to watch high quality TV from the last few decades as much as you want, whenever you want (and, goodness me, if you have children, Netflix is an absolute godsend - fire up Paw Patrol and off you go...); to watch a large and moderately decent selection of films, often including relatively new releases, whenever you want, as many as you want; and as if that weren't enough, they even produce their own content, some of which is actually good.
I remember when, if you wanted to watch a film, you would drive to Blockbuster and rent it, and you had a couple of nights to watch it or the fees would start racking up - and their selection was never all that great, and the availability was limited to how many DVDs or videos they physically had. If you wanted to watch a TV series, you'd buy the boxset - and before DVDs, Friends took up about four feet of your bookshelf.
Sure, I've seen a bit of a movement lately from Netflix to Amazon Prime, but seriously, what we have right now in 2017 is so miraculously much better than what we had ten years ago (when I had a LoveFilm account and had to rely on films being sent through the post - which seems oddly even more antiquated now than Blockbuster does, frankly), that to describe it as "crap" and "garbage" just seems crazy to me.