A few days ago, I found some videos of a TV show that I loved when I a very little girl. It was called Lamb Chop's Play Along, and it starred ventriloquist Sheri Lewis and her puppet companion, the eponymous Lamb Chop, a ewe lamb with black eyes. Also featured in the show were puppets Charlie Horse (a colt who had buck teeth wore a green t-shirt, pants, sneakers, and a red baseball cap), and Hush Puppy (a little grey-brown dog with floppy ears and wore a blue and red striped t-shirt). The show centered mostly around games, jokes, riddles, and whatever the main story is in the episode. Unfortunately, Sheri Lewis died of cancer in 1998, a year after the show ended. But she was very original in her work. Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy, and Charlie Horse were all very enjoyable characters with lovable personalities. Their jokes, riddles, and games are still awesome even after thirteen years.
These days, kids shows are lame. Their main goal is marketing rather than entertaining children. Dora the Explorer, Bob the Builder, various Disney products, etc., are all lame shows with tie-ins meant to be marketed. Nothing's original; it's all the same sort of idea. And all those tie-ins (*shudder*); toys, party supplies (i.e., paper plates, cups, napkins etc.), even school supplies. I remember when we had to request a cake with Lamb Chop's picture on it for my fifth birthday because it wasn't already available. But the fact that we had to request having the picture on the cake was what made it special. These days the tie-ins are so ubiquitous that I want to wring the necks of those who produce them. I'm sick of seeing Disney Princesses, Dora, SpongeBob, etc., all over the place. In fact, I want tie-ins to go away completely. The fact that tie-ins are everywhere results in the items being mundane. They are not special at all.
Now I happen to own some Barbie dolls and a few Lord of the Rings action figures plus a Legolas poster, but I don't play with the toys much anymore now that I'm twenty, but I gave my dolls their own personalities. I also like Star Wars tie-ins; but what separates Star Wars from the rest is that in Star Wars people actually get killed. I'm not saying I like it when people die; I don't like it at all. However, a lot of marketed kid's stuff does not involve much death unless the character in question is the villain; and then the death usually involves falling to one's death from a great height. In Star Wars you have people getting shot, impaled, blown up, etc., and while there isn't much blood (lightsabers and blasters tend to sear the flesh), there is still an onscreen death, and a lot of kids have seen death up close. I for one, happen to be unfortunate enough to have seen a stray dog shake one of my beloved pet rabbits to death right in front of my eyes―and when I was six-years-old.
There was no talk about death in Lamb Chop's Play Along, but that show was purely about jokes and games. That was different from the adventure/pseudo-adventure items that are popular today.
Producers of children's entertainment, if you want to just entertain, please go back to the old jokes and games deal. Please lay off all the tie-ins and stuff like that. If you want adventure stories, please show some real serious stuff like in Star Wars and Transformers. And quit trying to lightly touch on serious subjects like death. Show it onscreen as a lot of kids have seen death whether it was a pet that died or a relative. Don't dance around those subjects. Teach kids how to cope with it (I'll talk about that later). Lay off the marketing and stick with just plain entertaining or helpful.
No comments:
Post a Comment