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Reviews
Sid the Science Kid (2008)
This is great, but if you don't like this show, the reasons are clear to me.
It's easy for kids to overlook the bad parts of Sid the Science Kid and appreciate it. And I can certainly see why!
The setup is the same every single episode but with a few small variations, and this is a show that does that in a good way. A lot of modern cartoons that have the same setup every single episode but with a few small variations do that in a bad way.
I love how when Sid knows that he has to do something that he's not a fan of or is in a situation that he doesn't really like that much, instead of complaining too much about it, he helps himself feel better by asking a science question about said situation and investigating it at school with his friends and his great teacher.
The show has great humor, and I love the style of Sid's "big idea" segment and the live action segments. And about the songs? Some of them sound like rap songs, others country songs.
The only real negatives to this show is that as good as the writing of each episode is, the animation and voice acting are bad, and the characters besides Sid don't have that much of a personality.
Overall? A show that looks and sounds bad on the outside but is enjoyable on the inside. Really proves that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, or in this case, a cartoon by its animation.
The Creature Cases (2022)
You outdid yourself, Silvergate Media.
I love the approach to this show. I really do. To me, this is Octonauts Above & Beyond, Mira, Royal Detective, and British spy media mixed in a blender. Both of the former two are really great preschool cartoons. And what a masterpiece this show is!
Sam and Kit are really good partners in this show, and maybe that's mostly because their opposing personalities make them a great example of "opposites attract partners." Sam is a germaphobic man who is serious about his tasks, while Kit is a silly free-spirited girl. And I really love how their British accents sound perfect for these characters being detectives/special agents.
The only reason it's a 9/10 instead of a 10/10 is because of the "fact file" song. It's just kind of annoying and hard to hear.
Overall? If this show can combine three really great pieces of media into one masterpiece of media, then this has to be the best show from Silvergate Media so far, and it's only rivaled by SuperKitties, which came out a year after this.
Superkitties (2023)
Finally! A show from Disney Junior that is PJ Masks done correctly!
I know you've seen those reviews: this show does remind viewers of PJ Masks, a show which I used to like but now hate because it feels like they did everything wrong. SuperKitties on the other hand does almost everything right. The SuperKitties have great personalities themselves, and so do the villains. They might get a little whiny sometimes but it never gets under my skin. And unlike the villains in PJ Masks, who do bad things just because it's evil, these villains in SuperKitties most of the time want something that's actually reasonable. They do learn from their mistakes, and this show has great lessons. Even if they use the same lessons several times in one season, I like the plots they use to teach it.
The CGI of this show is great, and it looks so smooth. After all, it's animated by Silvergate Media, the same animation studio behind Octonauts, a really good British cartoon that aired on Disney Junior in the USA. And the Peter Rabbit cartoon, a really good Canadian cartoon (well, at least I think it's a Canadian cartoon) that aired on Nick Jr. In the USA.
There are only two things in this show that aren't as good as everything else. One is the character of Pickles. You can basically say he's modern Patrick Star but more annoying. And the second one is the fact that they have to sing a villain's name the first time said villain's name is said.
Overall? This is a really good American-Canadian cartoon that I will always find time to watch some really good episodes again and again.
Pupstruction (2023)
Travis Braun Is Improving
Before this show came out, Travis Braun created T. O. T. S which is an okay show in my opinion. I like the creative idea, the great CGI from Titmouse, and the good lessons each episode teaches, but in my opinion, there were some areas where it could get boring, annoying, or both, and the main characters often are really dumb, but it ends up great in the end.
Pupstruction is an improvement over the goof-ups that Travis Braun made in T. O. T. S, and don't you like when a show's creator makes two shows you like, but the later one is better than the earlier one? That's how I feel when I watch Pupstruction. In my opinion, the best part about Pupstruction is the characters and their personalities.
Let me explain: Phinny of course is a small but artistic corgi who has a lot to learn but leads his team through the toughest jobs no matter what. This reminds me how good Disney Junior is at making great leaders and captains of the main groups of their original shows. Then, the other members of the Pupstruction crew are just as great. Tank is a pup who loves food, is kind to other people, and is fast to feel guilty for ruining something important. It feels like the writers could've had him wallow in guilt from how he ruined things, but it's much better for him to get the job done despite what he feels guilty for. Then, we have Luna, who has to be like Freddy from T. O. T. S because it has the same creator; yeah, she's silly and kind of stupid but is always supportive of her team and learns from her mistakes. And Roxy is the tomboy with a little bit of a girly-girl side to her, and loves destruction but will always find room to build too, and I love how they made her a dog with a pair of wheels for back legs and are even doing an episode revolved around the pups helping handicapped people like her.
And I really like how great Phinny's parents are and the great personalities they were given. Phinny's dad Harry is a great chef and supportive of his son and his crew, but can worry too much about his children and often freak out when something is going wrong. And Phinny's mom Maya serves as a great supporter of Pupstruction and a great mother and guide. And I also love Phinny's sister Bailey, who always looks up to her brother and his crew.
Bobby Boots also serves as a great villain in this show. He wants his construction company to be better than Pupstruction even though they are really bad at construction due to the fact that they hate taking the time to build. And because he wants to be better, instead of improving his standards of building, Bobby will find a way to sabotage Pupstruction and ruin their projects, which he does sometimes feel bad for and will confess to Pupstruction about.
Other than the characters, the songs and animation are great, and I love the stories in each episode. Overall? Both cartoons that Travis Braun did so far are good, but I'd rather watch this over T. O. T. S.
Mister Maker (2007)
Weird, but oddly satisfying and relaxing. Kinda like an ASMR TV show
I love the artistic design behind this show. It encourages children to make art, and who wouldn't like that?
When you do watch this show though, you might realize that there's hardly a moment of silence in this show. There is a lot of noise - relaxing noises, weird noises, and even noises like shouting, wowing, and laughing. It's a myriad of noise, noise, noise! You hear a new sound effect every single second. It has the feel of those ASMR videos you find on YouTube, only each ASMR is extended into 22 minutes and shown on television. I guess that preschool children like this show because of the weird noises that would appeal to them and the fact that art is being made on the show. However, I think adults and teenagers would like this show too.
Overall? A great show for any age (unless you're just not into a show with a myriad of weird noises).
Octonauts: Above & Beyond (2021)
Different, but okay.
When I first heard of this show, I thought, "A sequel to the original Octonauts series? Now why hadn't anyone thought of that?" I like the original series even though there are times where it's dumbed down to not scare children. This is very different from the original Octonauts because instead of just investigating creatures underwater, they investigate land creatures, too. There are new helpers on their team, and Paani is such a great character. He does seemingly crazy things because he likes to help creatures, and he means well when he does so. This isn't too much like the original Octonauts, but it's just as good.
Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes (2023)
Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes: The "Wedding Peach" of the 2020's. Just ... why?
Well, let me explain my heading.
Wedding Peach was an anime from the mid 1990's that ripped off the very popular anime at the time named Sailor Moon. I have never watched either anime because, since I don't speak Japanese, I hardly watch anime, but I heard about Wedding Peach from a guy on YouTube who made his list of his Top 20 Worst Animated Series from the 90's. You could also say that it's Sailor Moon minus everything that gave Sailor Moon structure. You know about those cool action scenes in Sailor Moon and the true feel of anime fighting-hero shows? Well, that's all absent in Wedding Peach. Instead of fully-developed heroes in sailor outfits attacking with strong powers and defeating demons, we get heroes devoid of any personality in stupid wedding dresses attacking by slapping hearts and flowers on everything and purifying demons.
When I first watched this show, I realize that this is a complete ripoff of PJ Masks, which I think is a really horrible show. And both PJ Masks and Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes have three kids going around fighting villains in their city that want to ruin everyone's fun, and learn a lesson along the way after making the same mistake more that twice. What is even more infuriating is that both PJ Masks and Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes were made by Hasbro and aired on Disney Junior. After that, I began to wonder: What happened to you, Hasbro? You were better than this!
Now that I know this show exists and what it's basically about, I am beginning to fear that Hasbro became in 2015 what Hanna-Barbera became in the 1970's (because according to Mr. Enter, Hanna-Barbera lost their charm in the 1970's because they began cashing in on cartoons and losing their originality; in his words, Hanna-Barbera was the "king of cashing in" and now, I might say the same thing for Hasbro.)
But since Hasbro wanted this cartoon to thrive, what were they to do to make kids think that they weren't rehashing PJ Masks? Simple. Because PJ Masks was mostly for a male audience, they made their rehash mostly for a female audience. And because they're, well, Hasbro, they made almost 75% of this show dancing. Cool music, and typical girly things that little girls like, just like they do for every cartoon that is owned by them and directed towards a female audience.
However, I don't just find Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes a ripoff of PJ Masks. It's kind of also a bad fanfiction of Ninjago (another show mostly for a male audience, but this one I find mediocre) made by someone who NEVER watched Ninjago before. They certainly don't know what a ninja is, because I don't think Kiya's a real ninja. She doesn't dress like one, and she does use martial arts, but she just uses them to show off, and mostly to look cool. This is NOT what martial arts are for. Martial arts are used to defend yourself. And last time I checked, ninjas don't wave batons around. That's what marching band leaders do.
Speaking of the heroes, I think their superhero names were just thought up of by the creators because it made them sound cool, but they don't exhibit the names really well.
Plus, just like the ninja in Ninjago, the Kimoja Heroes in this show don't even try to keep their identities secret, since I'm pretty much sure everyone in Kimoja City knows these kids are superheroes, and they don't even try to cover up their faces or even wear a mask. At least Clark Kent took off his glasses and wore contact lenses when he became Superman!
Most fighting-hero shows and movies have the heroes keep their identities secret not just to avoid embarrassing themselves, but not having a secret identity raises the chances that their enemies can hurt their friends or family if they want to find them. Ninjago has shown this a few times in their show, while Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes is blissfully unaware of this, which is the last thing you want in a show with fighting-heroes that don't have a secret identity at all.
But the biggest and most important nail of the coffin in this show is, of course, the action scenes, or the lack thereof. Just like in Wedding Peach, this show just has the heroes and villains attacking each other by throwing obstacles at the villains, whom they don't really defeat.
But unlike PJ Masks where the voice actors sound like they want to kill each other, the voice actors in this show sound like they don't want to even be on the set.
The overall formula for this show? Ripoff of PJ Masks + Ripoff of Wedding Peach + bad Ninjago fanfiction - everything that saved Ninjago from being horrible = Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes. This show is so unoriginal, shallow, and boring that it makes be wonder if the person who greenlit this show for Disney Junior was wearing a blindfold when the idea was submitted.
Overall, this show makes Ninjago's trainwreck of a final season look like a masterpiece in comparison to this.
The Chicken Squad (2021)
If you wanna watch a cool 2020's preschool kids show about an animal rescue crew, then you've come to the wrong place.
Personally, to me, the Chicken Squad feels like a show that was made in 2009 and not 2020. Why?
Well, 2009 was the year that 2D animated cartoons were allowed to look like they were lazily done with cheap flash animation and 3D cartoons were allowed to either be ugly, amateurishly made, or both. Remember, Disney Junior released Special Agent Oso in 2009, and when you watch both Special Agent Oso and The Chicken Squad, you'll not only realize that the same problems with Special Agent Oso are also in The Chicken Squad, but the problems with Special Agent Oso are even worse in The Chicken Squad.
Let me explain. Most of the problems in Special Agent Oso are more from Season 1 than Season 2. In Season 1, every single episode began with Oso doing some random training exercise, and his instructor telling him the best way to do it, and once you watch it, you'll realize just how forgetful Oso is and realize that he's going to mess up. But before this happens, we cut to a random kid having a problem with an activity that they don't know how to do. So basically, with both the training exercise and the kid's struggles, you know the entire plot of any episode of Special Agent Oso Season 1 one minute into the plot, and cartoons should not have to spoil their own plots before you even start to get a grasp on what's going on.
Plus, the humans in Season 1 look like wooden dolls that are animated with poor CGI. They at least looked like actual humans in Season 2, but the writing in Season 2 kind of seemed to get worse. Yeah, that means I don't like the special two-part or four-part episodes of Special Agent Oso because most of the time it feels like the plot is moving at a snail's pace.
There's one more complaint I have about that show: Why is Oso doing training exercises to be a special agent if all his company is about is helping kids do simple tasks? It just feels like a plot element that didn't need to be there.
The creator of Special Agent Oso obviously had two ideas: 1. Make a show about a special agent for a company and make it for a preschool audience, and 2. To make a show teaching kids how to do simple tasks. Both those ideas are great, but not when they're together in the same show. Those ideas are like oil and water; they don't mix.
So, yeah; you get the problems with Special Agent Oso now? Plots that don't mix together, terrible animation, pointless plot points that didn't need to be there in the first place (which is one of my absolute least favorite parts about any story), plots with snail's pace and plot points that are made as an excuse to halt the plot, and giving away the plot before the conflict even begins.
Well, that's most cartoons released in 2009 for you.
Now, remember how bad I said the special episodes of Special Agent Oso are? Well, imagine a show where EVERY SINGLE EPISODE gives you the same experience as one of Special Agent Oso's special episodes. Well, that's The Chicken Squad for you, and let me explain how The Chicken Squad only made those problems worse.
In The Chicken Squad, every single character looks like a toy from a Happy Meal. I hesitate to call our chicken characters chickens because they look like ducks with red hair just copy/pasted onto their heads. Most of the objects in this show look like drag-and-drop toys with their colors changed in Microsoft Paint. And "The Chicken Squad" sounds like a name of a 2000's cartoon than a 2020's cartoon. It feels like this cartoon was really made by some amateur in 2009 and they waited for more than a decade to get it on television, and decided to stamp some really trusty names on the cartoon to make it look like a 2020's cartoon. I know the company that "animated" this cartoon and they are better than this, and I don't think that the animation company behind this even existed in 2009.
The premise? The show's basically your typical "animal rescue crew" show, but for some reason, the ducks (no, I am not going to call them chickens because they look like ducks!) dress like and are treated like members of the military. Is that absolutely necessary for a show basically about ducks rescuing farm animals from danger? Plus, this show is based off a book, but looking at both the books and this cartoon, I don't really think the people behind this show adapted the book really well.
The plots? They're not much better. Every episode's plot feels like someone used a random word generator to help them write the synopsis. And in every single episode, the chickens try to get a job done but they are so stupid that none of their attempts work, and eventually, their mistakes gets them in trouble in a way that's supposed to be comical, but in reality feels like an insult to injury, which I really don't like in kids cartoons, because that basically tells the kids, "If you don't learn this lesson from what our heroes did, then yay, you're an idiot!". And I know that this is basically how shows are made, and preschoolers aren't really the brightest, but I hate when shows challenge preschoolers by insulting the intelligence of preschoolers. Plus, this all just feels like both an insult and an excuse to halt the plot and make it boring. Speaking of that, the plots in these kinds of shows are so thin that the entire plot consists mostly or entirely of the conflict. This is so true in The Chicken Squad that by giving these ducks advice 30 seconds into the episode, Captain Tully basically gives away the whole plot and all excitement for any episode evaporates. Aren't hero shows more exciting than this?
There's one more thing that I hate about the Chicken Squad, and that's Little Boo. He's the kind of arrogant and smug character that you just wanna slap in the face, even if he hasn't said anything.
Overall? A poorly designed cartoon that's feels like it's a scam and is just as exciting as watching paint dry. You and your kids are more likely to either fall asleep or be irritated at the end.