Yay Wonder Pets! [disability win]

[marydell]

Wonder Pets has become a staple TV show in our home, because Charlie looooooves it. And we find it weird and entertaining enough to be able to tolerate watching it with him and singing along. Also, episodes are 15 minutes long, which is about as much TV as we like him to see daily.

The shows involve a team of 3 classroom pets rescuing (usually) baby animals after the class has gone home for the day. They sing a little song about saving the animal. However, the ep we saw yesterday, called "Save the Bullfrog," was about helping an elderly bullfrog who couldn't hop to the water. He wanted to swim with his "grand-poles" but couldn't because his legs wouldn't get him to the water. They modified their little song to say "let's help the bullfrog" instead of "let's save..." and then they went and built him an awesome little wheelchair out of a cut-up log, and then helped him get into it and he wheeled himself to the water and got in to swim, keeping his new wheelchair nearby. THE END. Mobility problem, solved with a mobility device, YAY.

They normally have to solve a problem in the classroom before they fly off in their flyboat (don't ask) to help whoever, and the problem in the classroom has the same solution as the problem of the animal who needs helping. This episode's "classroom problem" was about finding wheels for the flyboat because it needs wheels to go (I said, don't ask!). Also during the credits they show a dog with one of those wheel-carts for his back legs, trotting by the door of the school. Basically the whole episode is "wheels are good!" and the bullfrog's problem isn't presented so much as "his legs don't work" but as "his grandpoles miss him" and "he needs to get to the water." Wheels are the solution.

We did notice that they don't cover how he's going to get out of the water and back into the wheelchair after they leave, but I guess there's only so much they can cover in 15 minutes. :) Anyway it made us happy to see a positive showcase for a mobility device, that treats it as a fun solution to a straightforward problem instead of a very, very sad encumbrance.

For contrast, in the Halloween episode of Ni Hao Kai Lan, Rintoo sprains his ankle and so can't go trick-or-treating (in their apparently crutch-free world) until the kids figure out that they can put wheels on the bed and all go trick-or-treating together on wheels. First they spend 15 minutes going "oh no! you can't go trick-or-treating because you CAN'T WALK! Oh No!" while I yell at the screen.

Comments

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

We love Nick Jr. in general here. I see much more self-aware commentary on Cassie's shows than I do my own, more often than not. Also? No commercials. My god, turning regular Nickelodeon on for any amount of time is horrifying. Once my mom turned Dora on on Nick instead of Noggin, and I turned around to see that Cassie was watching a commercial for Nair. WTF?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Nair, eek! Advertising poisons on kids' shows seems like a bad idea. Even if it wasn't noxious, hair removers + kids, not a good combo. Not that she'd run out and buy it but ads make kids more interested in things they might find in the cupboard.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

This was the past summer, so I was less worried about her looking for lotion in the cupboard than I was with her absorbing ideals of hairless beauty standards. :(

[sanguinity]

1. Yay!

2. Oh, but it pains me that I don't get to ask about the wheeled flying boat.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

LOL, my husband is a flight enthusiast and is always gnashing his teeth about the fly boat. him: "Where does the thrust come from?" me: "From the whiteboard-marker caps, obviously!" him: "what do those gears in the bottom do?" me: "they make it GO, duh!"

One time the flyboat was broken so they quickly made a "fly cycle" that had a hanger, spun by the duck, and an eggbeater, turned by the guinea pig, that made it fly. Mike was practically tearing his hair out.

[sanguinity]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

There is so little about that image of the flying boat that maps to anything I know about reality -- and this includes the never-aging duckling -- that it's impossible for me to get upset about its preposterousness. Thrust? C'mon, what possible utility would mere thrust have for a flying vehicle shaped like that? Pfft.

Although I would like to point out that it IS clear that the gears don't make it go. Those gears are like spinners and fascinators: they're there to look cool. Duh. :-)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Except when the gears come apart, the flyboat promptly crashes, which leads to the eggbeater situation and much talk about the gears, as well as singing a song about the flyboat.

I think the flyboat runs on CRACK.

[sanguinity]

Hm. That's evidence for the gears being a component necessary to its going, but does not speak to whether the gears "make it go". The gears could just as easily be an anti-inhibitor: they prevent something else from preventing it going.

Or! They're an indicator! They're just a visual representation of whether the flyboat thinks it is going or not! And in the grand tradition of people everywhere, y'all are confusing the indicator for the mechanism! Bwaha! Just because the duckling thinks the gears make it go, DOES NOT MEAN the gears make it go!

When the gears come apart, is it spectacular? If that safety shield wasn't there, could it throw a gear RIGHT THROUGH A GUINEA PIG'S SKULL?

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Don't tell him about the stories my dad and I made up about two chicks who flew, one in a cup and one under a saucer (attached with suspenders, of course).

Wonderpets is bizarre and surreal and strangely fascinating, at least for adults. And weird. It's kinda cool that kids like it, really, and yay for technology hacks!

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

Fiona was big on the Wonder Pets before we left Scotland, and Martin got very fond of them. He used Ming-Ming as a user icon for a good year after we moved.

Funny seeing them again.

[unhappytriad.livejournal.com]

Our dachshund rescue group (www.drna.org) likes Eddie's Wheels (http://www.eddieswheels.com/). Dachshunds get a lot of disc injuries, sometimes with hind-leg paralysis. It takes them about half an hour to learn to operate with the cart.