What the Kids are Watching

I have to say that the Netflix streaming service has been great for the kids. There’s seemingly no end to the cartoon entertainment available. Which is good, because they haven’t tended to go back to a cartoon franchise once they’ve completed it. The only one they sometimes go back to is Avatar: The Last Airbender.

For now, they’ve been watching episodes of Woody Woodpecker. These aren’t the original cartoons, though. Rather, it’s a re-boot of the original. The only characters I recall from the first go around are Woody himself and Buzz Buzzard. They’ve introduced nephews for Woody as well as Winnie, a sometimes girlfriend, Wally Walrus and Miss Meanie. In all, the only one who’s consistently amusing is Wally and that’s almost entirely to do with his think Svedish accent. I mean Swedish accent. It’s quite catchy. In all, I’d rate it as OK on the entertainment scale and certainly inferior to the original. But the kids enjoy it. Fortunately, the smarty-pants routines are seeping into the kids personalities.

The other one we found is the old chestnut Inspector Gadget whom the kids have just started watching recently. Gadget gets old since every episode is rehash of the same story line with Penny and Brain saving the world while Gadget bumbles through the episode. I don’t know how long they’ll watch this series, but there’s nothing objectionable to it.

Last night, I discovered Transformers Prime. Now this is a good cartoon. It’s one of the computer animated variety, and certainly the subject matter is well suited to the medium. The kids are old enough to watch it, but I wouldn’t let younger kids watch it since the material is definitely on the darker side of the spectrum. But Optimus Prime and his sense of honor and duty dominate the story and that’s something worth having them watch. In my opinion, it’s a better story line than any of the 3 movies that preceded it. And lets face it, big robots that turn into cars and planes is awesome entertainment. Right now, there is only season 1, but season 2 will become available later this year.

This week being a vacation week, the burn rate on the cartoons has been increased a bit. Even so, with these 3 to rotate through, they should be entertained for a while yet.