Ben Clark/Nickelodeon/GabbaCadabra LLC
Left to right: Scott Schultz, Muno, Brobee, DJ Lance and Christian Jacobs.
Aug. 28, 2008 | From the time my daughter was born, I knew I never wanted her consorting with Barney the purple dinosaur or his posse of grinning, syrupy-voiced child actors. I didn't even want her to mingle with Elmo, that baby-voiced shut-in, with his crippling speech impediment and his chronic upper respiratory infection, or Dora the Explorer, with her endless demands and her cultural identity crisis. In fact, I was pretty sure that none of the preschool buddies my TV had to offer were good enough for my sweet little petunia.
But then one day, my daughter was sick, and reading books in bed just wasn't cutting it. In my desperation, I sought solace in Nickelodeon, where I found a strange black man dressed like a DJ from another planet in a bright orange puffy hat, carrying a rainbow-colored boombox across a blank white screen. He opened the boombox, and the little creatures in it came to life and sang "Yo Gabba Gabba! Yo Gabba Gabba!" I felt like I had stepped into an underground, alterna-kid universe: The DJ was sort of odd and quite possibly gay, the creatures weren't completely annoying, and the music was really good.
Soon, "Yo Gabba Gabba" became our sick-day go-to show, and I found myself singing along with the songs (My personal favorites: "I Like Bugs!" and "Don't Throw Things at Friends!") or trying out "Biz's Beat of the Day" (basic beat-boxing taught by Biz Markie) or dancing along with some guest star's "Dancey Dance." Whether Tony Hawk was showing off some cool skateboard tricks or Brobee (the freaky little green creature) was learning about the "tiny, ugly germs" on the ground, my daughter, Claire, and I were totally transfixed.
Now typically, über-hip stuff for kids makes me a little queasy. But this was different: a kids show that wouldn't make me groan and tear my hair, even when viewed in the middle of the night as we waited for the Children's Tylenol to kick in.
With a whole new season coming up (premieres 11:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 22, on Nickelodeon) just in time for a new flu season, Claire and I may never have to resort to mingling with purple dinosaurs, sneezy red shut-ins or bossy kewpie dolls. "Yo Gabba Gabba" creators Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz say that was exactly their intention when they dreamed up the show for their own kids.
I've seen every episode of your show probably five or six times, and miraculously enough, I still enjoy it. How did the idea for the show come about?
Scott: Well, we found ourselves with 1-year-old kids and we were watching entertainment with them. We were looking at what was out there and wanting to participate in it with them and finding a little bit of a void of shows that would be interesting to us as well as our preschoolers. We thought of "Sesame Street" and other early childhood development programs, and said, "Wow, there was a lot of great stuff going on back then." We thought we could bring some of that flair -- some of those artists doing art and the animation and the musicians doing guest appearances and the music -- bring that back to the preschoolers.
Which children's shows had those kinds of elements? Christian: "Sesame Street," "Electric Company" and a lot of the shows that we were privy to during the age of childhood development programming. You know, all those late '60s and early '70s shows. They all had this variety format because they were mirroring what was going on in popular culture and on TV at the time: Ed Sullivan, "The Show of Shows." And it seemed like the kids programs were bringing younger and hipper elements into it, and not necessarily excluding kids from that, just appropriating that kind of a format to that age group. That's kind of what we wanted to do. There's so much great music and art and fun things going on out there, all it needs to do is be age-appropriated, then kids can share that with their parents.
"Sesame Street" and "Electric Company" did partake in the music and art of the times, when I think about it. Do you think there was a point where that got cleaned out of kids programming? Scott: I think it goes along with popular culture and the over-sterilized and over-educational slant of shows. I mean, we still educate on our show, but it comes more from a variety show angle than from wanting to teach something specific. Definitely preschool has become a genre of its own, its own protected, hallowed ground, where it used to be lumped in with children's entertainment.
There is this perception that young kids can only handle extreme simplicity and positivity, as if they should exist in a little rainbow bubble for the first five years. But do you ever worry that some popular culture trends will be too much for little kids? Christian: I think there have to be boundaries, not only for comprehension, but just in terms of what's appropriate, since the show we made is pretty much a labor of love for our own families. We try to add in what we feel as parents is important for kids to learn at an early age, whether that's behavioral things, like sharing, or just [urging kids to look] at things from a different perspective. There are boundaries, but the box is so much bigger, I think, than people realize or give kids credit for.
We don't want to put any subversive elements in the show. There are people who read that into [the show], but they're really not there. It's really just a show for kids.
Well, there was that article about how the show is a big hit among college-age stoners. How did you feel about that?
Christian: We just had to shake our heads, because stoners will stare at bark on a tree. It's just something to write news about. We get it, whatever.
Scott: We do like hyper colors and exciting, simple visual things that might harken back to H.R. Pufnstuf and things that could be interpreted as psychedelic, but really, it's just exciting, vibrant colors that interest us and are visually stimulating.
On a lot of other kids shows, the art is so busy and all the colors clash. Plus, there's this assumption that kids can only appreciate really simple folk songs with repetitive lyrics. And you think, "Why can't my kid learn to like the stuff that I listen to, so that I don't have to listen to this crap?" Christian: Exactly. And, you know, they can. Scott and I are huge music fans, we're both in bands, and our day jobs were in art. Scott was doing graphic arts and editing and I was working in marketing at a clothing company doing art. So we were doing music at night and art during the day, and the show is kind of a collaboration of what we've been into forever. You know, my kids like the Ramones and they like listening to hip-hop. They're not listening to NWA, of course, but why can't those type of beats and that fun dance music be appropriated for a kids show? The lyrical content, of course, isn't appropriate in most songs nowadays. But you can have a legitimate-sounding song like something by the Pixies, but make it about eating breakfast.
Why not try to have your kid develop a more sophisticated palate for music, really? Scott: Or at least you just expose them to different stuff. We've found that they do have a palate and they'll like and not like certain things, even at a young age. Christian had the Ramones thing with his kids, and I'll try and be like, "Oh, this is great for you guys," but they don't really like it, and then they'll pick up something else that they really like.
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