Jumping head first into the deep end of parenthood in the 21st Century has provided me with some strange discoveries and revelations. One of which is just how many nursery rhymes and children’s songs you can find on Youtube. Combined with a Chromecast, this is actually pretty great. It’s much more controllable than TV, more convenient, and can be used in varied doses to fill gaps of time in a semi-educational way. Many of them are incorporating CGI instead of 2D animation (one channel in particular is actually really great at this). Others are mediocre but forgivable. But I want to talk about the third category: the WTF-inspiring nightmare fuel that crops up in the Related Videos section of otherwise reasonable content.
(Caveat: You’ll notice that many of these videos are over an hour long. That’s common for kid’s songs; long medleys to reduce the number of interactions with the Search bar. I actually kind of like it, but for your purposes, just watch the first song in each)
Idle Hands
Finger Family is okay for a kid’s song. It’s a song about all the fingers on your hand. It doesn’t really teach much beyond that, but it’s still mostly harmless. Here’s what a normal one looks like, for reference (I had never heard this one as a kid).
For some reason, however, I keep coming across videos for Finger Family that involve everything but actual fingers. Let’s start with this monstrosity.
What I’m hearing is a song about fingers. What I’m seeing are Jell-O molds and gummy bears beating the shit out of each other.
And then there’s this.
First off, you’ve gone and set the song to Frère Jacques instead of using, like, the actual Finger Family song. But more importantly what the fuck is wrong with these creepy-ass egg faces? You charged straight into the uncanny valley and never looked back. AND WHY ARE THEY EGGS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Eggs aren’t fingers! You have created a problem that didn’t exist and then solved that problem in the most disturbing way possible.
Little Baby What Now?
The next two sections are dedicated to a couple of channels I’ve struggled to understand.
To be fair, Little Baby Bum isn’t the worst channel out there. But it does have the worst name. I’m assuming it’s less hilarious in Britain, its country of origin. My biggest issue with this channel is that it’s just so somber. Everything is low-energy and I feel like they’re putting my kids in a trance. The low-budget CGI might actually be what drives it. They can’t animate well, so they slowed everything down. But then they go off-script in strange and and unusual ways to boot.
This one is just confusing. Bah Bah Black Sheep’s Interstellar Knit Goods Delivery Service? What’s interesting is that the sheep is a recurring character in LBB videos and always wears his space suit. At least they are consistent with their characterization.
Then I found this.
For reference, “London Bridge is Falling Down” is a nursery rhyme and game that originated in the 18th Century and has one verse. Apparently there’s a much longer version that was published in 1951. Neither version makes reference to an evil hydrophobic monster rampaging through London, or the porcine superhero that would ultimately best him.
Again, LBB is nothing consistent. Superhero Pig shows up in other videos as well. I don’t know any Englishfolk, but if I did, I would have asked them if this is an actual figure in Anglo Saxon mythos. I like to do my research, you know?
Chu Choose-Something-Else TV
I wanted to make a separate section just for Chu Chu TV because I hate it. I hate it so much. But apparently the internet disagrees with me because this India-based channel’s content is always at the top of every damned search for every damned kid’s song. The art is atrocious, the accents often unintelligible, and most importantly they can’t get the melody or lyrics to many of the songs right. They’re always just slightly wrong. This confuses kids who like to sing these songs away from the TV, but now have multiple conflicting versions kicking around in their impressionable heads.
Here’s their take on Finger Family, where all the fingers are actually giraffes. Because why not. Also, wrong melody.
Here’s one about a kid who tries to drown a cat.
To be fair, they didn’t invent it. But just because a song exists doesn’t make it worth animating. Also, what the fuck, England? I mean, were there any rhymes that people cooked up that didn’t make the cut to turn into cultural memes? Maybe that’s why they were called the Dark Ages. Because your songs were so fucking dark.
This post is dragging on, which means I should probably just start stockpiling more of these. Clearly there will be a Part 2.
I think I liked it better when my kids were just watching What Does the Fox Say on repeat.