Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: #SHERA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER

On November 26, 2018November 25, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Television4 Comments

Y’all.

I had He-Man toys as a kid. I grew up in the eighties; it was inevitable. I didn’t really pay a hell of a lot of attention to She-Ra because … well, I was a boy. And She-Ra was for girls. I also watched the He-Man cartoon, and I have very detailed memories of being very angry with WGN because at some point or another they chose to commit the cardinal sin of pre-empting an episode of He-Man with a Cubs game.

I don’t think I ever watched the She-Ra cartoon. I remember that she said “For the honor of Greyskull” instead of “By the power of Greyskull,” but I think that’s cultural osmosis and not an actual memory. I could not have told you the names of a single member of her supporting cast prior to this week.

Honestly, I only decided to watch the show because it seemed to be pissing off a bunch of whiny manbaby manchildren, and I like it when those people’s feelings are hurt. If that makes me a bad person, I can live with it.

I probably shouldn’t even make this part of the CCPR series, y’all, because I loved every second of this show. The three of us watched the first two episodes together and we had to force our son to go to bed at his bedtime because he wanted to stay up and watch more. We watched the other eleven episodes in two big gulps over the next couple of days. This is absolutely 100% unequivocally the best show I’ve ever done one of these pieces on, and I’m only not calling it my favorite animated series of all time because I feel like the second I hit Publish on this piece I’ll remember what my favorite animated series really is and I’ll feel dumb.

I’m not gonna lie: a large portion of my affection for this show is somewhat political. I love what this show is as much as how it is what it is. But before I get into that, I want to be super clear about something: the show is hilarious and touching and action-packed and the voice acting is superb and even before we get into any of the representation issues it’s a great show. My son loved it so much that he’s created his own characters inspired by the show and he’s been drawing comic books about them and creating statues of them in Minecraft all day. My son does not love the show because of politics. My son loves the show because it’s awesome.

To wit: when She-Ra first turns Swift Wind, her horse, into a … pegacorn? Unisus? Rainbow horned wing-beast thing, the horse’s reaction to its new wings and horn had all three of us laughing so hard we could barely breathe. Sea Hawk’s insistence on setting his ships on fire was a running joke that never got any less funny. The relationship between She-Ra and Catra– an invention of the new series, from my understanding– is complex and heartbreaking, especially for a show where friendship is such an important theme, and it feels real. Adora’s fish-out-of-water reaction to … well, virtually everything after leaving the Horde is great. I love even the minor characters, with Mermista, Entrapta and Scorpia being particular favorites. The animation style, which got a lot of unnecessary abuse, is exactly appropriate for the show, and the facial expressions are worthy of The Amazing World of Gumball. It’s phenomenal, all the way through.

But yeah. Let’s talk about the cast. This is what She-Ra’s cast of characters used to look like:

I mean, the two on the outside are both purple…

This is what the cast of the new show looks like:

So straight off the jump we’re in a better place here. The cast of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is deliberately and intentionally diverse, both in the appearances of the characters and the actual voice cast. Glimmer is actually kinda chubby, and Spinnerella is flat-out fat,and it’s never once remarked upon by any of the characters. That’s just what they look like. It’s heavy on women characters, as a show with the words Princesses of Power might be expected to be, but it’s not just a palette swap with typical cartoons, where the women have less agency and less characterization. Bow may be the only male of the three principals with Adora and Glimmer, but he’s a solid character on his own right and his relationship with Sea Hawk is hilarious.

(A moment, please, to just appreciate the He-Man style of naming characters. This show features a sorceress character called Castaspella, mercifully called “Casta” most of the time, and a character who throws nets whose name is Netossa. And in case “Netossa” is too subtle for you, she actually explains it onscreen. The character named Perfuma is once represented by some random object while the group is making a plan and she insists on being represented by a perfume bottle. The names are ridiculous.)

And, oh, guys, it’s so gay. So very very very very very very very gay.

This show is so gay it makes Queer Eye look like 19 Kids and Counting.

Bow wears a midriff with a heart on it. At one point he needs to wear a tuxedo for a ball. His tuxedo has a cummerbund on it. He tears off the cummerbund so he can continue to rock his abs in his formalwear at the ball. Which he attends with a girl, but oh my God his reaction when he realizes Sea Hawk is there.

The bad guys are literally wiped away by a giant rainbow wave of love in the final episode.

Spoiler alert, I guess. I mean, if you didn’t know the good guys win at the end of the season. You probably coulda guessed.

Oh, and the goddamn horse ends up being a socialist.

You need to watch this show. If that means you need to get Netflix, do it. It’s great. I can’t wait for the second season. Neither can my seven-year-old son. If my recommendation doesn’t work for you, take his.

#REVIEW: Ada Twist, Scientist

On January 15, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews8 Comments

61pu8UIQ+kL._SX406_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg Something a little different tonight, if you don’t mind (and it’s my blog, so I’m doing it anyway whether you mind or not): I need to make sure you’re aware of a certain children’s book I just read to my son. I was considering making this part of my Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews series, but decided not to.

So here’s the deal: if you have kids under, say, 12 or so, or if you teach science to any kids of any age, or really if you teach at all, you need to acquire a copy of Ada Twist, Scientist and make reading it out loud to said children a part of your mission in life for the near future. Educators will already be aware of this: it’s occasionally a great idea to read out loud to kids, regardless of their age, and it’s also occasionally a good idea to read what are ostensibly children’s books to kids who are on paper too old to be reading those books. You should all find your kids and then find this book (in that order, preferably) and then read it to them.

Here’s why: Ada Twist, Scientist does a great idea of breaking down how science works and how the scientific process works and how scientists think in 32 pages of simple, rhyming prose. The fact that the titular scientist is a young black woman is just icing on the cake. Representation is important, and young women of any race need to see themselves as scientists. So do black children of either gender. And my white male son needs to see scientists who don’t look like him. Plus, again: it taught my five-year-old the word hypothesis. Which he’ll be using in sentences by the end of the week.

Go check it out.

Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: ZIG & SHARKO

On December 31, 2016December 30, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Television

coloriage-zig-et-sharko-10755

So. ZIG & SHARKO. See if you can figure out the premise of the show from that top image there; it ain’t complicated. Getting a strong Wile E. Coyote vibe? Yeah, that’s not too far off.

There is a mermaid. Her name is Marina. There is a shark named Sharko. There is a… hell, I have no idea what Zig is supposed to be. Some sort of canine variant? A hyena? A Tasmanian devil? I dunno, but he lives on a volcanic island in the middle of nowhere, and the volcanic island is host to basically every animal that exists when the show calls for it, including– in the episode currently airing on my TV right now, a cheetah (or maybe a leopard?) which is an animal also not generally expected on volcanic islands.

Anyway, Zig wants to eat Marina. Sharko is Marina’s protector and doesn’t want him to. Marina is either extraordinarily bubbleheaded or actually special needs in some way and doesn’t generally notice the competition for her bloody death that takes place around her in every episode.

The hermit crab is named Bernie, and he is generally irrelevant.

The show is French, but that doesn’t really matter as there is never any actual speech, just lots of grunting and giggles and random noises. Much like the aforementioned Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons, here’s the plot of every episode: Zig wants to eat Marina. He concocts some complicated plan to do so. Sharko stops him, generally administering a vicious beating along the way. But it’s way more creepy than RR/WEC ever got, because Marina looks human— well, mostly– and plus she dresses like a mermaid, and is therefore half naked all the time, with bouncy girl parts and such, and… yeah, it makes it weird. Generally harmless, but definitely a bit weird.

Oh, and then there’s that one super racist episode. In one episode, shark hunters find Sharko. They’re Chinese. They wanna make shark fin soup out of him. When they see him, they look like this:

And this happens:

This show aired in 2011, and not, say, 1943. I had to take pictures of the TV screen, because I couldn’t find any screencaps online. How in the fuck? This is some 1870’s-level Yellow Peril shit right here, with a nice dose of “they all look the same” mixed in for good measure. The six fishermen in the red literally all move and act exactly the same for the entire episode, and the only noises they make are creepy giggling.

Maybe lose this episode, Netflix. I doubt anyone will notice.

Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: SARAH & DUCK

On July 30, 2016July 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Television

Sarah & Duck has been on constantly at my house for… oh, ten years? Fifteen? A hundred and twelve? How old am I? What year is this? What century? Did we elect a plant President yet? A real long damn time.

Sarah & Duck’s theme song plays four times an episode, since each episode is broken into two little mini-episodes and we get the theme song played at the beginning and the end of each, meaning that in the middle you get to hear it two times in a row. Picture these words chanted in a charming middle-aged British accent over gentle guitar music:

Sarah and duck. (quack!)
Sarah and duck. (quack!)
Sarah and duck. (quack!)
Sarahandduck. (quack.)

Quack isn’t actually a word; that’d be Duck quacking. The only difference is the cadence; the fourth Sarah and duck is faster than the other three.

So, yeah. Sarah & Duck. Here they are. Try to guess which one is which:

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The artwork might remind you of South Park. I doubt that’s intentional, as it would be impossible for any animated program to be farther from South Park in tone and execution as Sarah & Duck. Sarah is a girl. Duck is a duck. They’re both very, very, very British. There’s also a nameless, disembodied narrator, who not only narrates but talks to both of the characters. They talk back. He’s very British too, and says things like well done and have a go and Tuesday and Bobber-clobber, which is probably an ethnic slur, all the time.

Sarah appears to have no parents, but she lives in a nice house with Duck, who has his own bedroom. Adults are occasionally present as side characters, and then there’s the narrator, but he doesn’t have a body so he doesn’t really count. Other things talk, but not all of them. Duck only quacks. This is Plate Girl:

Picture Shows: Plate Girl squeaks her plate to speak to the lost plates.

I want it noted for the record that I didn’t know that picture had a caption until uploading it, and I’m keeping it there, because that’s the kind of show this is. Plate Girl has a plate with her all the time. The plate doesn’t talk. There was an episode where she lost it in the fog, and she was very sad, and eventually Sarah figured out that she accidentally set it on top of a giant tortoise who happened to be walking by when Plate Girl set her plate down so that she could open the gate into Sarah’s “garden,” which is British for “front yard.” I have not seen this “lost plates” episode yet, somehow.

This is Scarf Lady, who seems mis-named:

Old_lady

You will note that Scarf Lady’s handbag has a face, and talks, and generally seems to not actually like Scarf Lady very much, which I would think would be a more salient characteristic than her everpresent scarf. But no, she’s not Talking Handbag Lady. She’s also not Keeps a Cthulhoid Sentient Pile of Immobile Yarn Captive in Her Horrifying Knitting Abbatoir Lady, but she does that too:

sarah_and_duck_s1_ep5_1288218983

Oh, and there are talking shallots in Sarah’s garden. By which I mean an American garden-garden, not a British lawn-garden. The shallots are the only thing growing in the garden, and the British pronunciation of “shallots” is different enough from American pronunciation that it took forever for me to figure out what he was saying. They talk too:

images Anyway, Sarah has adventures, and they’re whimsical and British– did I mention this show was British?– and fun, and occasionally slightly entertaining, and the way she has to sound out long words can be really cute at times, and the show’s harmless and sweet and actually not very annoying at all.

Until the Pink Episode. Which starts off typically, but then goes off the rails completely for a moment, in a way that will have you questioning your own sanity and the show’s entire premise. Watch this to the 1:49 mark and then pause it:

You see what I mean here? The weird look on Duck’s face, the creepy bells, the sudden horrified silence of the narrator as the show implies that Sarah is about to carve her own heart out to make sure she’s as pink on the inside as she is on the outside? It’s the most WTF moment of any kids’ TV show I’ve ever seen.

The show is, uh, not normally like that. But that’s what got it reviewed. Because it ain’t a kids’ show until somebody’s threatening to disembowel themselves, right?

Two thumbs up, but one of them is severed.

Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: DINO SQUAD

On April 25, 2016June 9, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Television3 Comments

vlcsnap-2011-08-29-23h37m58s59 Oh, Dino Squad. How much do I hate thee? I hate thee a whole damn lot. In general, I am very much pro-dinosaur and pro-dinosaur programming, but this show is edging closer and closer to the “Oh, sorry, Netflix is broken” level of I can’t watch this shit anymore right now. It’s getting the kid interested in dinosaurs, and he’s learning a few things, but it’s making me insane, and it’s all about me and we can’t have that.

We will start with the theme song:

You didn’t click that, so here are the lyrics:

I’m in
I’m in
I’m in
in the dino squad
on a beautiful beach not far away
I went to visit for a day
got covered with some gooey ooze
that changed my DNA
Now I’m trying to act normal
Keep my cool
While other kids play after school
I turn into a prehistoric hero
I’m in
I’m in
I’m in
in the Dino Squad!

Okay.

I understand that complaining about suspension of disbelief and scientific inaccuracy in a kids’ show is a mug’s game. I’m a superhero guy. There are expensive superhero statues in the room with me and action figures on my desk. My disbelief is suspended from the firmament itself most of the time, but this show still breaks the hell out of it. So let me just lay this show out for you, and you tell me exactly when it gets to be too much. Here is what Dino Squad is about:

A bunch of kids (high school students, old enough to drive motorcycles) go to the beach and get covered in ooze. They discover it has given them the ability to turn into dinosaurs. So far, I’m OK! This is basically Daredevil’s origin, right? Spider-Man got bitten by a radioactive spider. Gooey ooze. I’m good.
They meet this old lady, whose name I can never remember, and she tells them they can turn into dinosaurs. She’s in this picture:

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So, all right, still okay.

The lady tells them that she is, herself, a dinosaur. She is, in fact, a velociraptor! A velociraptor who somehow avoided dying in the Chicxulub impact and “evolved” to be able to turn into a human being. You literally see the two velociraptors diving into a cave during the meteor strike.
This is not how evolution works.
Velociraptors were the size of turkeys and had feathers. If you saw one today, you’d think “Ooh, what a weird-looking bird!”. Cassowaries are considerably scarier-looking.
Velociraptors died out ten million years before the Chicxulub impact.
This means that she was already somehow ten million years old before that explosion, and therefore the oldest living thing on Earth, exceeded possibly only by the other immortal velociraptor, and is therefore…
…currently 75 million years old.

But that’s Science Luther talking. Shut up, Science Luther! It’s a kid’s show! Okay. Like I said, eventually that line gets crossed. Maybe this is what does it:

The other velociraptor is also still around, and is therefore also 75 million years old. He calls himself… wait for it… Victor Veloci.
Victor Veloci’s evil plan is to occasionally turn rodents and fish into dinosaurs, but only a couple at a time. He’s insanely incompetent for a 75 million year old immortal dino-person. The two of them should literally rule the planet by now.
You turn Victor Veloci’s dino-rodents or whatever back into regular rodents via a two-step process: 1) shooting them with a sprayer that causes the “dino DNA” to be sweated out of their skin, and 2) then– I am not joking– sucking the dino DNA up with a vacuum cleaner. This makes them better.

Has the suspension of disbelief gotten harder yet? Still need more? Okay. Here’s the kicker, then. This is Victor Veloci’s hair:

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And, lest you think “Oh, he’s just long-haired, what’s the big deal?” let me show you another picture of Victor Veloci:

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No, he only has long hair on one side. And that is an honest-to-God red streak dyed into his hair. His haircut, somehow, is the most ridiculous thing about the show.

Note also his minions, who are dressed like COBRA applicants who got rejected for dressing too ridiculously.

So, yeah. The show is about how this 75-million year old supervillain is routinely outwitted by a bunch of teenagers who can turn into dinosaurs. Note that Veloci himself can regain his velociraptor form at any time. (So can the old lady, presumably, although I don’t know if I’ve seen an episode where she does.)

And those teenagers? They’re… weird. Especially this one:

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Now, again, these kids are in late high school, because they’re driving, but this one particularly– he turns into a pteranodon– keeps getting storylines that imply he is nine. This particular image is from an episode where he’s having problems with bullies. The bully’s name is McFinn, which is somehow much more ridiculous than it should be; it sounds really dumb anytime anyone says “McFinn” on the show, especially when they imply that this “McFinn” person is scary or tough. He’s just not. Plus, dude, you’re a dinosaur. Drop him off a cliff. There’s one right there by that lighthouse y’all are based in for some reason.

Now, I know, high school kids do have problems with bullies, and I’m not trying to minimize that. But the way they handle it is weirdly infantilizing, especially since they really do try to treat pteranodude like he’s a lot younger than the rest of them. He also gets an episode where Victor Veloci pretends to be a pretty girl in an MMORPG (75 million years old, people) and tries to get him to “break Internet safety rules” and tell her where he is so that Veloci can… do… something. I dunno. Underpants gnomes, profit. The high school students have technology sophisticated enough to detect two mutated dinosaurs three states over and this dude is trynna catfish over Xbox Live. I don’t get it. And mohawk dude is the only one who gets these storylines.

(Oh, and remember that “play after school” line from the theme song? Is that what high school kids do after school? They play?)

Here’s the transformation video. It plays six times an episode. If your kid watches this show, expect him to spend a lot of time yelling “65 million years back!” and “going into dino mode” when you need him to put on his shoes:

One (1) point is awarded to the show because the big black kid, who would be a football player on any other program, is actually the computer nerd. Other than that, I hate this show.

Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: SLUGTERRA

On August 11, 2015August 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television7 Comments

images I’m actually pretty sure I… like this one? We have a new hotness in the Siler household, the latest of any number of new hotnesses, and this time he’s plucked a thing called SLUGTERRA out of the Netflix queue to mildly obsess over for a few weeks. SLUGTERRA is interesting; it’s the first show he’s ever really liked that I thought “Oh, this show is designed to sell kids a bunch of dumb shit,” except since we watch it on Netflix we don’t see any commercials and so– ha!– we evade Disney X D’s(*) capitalist clutches. That said, before I realized the show was designed to sell kids shit, I’ll freely admit that I thought Man, this would make a fun turn-based video game.

So there’s that.

Anyway! The premise. It’s weird. The show is set… underground, I think? Maybe under the real world? And there are people, but also trolls (they’re blue!) and whatever the mole dude is:

They’re called “slugslingers.” They shoot at bad guys with guns.

The ammunition for their guns is slugs. These dudes:

When the slugs get shot out of guns, they twirl a little bit and then they can spin a web, or set themselves on fire, or freeze stuff, or turn into spinning blades, or any bit of nonsense you can imagine, and sometimes they punch each other out of the way, and sometimes they just explode, which seems kinda lazy, and they’ve only got one of each kind of slug that they have and so once they’re shot I guess they just wander back to their owners for some reason. There’s probably something complicated behind it because this show has a Goddamn wiki but my kid is four so he’s not too into the details. Oh, and also they ride around on mechanical animals. There was this one episode where a dude was riding a robo-snake. I approve of robo-snakes.

The sound design, believe it or not, is the coolest thing about the show. The little slugs make cool noises when they’re being fired at each other. I like the sounds they make.

There are bad guys. This is Dr. Blakk. Yeah. Blakk.

Ooh, scary. This is Dr. Blakk’s henchman. His name is– I am not making this up– El Diablos Nacho.

large_size_Slugterra_009_D5 — Your name is a REALLY stupid name.

He’s actually scarier-looking than Dr. Blakk, but his name is Nacho and there’s a grammar error in the first two words of his name and plus there’s no Spanish in this world anyway so why the hell is his name El Diablos Nacho and I refuse to worry about it.

(See the little red canisters on his shirt? And the blue ones on the good guys up above? They have to slam the slugs into those before shooting them, then put the canisters into the gun, then fire the shot. It’s very 1800s. I want to know how the hell this ecosystem evolved, and who realized you could shoot these things.)

It’s a fun show. I like the characters, and the setting is pleasantly weird, and like I said the sound design is stellar. I just can’t get behind calling a dude El Diablos Nacho, though.

(*) Why is that space in there? Because if you take Disney X D’s name and you write it without a space, WordPress turns it into Disney XD, which isn’t a word, and wait, is that why it’s called Disney X D? How do you say that? And how do you turn off the substitution in WordPress? OMG OLD.

Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: THE SUPER HERO SQUAD SHOW

On June 20, 2015June 20, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews6 Comments

I was all ready to do a review of Avengers Assemble! when the boy noticed The Super Hero Squad Show on Netflix, and he hasn’t watched an episode of anything else since. There were only two seasons of this show for some reason, and both seasons are on Netflix. I think we’ve watched everything at least once by now.

This is actually a pretty good show, believe it or not. The premise: There are two cities, Super Hero City and what I believe is called Villainville, and they’re separated by a giant wall. All the people and all the superheroes live in Super Hero City, and the villains do villain stuff so that the heroes have to fight them. The first season is obsessed with finding and controlling little broken bits of a magic sword and the second season is all about what happens when the sword gets put together and is a lot more cosmic in tone.

There’s a rockin’ theme song, too. It has no right to not be a Bowling for Soup song. Check it out:

The cool thing about Avengers Assemble! was how seriously it took itself– and there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll still be writing a piece on that show soon enough. The Super Hero Squad Show takes absolutely nothing seriously, and that’s the genius of the show, because it knows it’s goofy as hell and runs with it. Particularly fun are the portrayals of Captain America and Thor; Cap (who is a side character, surprisingly) is convinced he’s still in the 1940s and talks like a dad from a sitcom from that era, and Thor has the Norse nonsense turned up to 12– the episode from Season 2 where Beta Ray Bill is introduced is especially funny.

Hulk calls the Falcon “Bird,” which absolutely never ever stops being funny.

My one beef with the show? It occasionally kinda treats its female characters like crap, and flat-out sexual harassment is a bit more of a theme than it ought to be, in that sexual harassment is a thing that happens and it shouldn’t ever be. There’s a bit where Mr. Fantastic is proud of Ms. Marvel for having a good idea and he kisses her on the cheek as a reward. It doesn’t surface all that often but when it does it’s really jarring and annoying, and Ms. Marvel is frequently a part of it; she’s frequently portrayed as a ditzy girl and it’s really obnoxious. She ought to be Captain Marvel anyway, dangit.

(It’s a boys’ show, you say? Shut up, I respond. Boys need to see females who aren’t doormats and aren’t going to take time during world-saving to squawk “You think I’m cute?” like Starfire does to Human Torch at one point. Boys need feminism too, goddammit. And that’s before we get to the part where girls watch superhero shows too. Even if no women or girls ever watched the show, the show needs to portray women better anyway.)

Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: BOB ZOOM

On May 13, 2015May 13, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews25 Comments

bobzoom_toalha I don’t know what to do with this one.

I hesitate to call BOB ZOOM the new hotness; more like a passing fancy– the kid noticed it and insisted on watching it a few times and then it disappeared from Netflix like a bad Brazilian dream. Bob Zoom is an ant. He does not, in any noticeable fashion, ever zoom anywhere, and the provenance of his last name is unclear. Then again, the show is Brazilian, and translated from Portuguese, and I’m really tempted to ascribe all of the weirdness to the fact that the show was originally written for a Brazilian audience. But I’m not convinced. They find this shit weird too, right? They have to.

Start off with this: the ant’s name isn’t Bob Zoom. It’s Bobby. They never once call him Bob, ever. I originally wondered if this was also an artifact of translation, and the show was originally called Bob y Zoom, and Zoom was some other character, but there’s no sign of him anywhere and I’m not sure y actually means and in Portuguese anyway. But here, watch the intro to the show. His name’s Bobby!:

There’s no actual storyline to BOB ZOOM; there are (well, were) two episodes on Netflix and they’re entirely composed of songs. Bob himself doesn’t do much of anything. Some of the songs are fairly normal; there’s the alphabet, and they do a version of BINGO that isn’t far from the American standard but has entertainingly been translated from English to Portuguese and then back to English again. There’s a Maori song called Epo I Tai Tai é, and I dare you to head down the Internet rabbit hole that trying to figure out what that translates as will lead you to, because it’s terrifying.

And then there are what I assume are a couple of traditional Brazilian children’s songs, and that’s where the show gets weird. Well, not immediately. The song about the cow named Barnabe who is in love with another cow is fairly catchy and fun and normal:

Your foot’s tapping, right? And you’ve already got it sorta memorized? That’s how kids’ songs are supposed to work.

I give you Mrs. Cockroach:

Now, before I say more, let me point out that my wife works with an actual Brazilian national and he has never heard of this song. Which is comforting, because make fun of the lying poor person isn’t something that I’ve gotten an impression is a big part of the Brazilian psyche, and this song vibes all sorts of creepy and very probably racist in some sort of coded Brazilian way. And the animation is messed up, too; Mrs. Cockroach spends the occasional moment in the video looking seriously depressed and sad and then puts on her strong face, fully aware that the white children in the back of her car are going to keep making fun of her no matter what she tries to do.

And that’s before we get to what are obviously translation issues: her shell being hard as steel seems difficult to connect to her class ring, for example. But this song, and one more that keeps the weird but takes away the creepy and the “Wait, is this racist too?” element, definitely put BOB ZOOM high among the ranks of weird shit that I would never have been exposed to if I hadn’t had a kid.

Ah, what the hell, I’ll give you the chicken song too. It will haunt your dreams. Enjoy: