Grew up watching Arthur every morning before school well into middle school (have a sister who's three years younger). Arthur's family and life was more precisely like mine than any other I ever saw on TV growing up, and for that it will always be special. Standout episodes include the time the Brain sleeps over and Arthur gets mad about how clean and well-mannered he is, then goes to the Brain's house and finds out he's a slob, the lesson being he was just being a good guest, something childhood me took to heart; the Hurl-i-whirl ep; the ep where Arthur hits DW with the swing and gets in trouble (very relevant to my life with a little sister); and of course the seminal "trapped overnight in the library" ep.
The writers of the show, perhaps by nature of having a lot of episodes to work with, made a stunningly large corpus of nearly universal childhood experiences. I don’t look fondly on my own childhood (not for any bad reasons or anything) but I do admire the thought and work that went into making a show relatable even for people with boring childhoods like mine.
Some of my favorite episodes are “Prove it”, where Arthur’s sister tricks him into taking her to the science museum by promoting pseudoscience, and the episode “Bugged” which contains a surprisingly dark retelling of “Metamorphosis” about being a know it all. Just a phenomenal show.
As a parent I'm very interested in why you would label your childhood as "boring". I would feel bad if my kids would feel the same. What is the reason? Were your parents very protective? Did you stay inside most of the time? What would you consider "not boring"?
I found my childhood to be boring, bordering on depressing. It was literally for a lack of stimulation for the following reasons:
- Only child.
- Invalid mother, so no access to all that entails: no car, no ability to get to places to do stuff, and all limitations related to health concerns.
- Father worked all day.
- I lived in a small, dark apartment with no internet, no cable, and no nearby friends.
Of course a kid is gonna find ways to entertain himself; I wandered the neighborhood, watched broadcast TV, played with my toys, etc.
But the general tone of my childhood can be summed up in a typical weekend: since dad is at work and mom is disabled and sleeps all day, I build my day around the newspaper TV guide. Just boring crap on until I Love Lucy comes on at 4 PM. Fill the cracks in with bouts of random wandering around the neighborhood by myself, but no kids around to play with.
Things changed as I grew and got more agency, but my formatives years of like 0-10 were pretty much this. Not ideal; I therefore have pretty strong opinions about giving my kids structure and access to their interests.
Also an only child and I don’t think that makes things boring at all. I hate that narrative. I look at people with siblings and I am disgusted at the amount of fighting involved.
Kids fight with each other because they need attention. The best way, but this is hard, is to give them undivided attention for as long as they want it.
Then you have to figure out how to reward cooperative play and not reinforce either negatively or positively bad behavior.
Hmm I have the opposite reaction, as a parent with a very "not boring" childhood I hope to provide enough stability for my children's complaint to be that we're boring, while taking the good parts of my childhood and instilling a sense of independence and capability in them. Time will tell if this is successful.
I guess the pendulum swings back and forth. I had a stable but not boring childhood. I think the main positive source was the small Forrest I grew up next to, an endless source of entertainment and adventure.
My kids don’t have this, but our garden is pretty big. I hope they aren’t bored by it. I dream of moving to a place in or near a Forrest with a small lake preferably.
I grew up in a safe neighborhood with a ton of twisting bike trails that weave through the various villages, but, are "behind" them in natural landscape so you always felt like you were in another world.
As a kid, these trails were the source of so much happiness and joy. I could hop on my bike, and go explore. Miles and miles of trails. As I grew up, I would venture further and further on the trails.
There are a couple points where the trails exit the safe neighborhood area, and connect up to the more general biking trails ... those were always such fascinating boundaries for me as a child. I'll never forget the thrill of crossing over into that forbidden land on my little 1 speed bike.
I was probably 8.
I don't plan to have kids but if I did, I would really want to ensure that they had a source of mystery and adventure which was their own. A sense of independence and freedom to explore.
Making sure kids have a small amount of unstructured time to forge forward themselves through....whatever obstacles...can possibly set them up for some fortitude later.
Mine was only boring because I had a lot of interests but no real way of exploring them (even with the internet) and thus never really accomplished anything of note. I can’t really point to any real happy memories though none were exceptionally unhappy either.
While I never had any similarities between Arthur's life and mine, there was always something about the show that felt both deeply relatable, and on some level familiar. It was also a little odd finding out that I was around for only 3 or so years before it existed. Makes you feel old.
Mr. Rogers, the original Sesame Street, Zoom for me. My mom was a big PBS enthusiast. Didn't get to watch the "regular" TV, even the kids shows, until I was older, which was something of a problem as I could not relate to many of the things kids at school would talk about.
One thing I’ve noticed is the people I know that watched PBS as kids have a generally less cynical outlook on life than those that didn’t. It’s a weird, unscientific observation I’ve made but I think watching characters that are role models like Mr Rogers and aren’t paragons of stupidity like Ren and Stimpy or Spongebob might be part of the reason why.
Regardless, I’m thankful that I only watched PBS (and TV Land and History Channel).
Mr. Rogers and other PBS childrens' shows are meant to be educational. Ren and Stimpy, Spongebob, etc - aside from being intended for an older demographic - are meant to be entertaining.
Of course part of the education that good childrens' programs instill is self-esteem and empathy - to find value in yourself and others.
Values the sociopathic, nihilistic world of adulthood will then try to twist and mock and beat out of them for the rest of their lives.
Shin-chan is absolutely not aimed at kids. The manga was a seinen, or young adult men, demographic. It's an older demographic target than shonen like Naruto or Dragonball Z. An equivalent here would be South Park or Family Guy.
English localizations of anime in that time period were often pretty heavily changed from the Japanese originals. I haven't seen this one in particular but I wouldn't be surprised if it was practically a different show by the time western translators and editors were done with it.
Edit: Yep, from the wikipedia page:
"Many characters had their names changed to American-sounding ones, the original background music was completely replaced with new background music, and scenes with nudity were edited to remove any signs of indecent exposure. Most adult jokes were re-made into family-friendly jokes, and the profanity was edited out. However, the frequent appearance of Shinnosuke's naked buttocks, as well as humor relating to breast-size and sexual themes, remained in the finished product. Some episodes that displayed adult material and mature content were not dubbed at all. Additionally, the episodes were dubbed out of their original order which created continuity errors. For example, episode 29 shows Shin bringing his classmates to visit his newborn sister, episode 30 shows his sister coming home from her birth in the hospital and in episode 52 it was revealed that Shin was going to have a sister."
It's broadcast at dinner time on Sundays. So yes, living in Japan one can hardly fail to know it. Character don't age. Technology is not really present, so it's kind of timeless.
Sazae herself is named after a shellfish. As are all the other main characters.
Sazae-san is such an institution here that there's slang describing the feeling when you watch it on Sunday night and know you have a full work week coming up: Sazae-san Syndrome.
That's interesting. Growing up in the UK as a child the equivalent of Sazae-san Syndrome was hearing the Antiques Roadshow theme. Even now when I hear that music it fills me with the Sunday night blues.
It could be that everyone in the US is self-centered and thinks the world ends at the edge of North America. Or perhaps the executive producer who was quoted simply didn't know of these shows and made an honest mistake.
Well, they could also titled it "The Longest-Running Kids Animated Series In US". Naming it the longest animated series in history implied that there is no other animated series produced all around the world, which run longer than it.
They give a vague description of their data collection process here: https://www.similarweb.com/corp/ourdata/ I bet the raw data is pretty noisy (since most HN users probably won't e.g. allow a shady extension to report their browsing habits, Similarweb is likely only seeing a small sample of all traffic) but as long as the noise is uncorrelated with the demographics they're tracking, they can probably arrive in the right ballpark.
Or you could just ask dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27656775 Although I'm pretty sure he said something like "Last I checked, about 50% of HN readers were in the US" a few years ago as well, so I don't know whether that info is up to date.
I remember when my youngest sister was watching it in the late 90s.
My daughter started watching it in the last couple of years. I was a little taken aback that it was the same show.
There's at least one episode where a reference is made to the non-passing of time in their universe. We got some DVDs of the older episodes from the library. I found it interesting, and a little spooky, that technology in the "Arthurverse" updates while the ages of all the characters remained the same. It's like some kind of twisted "groundhog day" scenario.
Jacob Geller has a neat video essay about what the passage of time means in a timeless animated show: "The Best Simpsons Intro Is About Losing Everything You Love"
It's not just technology either, the character back stories get updated too. There's an episode from the 90s where Homer feels old because he doesn't understand grunge rock. Then, more than a decade later, they made a flashback episode where his backstory was updated to show that he basically started grunge, and Kurt Cobain ripped him off.
I think to maintain relevancy shows like to stay up to date with drawing style and current technology, though. I think kids would find it funny if Arthur were still using a typewriter and didn't own a computer, for example.
Sazae-san story is now basically like that. Their lifestyle is frozen at around 1980s. The anime production also had been used analog cel rather than digital until about 2010. It's last TV anime show uses cel (oh I must put this word: "at least in Japan").
To keep things relatable. Most stories may at their core be a rehash or Aesop, Shakespere and the hero's journey but that doesn't mean they are relatable to the audience. At some point Beowulf must turn into Siegfried and Siegfried must become Luke Skywalker.
Now that's impressive because it means Mr. Rogers (the show) is almost 60 years old. The show feels so timeless though and I can imagine kids in 10 years still watching the show.
I like how Arthur got away with doing a "South Park", "Beavis & Butt-Head", and "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist" parody on PBS Kids in Season 4's "The Contest": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_6-EKOixUs
I dunno, I put Spongebob's fall from grace right around the movie. Before that things were pretty excellent, even if they weren't always stellar they were decent.
Was that title a Seinfeld reference? Obviously kind of generic, but also one of the most famous sitcom episodes of all time, even moreso in the early 2000s
It's a good lesson in how group dynamics can cause social movements to get way out of hand. Being a cartoon, it's a little farfetched, but the episode was inspired by an actual event:
I don't think Arthur tackles it particularly well, although the message at the end is decent. I'm nevertheless impressed that they even thought to try and approach this topic with such a young audience.
This is truly sad, Arthur is up there with Wishbone in the PBS pantheon for me and fostered a deep love of reading.
Incidentally the author of the original Arthur books, Marc Brown, visited my siblings' school and he was a thoroughly delightful man with an incredible knack for talking to kids in a frank but funny way.
I thought you meant 9/11 when you said 911. But having watched half of it now I am a bit confused, and I thought maybe your comment meant that it was about 911 as in emergency response, since they have a real life fireman talking in the middle. But so I went back to your comment and I think my initial understanding of what you meant is what you said. I’ll watch the rest and see. But I guess maybe being a kids show they are tackling the same subjects in a gentle manner.
This seems so obvious and easily researched - I'm surprised the author didn't correct it. I can't find any extenuating context. E.g. they don't mention anything about "in the US".
That's not what's going on. It just never occurs to most people that something might have happened outside their home.
There's a popular game, Timeline ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128664/timeline ), involving placing events (represented on cards) in the proper chronological sequence. Due to modern sensitivities, many of the cards have titles of the form "The discovery of America (by Europeans)".
But mostly they don't. "Invention of the printing press", explicitly lacking the "(by Europeans)" rider, is located in the 15th century, several hundred years after the invention of the printing press. None of this stuff is hard to look up.
My understanding is that "invention of the printing press" generally refers to movable type, the thing that caused a revolution in the mass production of written material. Other techniques like block printing or indeed any other method of applying ink in a fixed pattern, came earlier but were not as generally useful.
Porcelain movable type had been used hundreds of years prior in China, but it never quite caught on because of the number of distinct characters needed.
Printing and movable type was first invented in China (though it failed to catch on there and as far as we know was separately reinvented in Europe). However the printing press, which is a mechanical device using movable type, was first invented by Gutenberg.
> However the printing press, which is a mechanical device using movable type, was first invented by Gutenberg.
The printing press is a mechanical device which mass-produces books by pressing inked plates against paper. Movable type is just a way to construct printing plates. It makes no difference to the press.
I'm intrigued that you believe China invented movable type without inventing a press that could use it. But suffice it to say that while movable type did not catch on in China, printing and printing presses were huge.
It's ok for a radio to focus on its own country, but to make a claim for something "in all history" looking for information in at least a few other countries is the bare minimum.
Here where I live I commonly see "touristic museums" and touristic places make claims that can be easily disproven by a google search and that is just not OK.
Imagine in a few decades some museum in US about media goes on to claim Arthur was the longest running kids show in the world and even link to npr as a source?
npr should have known better and put "In US" in their title.
The fundamental dishonesty of Arthur is that the original story book was about Arthur fitting in and feeling bad about his extremely long nose and had a really nice message for kids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur%27s_Nose
When the animated series came around they went and shortened Arthur's nose and completely undermined it.
I read these books to my three year old. Arthur’s nose is only large in the first book (or books, I only have one from that time). As early as the mid 80s Marc Brown changed him into the aardvark we know today.
Arthur was always my favorite as a kid. What kept me loving it as an adult is how well every episode holds up and how brilliant and absurd the humor could be. In one episode, a kid's head falls out of the sky and compliments the lawn it lands on. In another one, a tiny version of Neil Gaiman is just chilling inside someone's sandwich. Both of these make as much sense in context.
For me, the mastery Arthur had over complex themes and childhood experiences was best shown in its autism episode. It's called "When Carl Met George" and while it dealt with Asperger's specifically (which has since been wrapped up into the Autism Spectrum Disorder umbrella, thanks to the DSM-V), it still explains what being autistic is like to children in a plain, easy-to-understand way.
There were multiple episodes that I remember watching as a child (In fact, I think I have seen all the episodes except the recent ones in the last 3-4 years). The one where they make a movie due to the new "James Hound" movie is rated PG-13, the Christmas movie about uncle frank, the Mr Rogers episode where he comes and stay in Arthur house(there was another episode like this except Arthur's teacher Mr.Ratburn) and so much others. However, one thing that was stuck in my head ever since I saw it was an episode where Muffy was watching a Backstreet Boys music video and Francine calls them a sellout. So she makes a band and calls it "U stink." Then they play in a front of a crowd and the Backstreet Boys themselves come[0]. That episode and the ones where they have different animation like South Park and beavis and butthead were the ones that stuck with me as a kid. But I have to admit how long this aired, I thought it would end in 2015, but apparently they kept making new episodes.
As someone without cable tv, the towers with the tv antenna fell on 9/11 and so did any ability to watch anything other than NJ pbs. Arthur, zoom and this math show were the only thing I could watch in high school. So sad.
For some people the signal was back in 3 days. But for most people it never came back and they all signed up for satellite and cable tv. When we got satellite in 2005, the installer was surprised to see we had nothing. He asked what did you watch after 9-11?
Watching Arthur episodes on PBSKids for the first time as a 'grownup on duty'. I like the storytelling and spectrum of characters, but am still ambivalent as for the fitness to the target mindset.
I find that generally the situations are more for lives of 8-10yr olds, yet at that age cartoons may be already too didactic. More younger kids may not face the kinds of challenges depicted. I'm often asked to explain it to the 5yo. Still, the stories are very well written.
My so far most memorable is 'Lost and Found', very relatable almost dream/nightmare-like.
Thanks, this puts into words what I remember about watching Arthur as a child. As I recall, it was constantly teetering on the edge of too advanced for a younger kid, and too staid for an older one. A shame, because even at that age the high production values of the show were obvious.
I thought Japan must certainly hold the record for the longest-running kids animation, and apparently I’m not wrong. Detective Conan started airing in January 1996 (10 months earlier than Arthur), and is still going.
>The news of the show ending was first floated earlier this month in an interview featured in the July 13 episode of the podcast Finding D.W., where Arthur writer Kathy Waugh revealed that the show was no longer in production, and the final episode was completed years ago.
>Still, this might not be the end of Arthur: The statement from Greenwald adds that "producer GBH and PBS KIDS are continuing to work together on additional Arthur content, sharing the lessons of Arthur and his friends in new ways."
I peeked newer episodes a while back. The had major budget cuts, switched to Flash or whatever soul less vector graphic animation software those Canadian cartoons like Johnny Test and Total Drama Island use.
Also a UK dad, but one who quite a few years ago picked up a book for a US friend's kid on the basis of a name, Binky, rather than a familiarity with the drawn character of the same name in the Arthur circles. Anyhow, this kid had liked the Arthur-world character Binky, but I picked up a book called Binky's Guide to Love.
Not the same thing at all. It was from Matt Groening's Life in Hell [1] output, and earned me some parental frowns.
The upside was that the then six/seven-year-old kid took a shine to, er, "new Binky", and by 10 was an avid fan, and since then has been a collector via second-hand bookstores. Now in mid-teens, I like to think that this has had only positive effects on that growing mind.
Varied. Had Philip Schofield in a tiny self operated studio (“broom cupboard”) doing the links from the mid 80s, before then childrens TV still existed of course just without the links.
Now there will be another longest-running series, immediately after this ends. The question should be for how long was this the longest-running series?
Im the same age as the show and grew up with it (favorite characters were Mr Ratburn and the Brain of course). Definitely shed a tear when I heard the news officially.
I’ll definitely be watching the final episodes once they come out.
How many "startups" grow to a comfortable level, run in a "mom and pop" reality, and just exist inside of a community for more than 5 minutes?
My comment was towards the tech community's propendancy to find value in selling anything and everything, rather, actually invest in a community or - gasp - exist for more than a few years. The "longest running" anything happens because someone locks the door to fleeting enterprise in favour of building an actual product where people work there for 5, 10 years. Imagine that.
And how many animated series grow to a comfortable “mom and pop” level and last longer than 25 years? Your comparison between the two is frankly baffling to me.
Easy one. My office literally has one above me called Pipeline Studios. It's not even the only one in my mid-sized city. Comparison is easily reachable. You just don't like it because it contradicts your bubble.
