Paw Patrol
He knows copaganda when he sees it.
Good for him. Now put on your GI Joe cartoons.
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Television
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My son Levi, much to my frustration, has never been a big TV kid. For years, I’d put on an episode of Paw Patrol or a newish Disney movie, but nothing seemed to stick. Either he’d come to me halfway through to report he was bored or he’d be entertained enough to finish but would never request a second viewing or talk about it afterward.
I attributed this to a personality quirk or insufficient attention span, until the day, when he was 7, that I showed him Gene Wilder’s 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now this “family movie” he loved. Same thing with The Wizard of Oz (1939). And then with an old children’s TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse (1986–90).
Or maybe the difference is that you put on Paw Patrol and left the room while instead sitting with him to watch Willy Wonka and PeeWee.
Back in the 1980s—the era of children’s media that I, a person born in 1979, am most nostalgic about—children’s television filled Saturday- and Sunday-morning time slots that otherwise held little value for networks.
It just so happens that he only likes all this media created decades before he was born? Or perhaps he likes spending time with his parent and this is all that his parent likes to watch?
This is the same thing I thought!! I got here
All the movies and TV shows Levi is drawn to have a psychological ambiguity mixed with a psychedelic silliness that seemed hard to find in much of today’s popular kids’ content.
He liked watching the stuff with someone, you schmuck.
Why are you obsessed with plopping your kid down in front of bullshit TV?
Slate is never sending their best.
This! I remember watching king kong (1933) and abbot and costello meet Frankenstein (1948) with my Grandmother as a small child. These movies predate her but she loved growing up with these things.
The era doesn't really matter as time for humans on this earth is actually very short. It's not about what you watch, it is about who you share it with.
This is definitely some part of it, but even then - quality also plays a role that we should not ignore.
The reason why we remember certain shows and movies from our childhoods is because they were actually great. The rest of the slop we watched has long since been forgotten.
Even comparing modern kids shows, there is a massive gulf in terms of quality (and honestly memorability) between Bluey and Peppa Pig, let alone the giant gaping chasm between those two and the Cocomelon-level slop being fed to them.
Has anyone notice how much ALL TV has changed?
I remember the day i heard the words Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Blew my mind.
I agree that letting kids figure things out for themselves is a healthy thing. Some of the quotes from this article remind me of Jonathan Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation', in which he encouraged parents to let their children go outside and have real adventures, filled with danger, conflict, negotiation, etc, instead of experiencing this stuff secondhand through a screen.
However, the beginning of the article annoyed me a bit:
My son Levi, much to my frustration, has never been a big TV kid. For years, I’d put on an episode of Paw Patrol or a newish Disney movie, but nothing seemed to stick. Either he’d come to me halfway through to report he was bored or he’d be entertained enough to finish but would never request a second viewing or talk about it afterward.
I attributed this to a personality quirk or insufficient attention span, until the day, when he was 7...
Was it really so bad that your 7-year-old son displayed little interest in TV? Do kids really need to be exposed to screens to that extent, at that age? The author didn't go into further details about what their kid actually likes to do, but surely this is a chance to encourage them to do something other than sitting in front of a screen? I know this is projection from me, but it just smells like classic selfish, lazy Gen X/older millennial parenting where getting your kids addicted to a screen from an early age means more time for yourself. Maybe the author is a big fan of storytelling on the screen, in which case I can understand their frustration in not being able to share their hobby with their child, but the kid is 7...there is plenty of time for them to grow up and discover the joys of film and TV for themselves. You don't need to desperately try to force it because you're worried your kid has a "personality quirk".
Thanks. I was reading the first sentence and my reaction was a big WTF - who wouldn't be happy that their kid doesn't want to spent time in front of a TV?
I wonder how the author feels about Bluey. It seems like such a breath of fresh air in an otherwise dreck-filled modern genre.
Bluey is a strange blend of past and present. There's definitely still the moral imperatives being taught, but it doesn't have that greasy American corporate sheen that most others seem to have. Bluey tackles difficult topics, but also features a lot of silly-for-the-sake-of-silly. I guess that's why it's popular among parents as well, reminding us of the better aspects of cartoons from our past.
My 3 year old loves mister rogers more then the new daniel tiger stuff. I think the model trolley is more real to him than the cartoon, idk.
I can't stand Daniel tiger. I can barely be in the room if it's on.
On the anecdotal flip side to this, my 3 year old LOVES Daniel Tiger and gets bored easily if she is watching anything live action. About the only "real people" shows she likes is the occasional Ms Rachel or Odd Squad episode. We even read her Daniel Tiger bedtime stories.
My kid loves Daniel Tiger so much that in a moment of excitement at the No Kings protest yesterday she exuberantly yelled “DANIEL TIGER!!!”
I'd like to imagine your little one yelling this while leading the charge at the line of police barricades like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.
This is some of the dumbest shit on parenting I've read in a while.
This comment convinced me to read it! And… maybe not the dumbest but quite up there.
Different kids like different things. Sometimes the same kids like different things. Kids are people and have opinions.
This article also seems to hinge on the idea that consumerism is the same as it was in the 20th century, and it just isn't.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, they made the toys first. There'd be a villain that showed up in exactly one episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they'd already have a toy for it at Toys R Us.
Now my kids are three seasons deep into Spidey and His Amazing Friends, and they never even really made toys for two of the three villains that have been recurring since season 1.
My kids got into Super Kitties and we couldn't buy them anything, not even a book, for over a year.
The Gabby's Dollhouse movie came out less than a month ago, and the store shelves are completely empty of merchandise that was available earlier this year. Gabby Lego sets? Gone. The dollhouse and rooms? Not even space for it on the shelf of my local Target.
They could learn something from the 90s.
I wouldn't say they could learn anything from the 90s; after all, it was those markets that led into today. It's just that the profit motive has shifted. 30 years ago, Marvel spends a little money on an IP like Biker Mice from Mars, licenses it out to ABC to distribute and Hasbro for toy manufacturing, then ABC pockets the ad revenue while Hasbro shares climb come Christmas. Not defending the system, but at most levels there was incentive to make a product good enough to maintain hype.
Today, Disney produces Spidey and His Amazing Friends, and there is literally no financial incentive for it to be good, or even marketable. It's streamed in-house on a subscription they know you have. The only competition for eyeballs is also a Disney Plus exclusive, so who cares as long as subs and usage times don't drop? The toys are a wash; it's 2025, your kid is more likely to have a smartphone in their hand than a toy. Better to invest in a freemium mobile game, or toss the character skins into a preexisting freemium game. Hell, even better, since they own the show and it's competition, just throw everything in there. All Disney needs is the bare minimum product to keep up screentime; something they made easier on themselves by funding politicians that actively removed any and all public works to create or maintain anything else for kids to do. And the only reason they need to keep up screentime is that the real money maker now is collecting and selling user data to grow your speculative forecasts before the next quarterly. Who gives a shit selling toy manufacturing rights to Hasbro for $60 million over 3 years when you can grow stock shares by $12 billion for less than half the effort?
K-Pop Demon Hunters is another great example. They managed to get the Halloween costumes out in time, but some Barbie-sized dolls would be the biggest thing for Christmas this year if it existed. It's like they don't want money. It's also like only the clothing companies are capable of pivoting fast enough.
I don't think Spidey is a bad show. There's effort there, and the soundtrack is aimed directly at millennial parents. It's no Bluey, but it's been a good way to get my kids interested in the same superheroes I like.
You're probably right about kids wanting more screens than toys. That's still crazy to me, because my wife and I aren't especially strict parents, and it just hasn't been difficult to keep the kids away from tablets. They just don't know about it. They want to play with physical toys.
Sorry, I should have clarified: The lack of incentive is only economic. There are millions of good artists and writers that work every day of their lives to make things with beauty and meaning. What I'm criticizing is the companies themselves, not the creatives behind their products.
And good on you for keeping your kids screen-free! Genuinely good parenting.
I remember, I had a ton of the ThunderCats toys; for my brother, it was He-Man. Similar designs, both pretty cool.
I'm shocked at the absolute dearth of KPop Demon Hunters merch. Like, there's almost none. I see a shirt every now and then. And they're saying this is the new Frozen, especially for its songs? Someone messed up. Netflix made a ton of merch for Stranger Things... and that's about it. I've seen a couple things for Squid Game. Apple TV is worse. They have stuff for Ted Lasso, but nothing for any of their best shows (Foundation, Severance, and Silo). It's like the studios aren't taking a chance on merch, and when something blows up, they're afraid if they move late, the hype will blow over.
Meanwhile anime I've never heard of gets tons of merch, but anime is co-sponsored by merch companies anyway.
K-Pop Demon Hunters was a massive unexpected surprise for Netflix who had considered it a bit of mid-budget filler, and they had to scramble to get out a sing-along-a version, fly the vocalists in to do some appearances, and start the work on physical merch, most of which has months-long leadtime. Rest assured they will eventually run it as a huge franchise, and they’ll hype it in late 2026 when the merch comes in for christmas. Maybe a holiday special.
The irony is they’ve been desperate for a franchise to go alongside Stranger Things. They’ve mainly focused on IP, buying the Roald Dahl estate and making a big play on Addams Family, and in terms of original franchises they’ve only really had Bridgerton and Squid Game
I agree with this guy's kids on being tired of the clinical edutainment of today's media, but in my case it's media for adults. I feel the people producing media today are so focused on tailoring the unambiguous Aesop moral fable of their story, it becomes very hard to believe these characters have any life outside of what the script requires them to do.
On the other hand, a lot of the weird shit from the 80s and 90s was... pretty weird. Ever watch the Brave Little Toaster as an adult? It's a bad acid trip. And I remember hating Disney's Pinnochio (though that was from the 40s, very much a product of its time).
I agree that there's value in simple fun without the burden of instruction--I'm guessing that's part of what made SpongeBob so successful in an age where that type of humor was becoming increasingly rare.
That being said, my kids don't seem to feel that weight as much. Daniel Tiger is a favorite for them, and it's been super helpful for teaching emotional intelligence (something my generation wasn't taught at all). I'm curious to see how their tastes change once they get into school and start seeing learning as work.
What generation didn't get shows that demonstrate emotional intelligence? Millennials got Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, and Crocodile Hunter. Before that I guess there was Captain Kangaroo, and, if you were lucky, JP Patches.
It's not that there wasn't anything on those shows, it's that emotional intelligence didn't seem to be explicitly taught. There are things we picked up along the way, and it was demonstrated, but different from shows like Daniel Tiger that teach these things more actively.
I mainly say this based on observing my own childrens' emotional intelligence compared to what I experienced in my own generation at that age. They have language and tools that my generation didn't have, or at least didn't utilize the same way. They still have their issues, this is just one area where the kids seem alright.
I think we agree there. I would feel better if our efforts had immediately produced a flowering of wisdom and compassion across the globe, but clearly the work is more Sisyphean in nature.
Before that I guess there was Captain Kangaroo, and, if you were lucky, JP Patches.
And shows like Leave it to Beaver, the Brady Bunch, Lassie, Little House on the Prarie and a plethora of shows pushing some form of morality. Television was much more limited back then since there were only 3 channels so there wasn't much targeting kids specifically but instead pushing 'traditional values' on the whole family.
I didn't mention them deliberately because they weren't usually about emotional skills. But you're right that it was far more sparse in that era, these days we're spoiled for choice.
Kinda fucks you up to learn about good and bad in theory, then see how much different reality is in application.