...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Friday, December 19, 2003
      ( 12:32 PM )
 
Research

My 18 month old child is addicted to the Wiggles. What are the Wiggles, you ask? Are they some form of squishy fruit snack? Nope. Are they some weird stuffed animal? Nope. Are they a bizarre Australian 4-man singing group that has a worldwide following of millions of children under the age of 4? Yep. I actually really like the Wiggles, in terms of content - they aren't annoying, they are very creative with how they visually appeal to little children, but most of all their songs are super fun and really great to dance to. My son generally completely ignores the television. He doesn't even look at it when we have the news on and such. We tried those Baby Einstein tapes - no interest. We tried Sesame Street - no interest (though now he'll sit through the Elmo's World segment). Then, one day he saw an episode of the Wiggles. And magic happened.

He sat still. And then he got up and danced around the rest of the day. (to picture an 18-month old dancing, recall that one episode of Seinfeld when Elaine dances and thinks she's so great and everyone else tries to avoid injury).

I thought I would take a few minutes to do a little research on the Wiggles, just to find out how this phenomena got started. Of course, they have an official website. They do live singing tours (where their audience consists of parents and 3 year olds dancing in the aisles). I find that they've been on the air for TWELVE years - that's like 4 generations of preschoolers. And these four guys, Anthony, Jeff, Greg and Murray, met each other in college when they were studying early childhood development. A side note: Anthony (the blue one) was in a "popular band" called the Cockroaches. Heard of them? Their albums have gone gold and platinum and they are the most popular music tour in Australia. They've also won prestigious song writing awards in Australia. Finally, I find they've toured the US 12 times.

And I'm just getting to know them. But I feel pretty accomplished already - one video already memorized. And a little boy who asks "Weewoos! Weewoos! Peeese!" is hard to resist. So I'm guessing the Wiggles may make another video appearance at Christmas.... Just thought the general public might want to know what the under-4 crowd is up to these days...

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