As for the audio, imagine the scene from Dumb & Dumber when Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels make “the worst sound ever”. That’s what it feels like for an adult to listen to Cocomelon on loop (also: Cocomelon would be more forgivable in my books if the dad wasn’t such a pushover).
In 2022, the New York Times published a fascinating write-up on Moonbug Entertainment and how the studio creates videos (its kid show portfolio includes Little Baby Bum, Blippi, Playtime with Twinkle and The Sharksons among others).
Before getting into Moonbug's process, take a moment to remember Brumm's process. He is basing his work on real-life social play and his "5am" interactions with his children. For each idea, he navigates a writing maze and incorporates adult themes to develop the ideal 7-minute co-viewing experience.
It is craftsmanship.
Contrast everything I just wrote with Moonbug’s “audience research day”:
Once a month, children are brought to [a London studio], one at a time, and shown a handful of episodes to figure out exactly which parts of the shows are engaging and which are tuned out.
For anyone older than 2 years old, the team deploys a whimsically named tool: the Distractatron.
It’s a small TV screen, placed a few feet from the larger one, that plays a continuous loop of banal, real-world scenes — a guy pouring a cup of coffee, someone getting a haircut — each lasting about 20 seconds. Whenever a youngster looks away from the Moonbug show to glimpse the Distractatron, a note is jotted down.
“It’s not mega-interesting, what’s on the Distractatron,” said Maurice Wheeler, who runs the research group. “But if they aren’t fully focused, they might go, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ and kind of drift over. We can see what they’re looking at and the exact moment when they got distracted.”
I repeat: a “Distractatron”.
Brumm recently launched the Behind Bluey podcast. In it, Brumm talks to various team members (animators, voice actors etc.) about creating the show. I haven’t listened to all of the episodes yet but I’m guessing…THEY DON’T USE A F—ING DISTRACTATRON!!!
Here is more from the NYT:
Outside this office, some 270 employees are working on Moonbug shows in the company’s headquarters, a sleek, open-plan space on one floor of a four-story building beside a canal in Camden Town, a district in northwest London. Pre- and post- production are handled here and in the United States, where the company has another 120 staffers, mostly in Los Angeles. The company works with animators around the world.
Those hands are nothing if not data driven. [Moonbug Entertainment CEO] René Rechtman has a background in private equity and is more of an algorithm guy than an artist. Shows at Moonbug are honed in ways that leave little to chance, and audience research commences long before any episode gets near the Distractatron.
A data and analytics team sifts constantly through YouTube numbers to determine exactly what resonates. Should a girl wear black jeans or blue jeans? Should the music be louder or softer? Should the bus be yellow or red?
Yellow, is the answer.
“Kids love yellow buses around the world,” said David Levine, the chief content officer at Moonbug. “In some countries, yellow buses are actually used to transport prisoners. But still, kids around the world love to see yellow buses and kids on yellow buses.”
Infants are also enamored with objects covered in a little dirt, like they’ve been rolling around on the ground. And they’re fascinated by minor injuries. Not broken legs or gruesome wounds. More like small cuts that require Band-Aids.
“The trifecta for a kid would be a dirty yellow bus that has a boo-boo,” Levine said. “Broken fender, broken wheel, little grimace on its face.”
Moonbug has Cocomelon down to a science. It is an assembly line — a very lucrative assembly line — that is feeding YouTube’s algorithm and Netflix’s kid show tab.
Cocomelon is processed.
Bluey has a creative process.
***
Final Thoughts
Listen, I know I’m going pretty hard on Cocomelon.
Parenting is difficult.
I get it.
Cocomelon is a digital babysitter for time-strapped caregivers. I won’t pretend like I haven’t stuck an iPad in front of my son and let him watch Cocomelon or Blippi so I could get some work done. Guilty as charged.
The show has more educational content compared to other popular YouTube kids genres including toy unboxings, Hot Wheels on ramps or that time the algo was recomnending creepy videos with headless comic-book characters. But there are just so many better options than Cocomelon for YouTube and streaming (including Bluey, of course).
The Moonbug team did raise a larger point in the NYT article: Cocomelon is not meant to be a substitute for normal play. “It just should not replace the time you’re outside bicycling,” says Rechtman. “Or outside playing with your friends. That’s for sure.”
Same goes for Bluey. While it is a superior shared experience, watching the show with my son will never be better than biking with him at the park or playing his invented games (including ones from Bluey that he loves and adapts).
Let’s put the parenting aspect of these shows aside and talk about Bluey vs. Cocomelon as a view on art and media.
Cocomelon is as formulaic as it gets. There are countless Cocomelon knock-offs on YouTube right now because it’s so easy to knock off. Take a nursery rhyme from the public domain. Slap on some colorful animation. Pack the YouTube video with the correct keywords. Maybe even pay for some algorithmic-boosting secret sauce.
Next thing you know, the top YouTube search result for “Wheels on the Bus” is a Cocomelon knock-off called Lalafun Nursery Rhymes. There are countless others trying to rip-off the formula.
Every new iteration of generative AI will make it easier and easier to create a "Cocomelon" clone. However, do you know what AI isn't capable of producing today or in the foreseeable future? A thoughtful 7-minute episode about hungover parenting that is equally enjoyable for parents and kids.
In the face of the upcoming AI-powered content deluge, I keep going back to this quote that music super-producer Rick Rubin mentioned on the Joe Rogan podcast:
“Everything I do is just personal taste and it’s what the book is about. Really, for [people and artists] to trust in themselves. Make something that speaks to themselves. And hopefully someone else will like it. But you can’t second-guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like. It won’t be good. We’re not smart enough to know what someone else will like.
To make something and say, ‘well, I don’t really like it but I think this group of people will like it’, I think [that approach] is a bad way to play the game of music or art. Do what’s personal to you, take it as far you can go. Really push the boundaries and people will resonate with it if they are supposed to resonate with it. But you can’t get there the other way. The other way is a dead-end path.”
That basically describes Cocomelon vs. Bluey.
The former works off of a formula for what the audience might like. The latter is an expression of a single person’s unique taste.
Brumm echoed a similar thought as Rubin when asked on the Gotta Be Done podcast if he chose characters and plot lines with a marketing lens:
Look, I suppose the one thing I did not want to do was approach [Bluey] from a marketing point of view. […] My approach was, well, I'm just going to make something that's good and…that will be the marketing decision. Let's just make something that's good.
This is the approach that gave us “Sleepytime”, which is about sleep training toddlers and is probably the episode of Bluey that parents love the most. It transcends “children’s content” and embodies a Robin Williams quote from the film Dead Poets Society which Brumm cites as inspiration:
“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
I write all of this knowing that there is a finite amount of Bluey-caliber content.
Cocomelon is McDonald’s and Bluey is a Michelin restaurant. There is a place in the market for both but McDonald’s has a much more repeatable model.
The challenge of keeping up the Michelin quality is a concern for Bluey with many fans worried that Brumm is leaving the show. The season 3 finale — which will air on April 14 — is unusually long (clocking in at 28 minutes) and is titled "The Sign" (leading theorists to believe it may refer to a moving sign for the Heeler family).
Why would Brumm leave? His daughters have gotten older (which means less material). Meanwhile, the voice actors — including some Brisbane-based children — are also getting older (which means their voices are changing).
The brand is so valuable and BBC/Ludo will find a way to milk it. There is already a live play and talk of a film.
But without Brumm, the TV show will lose its unique soul…like that part in the “Whale Watching” episode when Chilli asks Bandit to get some chips and sour cream dip to help her recover from the hangover. I’ve done that at least 100x for my wife and snickered when Chilli made the request. My son was none the wiser and that’s what made the co-viewing experience so great.
