Why we like Harry Potter

Astute readers will notice that my posts here have been steadily declining for quite some time. This is mostly because other interests have taken my time and attention elsewhere, and those other activities remain incredibly, well, active, right now. I won't go into them all, which would be boring even for me, but I will say that there's been a lot of things I've wanted to write about here that have fallen to the side during all my craziness and disorganization. (And I'm oh so sorry to those publicists and musicians who I haven't followed through with yet!! It's still coming!) I'm writing for my own film/transmedia blog and have now started posting for Filmmaker magazine, plus I'm also revising my own website--randyastle.com--with the intention to migrate a lot of my blogging there. My writing docket's pretty full.

So what to do here, on my oldest and truest little blog? Long term I don't know, but for the next little while I'm going to try shaking it up and seeing what kind of effect that can have on my own writing and consistency. In a nutshell, I'm going to try treating Red Balloon more casually, more autobiographically, and more like any other daddy blog out there--although I'll certainly retain my bias toward media. Loretta and Isabelle are seven and two now, and their adventures through the digital world are well worth chronicling.

A couple weeks ago I was cleaning out some computer and camera stuff from our storage closet and ran across a roll of 35mm film. "Look, Loretta," I said, "this is what people used to take pictures on."

"Why didn't they just use a camera?"

Oh, my dear sweet digital native. Last night she said Izzy sounded like a "record on repeat" and I realized she'll never see or hear a broken record in her life. A hair turned gray but I got a bit more insight into her seven-year-old worldview.

In monitoring all this familial activity, I won't lose my perspective as an active participant in the children's entertainment industry. I'll try to increase my reviews--helpful for both creators and users--and continue speaking about industry information, news, etc. -- just all from the perspective of a father who's both a creator and consumer in this biz.

So I'm going to try to upload a rather large video file of Loretta talking about her favorite books. She accompanied me on a shoot for a nonprofit organization, and while we had a little pause for that I had Loretta take a seat in front of the camera and asking her about books was just the first thing that popped into my head. But I think it turned into an insightful little interview.

Sorry about the squeeze and grain on the image. I shot it HD but am still figuring out all the compression codecs, etc.

So for the record, we've let her read the first two Harry Potter books but we're taking a several-month break before #3. Call us conservative, but I also think that will help draw the experience out longer and help her as the actual reading level pushes upward toward The Deathly Hallows.

Here are some of her favorites, then:

and

The Anderson School, where Loretta goes, doesn't technically celebrate Halloween, not during the school day anyway (tonight they're watching Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit as an evening event). Next Monday is Storybook Character Day, not Halloween, so every kid's costume has to come out of a storybook somewhere. Loretta's is Annie's kimono here from Dragon of the Red Dawn. And if you're really interested in seeing it in action, here she is on the Today show this last Tuesday. A film crew caught us near the end of the day at Boo at the Bronx Zoo a couple weeks ago. So Loretta, little Isabelle (a chicken holding Cinderella's hand), and some friends are in the video at 2:41.



It was just a moment of screen time but it made Izzy's day. Happy Halloween!

First graders on transmedia

This is a great post on how first graders define transmedia buzzwords. Can't wait to try with my own first grader.

http://edtechinsight.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-graders-view-of-transmedia-world.html

Enjoy!

Brinca Dada Dollhouses

I don't often get to write about traditional toys here, but I've been meaning to mention Brinca Dada's modern dollhouses since I first saw a prototype probably over a year ago. I'm friends with the design principal Tim Boyle, a professional architect turning his skills to the world of toys, and in person this Emerson house is a really impressive sight. The kids I've seen interact with them love them, and my impression is that they've been getting fantastic reviews as well, like in this recent article on "Bauhaus meets dollhouse," which discusses a range of modernist dollhouse designers; I also enjoyed this interview with the CEO Douglas Rollins. If all the attention lately seems to have been on digital toys and gaming, it's nice to see such well-crafted design going into "low-tech" toys. Check out all that the house does, plus the furniture(!), at the company's website. And check out the more vertical structure and the muscle-flexing minimalist dolls who inhabit it.

The full-sized Emerson house comes at $329 and, though I'm not privy to any inside secrets, I suspect that a smaller, more economical model will be available soon. But at any rate the website inhabitots is giving away a free Brinca Dada Emerson house right now.

Facebook for Kids

The youth research firm Smarty Pants recently released their list of kids' most beloved brands (i.e. a combination of brand awareness and brand loyalty), and though the Wii topped the list Kidscreen on Friday had an interesting little article about Facebook's amazing jump up the charts. Here's what Kidscreen's Wendy Goldman Getzler had to say (read the original here), and here's Smarty Pants' listing of top brands, which is incredibly interesting reading in and of itself, even without the Facebook connection. (Like, what does it mean that Walmart is #51?)

Facebook's age limitation isn't stopping US kids from naming the world's largest social network among one of their Most Beloved Brands this year.

According to an annual study by youth research firm Smarty Pants entitled Young Love, Facebook's brand-affinity ranking among kids ages six to 12 jumped 85 positions in the past year and is now a Top 100 brand among tweens nine to 12.

Facebook jumped from #181 to #126 this year among kids six to 12 and to #91 among tweens, making the social network's shift in ranking among the most significant increases of the 270-plus brands evaluated by more than 4,500 children.

Brands that facilitate a family connection seem to dominate the top spots on the Beloved Brands list, with Nintendo's Wii holding the number-one spot, followed closely by McDonald's, M&M'S, Disney Channel and Oreo. Apple's iPod Touch and iPad made 2010 debuts at #35 and #109, respectively.

FCC launches a new site for parents

I just learned that the FCC has launched a new site called Parent's Place. The url is http://reboot.fcc.gov/parents/. It's billed on its homepage thus:

"From televisions to laptops to cell phones, electronic media have become our children's almost constant companions. Get information about how to improve your children's safety in today's complex media landscape, and what the FCC is doing to help."

It's still in beta but looks like it could be useful, with resources on parental controls for televisions, online safety, and even the media's relationship to childhood obesity. I'll put a link in my blogroll as well.

A little facelift...

I've been neglecting this blog in favor of other writing assignments and sites and blogs I want to get up, so yesterday I decided to give this site a little TLC. I hope you like the new look and the fact that all the links in the blogroll once again work, plus the addition of lots of new production companies I wasn't aware of in 2008 when I launched this site. Of course I couldn't be comprehensive by any means, but I hope to have included a smattering of the big fish, the little fish, and some of the best fish in the children's television pond.

Most importantly for anyone who is a potential return-visitor, please note that I changed the URL from balloonred.blogspot.com to redballoonblog.blogspot.com.

Also note that I added the links to my twitter feed and new film blog over on the right, as well as facebook and some other sites. The new blog isn't really up and running yet--I just have the architecture in place--but I'm really excited about it. Its immediate purpose is to document the progress of my feature film (adult) that I'm hoping to shoot next spring. But it will also include my thoughts on adult cinema, film criticism, transmedia, and other more grown-up themes than belong here at Red Balloon. You can follow these directly, of course, and I'll feed all posts from both blogs through Twitter and Facebook.

Let me know what you think. Anything I'm missing? Thanks!

Mind in the Making Video Up

The 360Kid blog has just graciously put up a video of the entire proceedings from last week's Mind in the Making event with Ellen Galinsky (see my post below). Now you can read Scott's excellent summary and watch the entire video. There's also a direct YouTube link if you'd like to watch there.

Thanks to David Kleeman for letting us all know about this (although 360Kid is a fantastic site that deserves to be followed, if you're not). David's also migrated the ACCM social network off of Ning and onto Facebook. Children's media professionals, scholars, and basically anyone interested can apply for membership.

Mind in the Making

There's a new book out on child development that looks poised to change, or at least dramatically shift, the entire field. It's Mind in the Making by Ellen Galinsky; professional researchers may already be aware of it, but it also looks fantastic for educators, parents, and content developers of media like television shows.

The American Center for Children and Media sponsored a conference with Galinksy at Columbia University Thursday morning. It was a great hour and a half--incredibly informative--and I used it to launch my tweeting career at @randyastle.

One of the highlights for me as a "film guy" was the extent to which Galinsky taped her research. The purpose was to create a "vook," which I didn't even know about before but which obviously means a "video book" for platforms like the iPad. I love documentaries, and the concept of a video book is, to say the least, intriguing to me. We watched several video clips, very well produced, and I believe you can see some also at the book's website. (which also has a great news feed/blog) **Well, I just went there and couldn't easily find the videos embedded within the site itself (maybe you need to buy the vook after all), but below I'll put the YouTube video that's linked to the site. The book in print will most likely hold a lot more information than the videos, but watching the children go through the experiments is priceless in its own way (including what was promoted as the best marshmallow test ever filmed). Check it out!

Status Update

For those who have noticed, I've had something of a hiatus here on Red Balloon. The wait has been primarily due to my redesign of my entire website (www.randyastle.com) and this blog, which will hopefully be more integrated into that site when it relaunches, with a new URL and everything. So if you were wondering if I'd ever return I certainly will. Thanks for checking in!

Helping Kids in Haiti

Here's a notice by Emily Claire Afan of KidScreen about one way to assist Haitian children. Read the original here.

Searching for ways to contribute to the Haiti relief efforts? Nonprofit Kids In Distressed Situations (K.I.D.S.) is looking for donations to help out the younger set.

The New York-based charity has already secured US$2 million worth of new products with large donations being made by Jockey, Haddad Brands, Gerber Childrenswear, Kahn Lucas, World Team Tennis and LT Apparel, UGG Australia, Vitamin Shoppe; and Toys 'R' Us.

K.I.D.S. is continuing to work with retailers and manufacturers to obtain donations of new products. The public donate cash at www.KIDSdonations.org or by calling 1-800-266-3314, and the organization is looking for new clothes, socks, underwear and blankets to provide immediate relief to earthquake victims, and any type of new product donations will also be welcome for the coming weeks and months.

General Mills Lowers Sugar

General Mills announced today that it will be reducing the amount of sugar contained in its cereals marketed to children. Five years after the firm, which is based in Minnesota and is, I believe, the second largest cereal producer in the country, converted all of its cereal to whole grains, this is a welcome move that's still been a long time in coming. It would be great if now Post, Kellogg, Nestle in Europe, and the other cereal makers follow suit (I don't follow this industry enough to know just where every company is on the "rush" to health food status). It's something that should position the companies as socially responsible without cutting into their bottom line (like banning marketing to children or advertising during children's television shows, which has been troubling in the United Kingdom). I hope the nutritional difference is enough to make an impact in children's diets, and I also wish there was a way to continue to inform parents that it's not just the lack of sugar in these foods they allow their children to consume (or, like at our house, consume themselves), but also the fact that eating these foods instead of more nutritional alternatives robs you of the potential benefit you could have had from those. In that sense it's like soft drinks and milk; sure the sugar and fat are bad for you, but it's the lack of calcium that's going to give you osteoporosis. Anyway, kudos to General Mills for taking this step, and let's hope there are more such announcements in the future.

Digital Kids and Homework

The New York Times science section ran an interesting little article today about the ubiquity of digital media in kids' and teenagers' lives and how that affects things like homework and multitasking. It's a good perspective on a topic all parents and industry peeps are intensely aware of. You can read it here. 

Disney Acquires Marvel Comics

It was announced today that Disney is acquiring Marvel for $4 billion. So if you're the kind of person who ever wanted to see Spiderman climbing up the side of the Cinderella castle in Anaheim, today's your lucky day. It will be very interesting to see how this effects Marvel properties (something akin to how the Muppets have played out over the past several years?), but here's the story from KidScreen, by Emily Claire Afan, with statements from both companies. 

Kids and Junk Food - Part 3

In October I wrote about the symbiosis, if that's the right word, between mascots and children's licensed characters and junk food. The quick version is that although many licensors are insisting their characters be used for healthy food there are quite a few, to say the least, that have their characters promote candy, presweetened items, Happy Meals, and so on and so forth.

So a couple weeks ago I followed that up linking to a story about how more characters are indeed being used for healthy food marketing; I put up a picture of Popeye, he being the pinnacle of cartoon characters and vegetables getting along (in the marketplace as well as on the screen).

So now it's come to this: Burger King is selling apples (Granny Smiths) cut in the shape of French fries. Is it a refreshing example showing how fast food chains are coming of age and offering healthier fare for kids? Or, given the packaging, is it a clever ploy to get kids with health-conscious parents in there so that it's just a quick switch to substitute fried potato for apple? (And just how fresh are they? Remember they're harvested in the fall...)

I don't eat at hamburger chains very often--once or twice a year (more when I live near a Carl's Jr.)--so I was unaware of these, but I became aware of them in a New York Times article yesterday by Tara Parker-Pope in which she tracks some of the recent trends toward healthy food. It's definitely worth a look. I was wondering just how fulfilling those apple fries could be (no skins?), so I found some consumer reviews. But do we have to call them apple fries? They're not fried, they're sliced. Do the marketing folks have too much of an aversion to "apple slices"?

Anyhoo, the entire trend comes in the wake of the largest study ever conducted on the health consequences of red meat. The National Cancer Institute recently studied data from a 1995 AARP survey of meat-eating habits and followed up on the participants' health today, primarily looking at incidents of cancer, of course, and heart disease. The results are pretty impressively stacked against beef: in short, the high meat eaters are at much greater risk for a whole slew of diseases than moderate consumers. This month's Nutrition Action Healthletter has it as the cover story, but it's not online (you can see the table of contents); the accompanying editorial by Michael Jacobson, the man who literally invented the term "junk food," deals with the health and environmental consequences of beef and is online there as a pdf. Back on March 24, however, the Times ran a story you can read about the study's findings, i.e. "Eating Meat May Increase Risk of Early Death." 

To piggyback off of Jacobson, here's a Mother Jones article about cows and global warming. It's "Diet for a Warm Planet" from the Nov./Dec. issue; there are lots of such reports, articles, and books out there.

As a children's advocate of sorts (I suppose) I applaud Congress passing stricter regulations against tobacco this week. Now let's reorganize all the myriad organizations overseeing livestock and agriculture and give the FDA some real teeth to enforce recalls, inspect processing plants, etc., and then do what needs to be done to get beef consumption down in this country. 

Kids' Characters Push Healthy Food

Back around Halloween I wrote some thoughts about the relationship between junk food and children's media. Today the Washington Post ran a story by Caitlin McDevitt about how kids' licensed characters are now being enlisted to promote healthy food. Cynics may point out that the companies like Disney are merely being market savvy as obesity and junk food gain ever more prominence and disapproval in public discourse, but I suppose any progress--toward improving the American diet--is good progress. Of course, branding potatoes may be just a half measure, a surface solution that doesn't approach the core problem of U.S. food production, but that's a post for a different blog.

Little People at 50

Well my March was full of March Madness, though not the NCAA kind—just the crazy writing lots of scripts kind. But that does mean that I completely missed writing about last week’s fiftieth anniversary for Fisher-Price’s Little People, even though I was perfectly aware of it. Apologies to Eddy and Freddy and all the rest, and happy birthday.

Fisher-Price launched the brand on March 21, 1959, so last Saturday launched a yearlong celebration for the company. For instance, as with anniversaries of Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids and others, you can buy retro Little People toys harking back to earlier designs; Emily Claire Afan of KidScreen informs me you can get a retrofitted 1968 Play ‘n Go Farm, seen below, for $17.49, or a remake of the 1971 School House for the same price.


I never realized before that it was Little People branded, but I grew up on this barn, with the silo (and without the large rooftop lettering). In fact my parents still have it—the doors still moo when you open them—and Loretta and my nieces and nephews like to play with it whenever we’re there. The Fisher-Price website capitalizes on the nostalgia angle:

“Do you remember? Take a trip back to the farm with your little one. Join some of your favorite childhood friends as they celebrate their 50th birthday with a commemorative play set designed to look like the farm you remember. Even the figures look like they used to! It’s all to help remind you that ‘it’s great to be little.™’”

The cynical among us could dismiss that as a cheap gimmick, but when I stopped to think about it I realized that it really is a remarkable toy and it does represent a positive step in comparison with most things out there today. I’m now in the middle of Dade Hayes’ Anytime Playdate (finally) and am continually struck by the fact kids are growing older younger, so that it’s now gotten to the point that toys are peaking at age four or five and after that kids are using iPods and GPS and BlueTooth things. (I was leading some four-year-olds in painting landscapes last Friday night and one of Loretta’s friends claimed she had seen Mount McKinley before on GoogleEarth, a striking term coming from her little lips.) So the point there is that stepping back in time, unplugging, and using Lincoln logs, pixie sticks, and toy farm animals that don’t contain any silicon can be a good experience for modern kids. I’m constantly explaining that I’m not a technophobe, but I do think there’s incredible virtue in including non-electronic toys in kids’ entertainment diet.

So that’s my plug. We also had the three-car circus train, with a ton of fun animals, and I spent innumerable hours playing with them. So perhaps the nostalgia is showing. But it has been an incredibly successful brand. Afan also wrote that over 1.5 billion Little People figures have sold in those fifty years, which is an enormous number but in its way not surprising (again, there are dozens in my parents’ house and Loretta has four of the modern incarnation in her closet, complete with the musical school bus. It’s that shift between the original, small wooden toys (who were noticeably nearly all adults, at least in my experience) with the modern large variety on shelves today that most interests me. As a kid I had 100% brand awareness of Fisher-Price—to me it meant high-quality, fun toys—but I had 0% awareness that those were “Little People”—in fact I didn’t learn that until I started writing this post. My first cognizant introduction to Little People as a brand was in a French version of the more recent cartoons that a Polish-French family loaned us when Loretta was about a year old. She didn’t get to watch much of it because we were limiting her television intake at that age, but I watched quite a bit to listen to the accents. I later saw it in English, got introduced to the toys, and made a connection with it with Loretta, although it hasn’t flooded our home. I love the new cartoons—anything still stop-motion is a winner in my book, and Freddy the frog is done quite brilliantly—and would personally like to see a lot more of them beyond the dozen or so I have watched, although as a parent raised on He-Man and G.I. Joe I am aware of the implications of cartoons based on preexisting commercial products.

Here’s the opening song sung (in English) by the great Aaron Neville, with a sample episode afterwards: “Michael and the Corn Field.” It helps to know that Michael has some magic powers; I’m not sure why but it works great stylistically. He can talk; he just chooses to be reticent here. Also, Sonya Lee can talk to animals. Also, I love Farmer Jed’s English voice; that actor makes it all worth it.

There are a lot more video recommendations on that episode’s YouTube page.

Returning our thoughts to the anniversary itself, Fisher Price has a webpage devoted exclusively to it. It has a great timeline of the toys’ progression, offers on some of those vintage-esque toys, notices of events—which in the next few weeks appear to be mostly at zoos everywhere from San Diego to Toledo—and some more online offers. Taking a step back to the main Little People website gives you more games and activities and other features.

If you’re really going to get into the history, then I’ve found no better source than this taxonomic portion of the website This Old Toy. The info and the pictures here are truly amazing. These folks are also—or primarily—an Atlanta-based retailer and repairer, and their homepage is here. There’s great stuff here I haven’t even touched on in this post, like the methods of dating your figures, a history of their styles and components, information on logos, generic knock-offs, and onward and onward. Plan on a half hour at least, and thanks to all the researchers and webmasters there on a job well done. 

(I loved this dog, by the way.)

And on and on and on… Here’s to fifty more years!

Hans Beck, 1929-2009

Hans Beck was the German inventor of the Playmobil figurines and for many years the head of research and development for that company. He died near Lake Constance last Friday and the New York Times ran his obituary today and here's a shorter one from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Also, leave it up to Wired to write a little tribute.

Video tributes are already up on YouTube, including this one:

It's Still the Economy...

Carol just told me that consumer spending on Black Friday turned out to be at least a little better than the dismal projections they were making before Thanksgiving, but today's stocks show (as if we needed it) that we're definitely in this for the long haul.

So just before the holiday there were a series of articles about kids and the economy. I saw the first in the New York Times, an article by Stephanie Rosenbloom about how mothers in particular will be going without this Christmas season in order to still get decent presents for their kids. This may sound like what lots of us have been doing for years, but on a macro level it's bad for retailers because Christmas traditionally sees a huge spike in women's apparel sales that most likely won't be happening this year, despite what happens to toy sales. 

Then I got home and saw two items in my inbox. KidScreen not only featured the Times article but also the results of a survey by Nodes Research that shows 84% of tweens and teens are worried about the economy. 

Finally, that same day the wonderful email newsletter Kids Off the Couch featured an article entitled "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow . . . Won't It?" which essentially gives advice on how to add economics to the traditional birds and bees that parents teach their children. And there are lots of films and books and media, if we stop and think about it, that can lend a hand in doing so. We recently saw Rob Marshall's Annie, the film featured in the article, and thought it relatively saccharine but certainly uplifting, and well done for a television budget (Carol and I came to it after both Chicago and Memoirs of Geisha, and though the choreography and visuals weren't as strong as on those later films it was still pretty much great). 

But that's a digression. The point is that hard times are here and there are plenty of resources for parents, from Dickens to King Kong, to help them talk to their kids.

Lego Minifigures at 30

It was August 25, 1978 that the Danish Lego company first jazzed up their building blocks by including a little yellow man. They had been in development for at least four years, however: it was this year that they reached their final form.

There is a great amount of history and trivia on Lego’s website–such as that there are three times as many Lego men as there are people in China—and here’s another blog from Wired magazine. For the truly obsessed there’s a photographic timeline. There’s always Wikipedia, but my favorite is the Minifig Generator, where you can mix and match to create your own minifigures (almost like the real thing!).

Of course, without Minifigures there really wouldn’t be any point to phenomena like YouTube either, as Lego men are really the site’s raison d’etre, if you ask me. Since I’m equally into Chaplin, Lang, Murnau, et al as Indiana Jones, here are a couple of my personal favorites. Enjoy!

Metropolis:




Chaplin:

Accordingly, by the way, this page on the website The Bioscope is one of my favorite pages on the entire web. 

Cabbage Patch Kids at 30--and 25

I suppose that I must frankly admit that my wife, not I, should really be writing this post. I was unaware of Cabbage Patch Kids on the occasion of their initial mass-production launch in 1983 (they were available only at one location in Georgia from 1978-1981) and I only gained that knowledge gradually and unwillingly--as a boy in the 1980s, if it wasn't G.I. Joe or Transformers, I didn't really want to play with it. 

But putting my childhood gender bias out of the way, I can say that these dolls have had a long and fruitful history, and they're now making something of a resurgence, partly because of the anniversary they're celebrating this year. I listed it as a dual anniversary because Xavier Roberts created the original cloth dolls in 1978, making them actually thirty years old, but the toy firm Coleco began their mass production in 1983; as far as the official festivities are concerned, that is the year that matters. To celebrate, the toy firm Play Along, which is a division of Jakks Pacific, has recreated the original line of dolls from their initial release. There's a commemorative line of clothing from Completely Independent Distribution, and other consumer items on offer. 

The dolls' wikipedia page has a good history of their production and reception. The official Cabbage Patch Kid website has a plethora of information as well, including dolls for sale and a page devoted to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the toys' marketing (which features several news stories about events and celebrations).

Finally, here is a video from CBS News about one collector feting the anniversary: