When I was growing up, I was one of the majority that treated ABC’s afternoon schedule as my normal form of after-school entertainment. There were many different series on that offered some educational and brain stimulating entertainment such as Play School (A series which has been on air for over 50 years in Australia now), and more entertaining series such as Bananas in Pajamas. The entire storyline is based upon this simple plot, which I have copied from Wikipedia:
The main characters are two bananas named B1 and B2. Other characters include three teddy bears named Amy, Lulu and Morgan, and Rat in a Hat. The bananas, the teddies and Rat in a Hat all live in the same neighbourhood, a cul-de-sac called “Cuddles Avenue”.
The storyline was simplistic enough, yet offered enough variety to ensure that kids would be entertained. There were only ever six characters (Two bananas, three bears and a rat) and they had all sorts of interesting (For the target demographic) adventures from organizing parties, going along with the scheming Rat in a Hat and all sorts of other things, that as a kid, I thought was a blast. The theme song for it, sung by the then Play School host (They had at least 10-15 that they rotated) Monica Trapaga and has become a rather popular song in terms of childrens songs. You can hear it below:
The original series utilized live action sets with costumed actors in them and whilst they were limited by the costumes (Such as no lip-syncing) it was very good.
SADLY I was on my television today and was switching through the stations before going to do a quick play-through of Yakuza 4 when I zoned into ABC-2 or 4. There I saw the new revived season of Bananas in Pajamas and for the next twelve minutes…. me and my mother were literally on the floor laughing at how poor this revived season is. I understand that they want to try new technologies to appeal to all cartoon lovers, however I think childrens series are the one type of cartoons that should remain using past techniques that have been proved to work well. Of course, this is my bias as I do love the way they used to do it….. The character designs remain far from the original live-action style, with the Bananas being…. creepy looking, the three teddies looking….. erm I don’t even know how to say it…. and Rat in the Hat being turned into a normal rat from the lovable purple rat and becoming Rat in a Visor.
I will save my final opinion for uh…. never since I don’t intend on watching cartoons aimed at a demographic 15 years younger then me, but I am interested to hear what everyone thinks of it.
I will admit, it is a kids show, so what do I know….. but seriously, replacing a much loved and very famous childrens program with some sort of cartoonish version is a very risky thing to do. But hey, if it works for kids, that is all that matters I suppose. I suppose it comes down to the fact that, I am used to the old series and am hesitant that the new series will not offer what it offered me when I was young.
To view this series, it is available every weekday on ABC2 at 8:03 – 8:15 and 1:32 – 1:45. There is apparently 104 episodes slated for the first season and each run at 12 minutes a piece. The original Bananas in Pajamas for comparison sadly seem to not be on ABC at all anymore.
