The Charge

Inspire your baby's curiosity!

The Case

From Baby Nick Jr. (Nickelodeon, that is) comes these three thirty-minute programs geared toward enhancing the development of babies. Each disc is aimed at a specific age group, and the content has been—apparently—painstakingly manufactured to squeeze as much growth experience out of the half-hour run time. Each feature is hosted by the Curious Buddies, a group of animal puppets with names like Cat and Bear and Elephant and Dog. Why these simple-looking puppets? Because research has shown that babies response best to puppetry. In fact, every segment seems to have exhaustive research to back it up; this ain't just useless time-wasting, this is going to get your rugrat's learning groove on. Let's look at the three discs:

• Let's Go to the Farm
Age: 3-18 months
Wow, who knew three-month-olds even had a clue what was going on in the world, much less the ability to watch and digest a thirty-minute video?! Regardless, like the rest of the discs, this has been produced with that age group's healthy development in mind.

The Curious Buddies introduce themselves, and from then on it's farm fun. Skits with the puppets are bookended by musical vignettes featuring life on the farm. Even some babies join in the fun, dressed up as animals or eating some vegetables, while surrounded by the leering Curious Buddies. (If I were a little kid sitting in a pig costume with a bunch of strange puppets staring at me I'd be creeped out of my Huggies, but these babies didn't seem to mind it.)

Concepts highlighted: colors, matching, food and animal identification.

Bonus music video: "It's a Ball"

• Let's Build
Age: 9-24 months
Nine months now, so let's take it up a notch. Here the babies learn the introductory concepts of long division and the deconstruction school of literary criticism. Ha, gotcha! Actually, this disc is about stacking foam blocks on top of each other.

Again the Curious Buddies are our hosts, and the same formula is followed: songs (some familiar for sing-along purposes, others not so much), puppet skits, and some footage of toddlers building with toys.

Concepts highlighted: shapes, construction vehicle and tool identification.

Bonus music video: "Let's Go to the Beach"

• Let's Move
Age: 12-36 months
Now it's time to burn off those two bowls of Trix. This disc gets the kids up and moving and running around, with a dash of introductory yoga thrown in. The Curious Buddies introduce the toddlers to different types of movement, while some extensive footage in the park shows kids running around, doing exercises, somersaulting, and basically using up the plutonium cores kids run on at that age.

All the featured songs are designed with movement in mind, and a few of them are old favorites, such as "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."

Concepts highlighted: physical activity and dance, stretching and balance.

Bonus music video: "I can help"

Each disc sports a bright, colorful full-screen translation and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix. Of course, a three-month-old is going to give a flying binkie what the tech specs are, but, hey, it's my job. Extra features are the same on each disc as well: photo galleries, repeat play, song selection, and the best addition: an audio commentary. The commentary is provided by an expert in early childhood development, and she runs through each program highlighting the purposes of each sequence and what the parent should do to augment the learning environment. It's a great little bonus feature and could prove quite helpful to the anxiety-ridden parent fretting that a single child-rearing misstep will lead to a skewed development for their toddler, which will of course result in the child's growing up to be a transgendered sociopath who murders strippers with a steak knife.

Similar Decisions

• Xena: Warrior Princess Multipath Adventure
• Ambient Water: The Ultimate Video Aquarium
• When Good Ghouls Go Bad
• Inspector Gadget 2

Give us your feedback!

Did we give Baby Nick Jr. Curious Buddies a fair trial? yes / no

What's "fair"? Whether positive or negative, our reviews should be unbiased, informative, and critique the material on its own merits.