Say, "Eh-oh!"

Weird... but it makes you feel happy.

It's all over the internet right now that the Teletubbies have turned nineteen, which means next year, they will be twenty... I guess that will be twenty years since they were first originally created, because I know they didn't arrive in America until 1998... but, that's besides the point. Ah, Teletubbies, I remember them well; vividly well, in fact. All things considered, TELETUBBIES was pretty much the H.R. PUFNSTUF of my generation.

Well goll-ll-ly, Jimmy!

If there's one thing that H.R. PUFNSTUF was known for was it's immediate following from an audience much older than it was targeted at; being a Saturday Morning show in 1969, H.R. PUFNSTUF was aimed at younger children who enjoyed getting up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and other such fare... however, it turned out that H.R. PUFNSTUF's biggest audience when it first aired was college kids (and, particularly, stoned college kids at that). It couldn't be helped: H.R. PUFNSTUF was bright, vivid, colorful, and trippy... and TELETUBBIES pretty much had the same effect on us as well. I'm not saying we were a bunch of stoned college kids, but I was eight-years-old when TELETUBBIES was first broadcasted in the U.S. on PBS - a wee bit older than the show's apparent targeted audience of 1-3-year-olds... but we were all intrigued by what we were seeing. How could we not? This show was weird (in a good way), you couldn't not watch it... you had four ridiculously adorable and brightly colored alien-like creatures with TVs in their tubby tummies, and like H.R. PUFNSTUF, it was such a bright, vivid, and trippy show, we were just mesmerized.

You know, now that I think about it, the ARTHUR episode, "That's a Baby Show!" really speaks volume, as it pretty much satired the effect TELETUBBIES had on us older kids when it came along... just see how the parody THE LOVE DUCKS seems to almost hypnotized Arthur:

 

I know Ragdoll Productions, the company behind TELETUBBIES, have come out with a few new shows since TELETUBBIES, I've glanced at them, but honestly, they're considerably less cute, less comprehensible, and less mesmerizing when compared to TELETUBBIES.

The performers inside the Teletubby suits. I heartell the guy who played Dipsy only did so because he needed money.

 

So, happy birthday to the Teletubbies... everybody? Say, "Eh-oh!"