Pocoyo!
January 28, 2012 7:56 AM   Subscribe

 
ooh! Watched a couple minutes on youtube. I love that it's 3d animation and looks modern but has a very soft, stop-motion feel to it, very minimalist and not uncanny valley-y in the least.

why am I not five when all this awesome stuff is out?!

*watches anyway*
posted by ghostbikes at 8:11 AM on January 28, 2012


My kids LOVE Pocoyo.

Almost as much as I do.
posted by wabbittwax at 8:19 AM on January 28, 2012


My kids love him too! :)
posted by zarq at 8:21 AM on January 28, 2012


As usually happens with these kinds of things, I like the duck the best.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:24 AM on January 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


When I clicked on the link to the English episodes and saw how many there were, my first though was, no kidding: "Shoot, should I try to watch them in order?" As if I might otherwise miss out on a crucial moment of plot development.

Seriously though, these are excellent. Yay cartoons!
posted by janepanic at 8:45 AM on January 28, 2012


I love the episode where Pato (the duck), in a snit because the others don't want to play his way, decides the ideal companion would be a clone of himself. Fortunately, he has a machine to do just that. The consequences of this are rather intelligently followed through.
posted by kurumi at 9:14 AM on January 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


I love Pocoyo but my kids are too old to let me watch.
posted by DU at 9:28 AM on January 28, 2012


Whoa whoa whoa! My youngest is very interested in languages right now (he likes things that are in categories because he's a nerd). I bet he'd love "foreign" Pocoyo.
posted by DU at 9:29 AM on January 28, 2012


Yeah, this is great for making me listen to basic Spanish in short bursts!
posted by vegartanipla at 9:42 AM on January 28, 2012


Yeah carter jr. loves this too!
posted by carter at 9:54 AM on January 28, 2012


Doop . . . dubuduboop . . . dubuduboop-boopboop-bu-BOOP!
posted by mobunited at 10:07 AM on January 28, 2012


Pocoyo is great. I can imagine the pitch to the producers on the concept.

Animators: "Oh, and there will be no background. Pocoyo and friends will wander around a blinding white field."
Producers: "Oooookayyyyy"

It's weird, but it works. I guess because the characters are so charming.
It always cracks me up when Pato's bill moves up and down his body and sometimes goes limp.

The very best on is this The Key to It All! (this one breaks the 'white background' convention tho')
posted by hot_monster at 12:28 PM on January 28, 2012


I found Pocoyó a couple years ago when I was hunting up Spanish kids' shows for my children. We don't have TV so I hadn't seen it before - I thought it was so cute.

But it was this Pocoyó dance clip that utterly won me over... it's from the 45 min. special "Pocoyó y el circo espacial" (Pocoyo and the space circus) which is not on the official channel but is available chopped up into parts elsewhere on YouTube.
posted by flex at 12:59 PM on January 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


So are grown-up guy fans of Pocoyo called "Brocoyos"?
posted by evilmidnightbomberwhatbombsatmidnight at 1:04 PM on January 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


My 3 year old has been watching Pocoyo for a while now, and loves it. We have about 100 episodes in Spanish, and i think he may actually know the titles/subjects of all of them...
posted by haykinson at 3:53 PM on January 28, 2012


My three-year-old twins also love Pocoyo.
posted by candyland at 5:04 PM on January 28, 2012


Hooray for Pocoyo, Pato, Ellie and friends! This show is really well done - the character designs are charming and clever, and the animators know how to do sight gags, convey the characters' personalities, and tell a story almost entirely with visuals, music and sound effects. Stephen Fry's narration in the English language version is a nice bonus, though.

I was put off a bit at first by the lack of a background, but after watching a few episodes, I realized that not only does it presumably save time and money during the animation process, it also lets kids more easily imagine themselves as part of Pocoyo's world. Since we only see Pocoyo, his friends and the objects they interact with directly, we don't know where in the world he is, or if he lives in a city, the suburbs, a small town, a farm or just out in the woods somewhere.

I also was a bit concerned at first that Fred, the red octopus, only has four tentacles, until I realized that he's probably just got four of them tucked away somewhere they can't be seen. After all, who ever heard of a quadrapus?

Pato is my favorite character, placed in my personal pantheon of animated waterfowl greats thanks to his nifty moves in the episode "Dance Off." Also, he and the producers demonstrate an admirable knowledge of animation history with some hilarious Tex Avery-style bulging-eyeball takes during "Scary Noises," which is one of the few eps that does have a background. (For the impatient: the first bulging eyeball take is here.)

One question, though - why is Pocoyo's dog Loula not seen more often? S/he's in the opening credit, but doesn't turn up very much in the actual episodes. Did s/he make unreasonable contract demands once the show turned out to be a hit? Or did the creators just find after creating her/him that they just didn't have that many stories to tell about Loula?
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 6:22 PM on January 28, 2012


This is awesome. Very entertaining, and it's exactly the right level of español for me to stretch my listening skills. Take that, Destinos!
posted by free hugs at 10:52 PM on January 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Well, today I discovered that I could listen to Stephen Fry narrating a children's cartoon literally forever.
posted by Hargrimm at 12:00 AM on January 29, 2012


Wow. I had just assumed this was British - thanks for clearing that up. I'm guessing Peppa Pig is all Brit though.

Is the white background thing really that weird to Americans? Seems like I grew up watch all kinds of British and Euro animation that was basically plasticine blobs against a white background.
posted by Artw at 5:33 AM on January 29, 2012


Wow. Given that Stephen Fry is narrating and my son apparently has a "thing" for British accents... there's a very real chance that I may have stumbled on to something to give me a break from endless re-watchings of Kipper.

Oh, and it's in Portuguese too?! I can pretend like he's learning something about his father's culture while I do the dishes?! AMAZING.
posted by sonika at 11:43 AM on January 29, 2012


I love this, and my son now apparently agrees! And it's so adorable he puts up with it being in Spanish (which he hears only from me and not frequently enough), double win!

Also, thank you Nate...Wagoner for telling me what that dog's name was, I couldn't understand it when they said it and was just counting down the moments until my son demanded to know what his name was.
posted by katers890 at 5:24 PM on January 29, 2012


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