Media Macaroni

On our recent holiday road trip to the Midwest, Olive was alternately entertained with my iPod, my iPhone, our Nintendo DS, and her Leapster. Sure, we pulled out travel bingo, but that lasted about 10 minutes. It got me thinking about how much has changed for kids in the past decade.

At the dawn of the decade, I was working exclusively on CD-ROMs. It was the heyday of CD-ROMs for kids. Budgets were fat and we even got parties and t-shirts at the end of projects. CD-ROMs dominated little kids’ eyeballs while GameBoy was in the hands of older kids, but that was all about to change. Here’s a look at some big milestones in children’s media of the past decade.

2000

• Dora the Explorer premieres, taking over the torch of “interactive” television from Blues Clues, and launching our Latina friend into super-stardom.
• PS2 was new on the scene, but a lot of producers were too busy playing Grand Theft Auto to worry about how to use it effectively for kids.
• Tivo was just hitting the market, and over the course of a decade a generation of kids becomes confused in those rare moments of watching TV as it’s airing.

2001

• Nintendo gives us Game Cube, with terrific launch titles like Luigi’s Mansion. I remember that game really opening my eyes to different gameplay possibilities. It was but a teaser, though, to the Nintendo revolution to come.
• Nintendo also gives us GameBoy Advance, securing their status in the handheld market.
• Beginning in 2001, Leap Frog starts to dominate the kids’ interactive market when the Leap Pad becomes the best-selling toy. CD-ROM tanking sales follow, and those of us in the CD-ROM biz start looking for new media.
• Baby Einstein is sold to Disney, and the tidal wave of make-your-baby-smarter products follow.
• The first iPod is released. While not immediately part of the world of kids, new iPod releases (video! touch! cheap Shuffles!) follow.

2002

• They Might Be Giants releases their first family album, No!, bringing kids’ music into the consciousness of hipster parents everywhere.
• The surprise hit Scene It! puts interactive DVDs on the map. CD-ROM folks jump all over this wave, creating mediocre interactive products for a couple years. (Really, DVD players really suck as an interactive platform.)

2003

• Leap Frog enters the handheld market with the Leapster. Suddenly handheld games are accessible to littler kids.

2004

• Nintendo releases the superior Nintendo DS. To this day, I wish this could be the do-everything platform for kids. I’m still waiting for more educational games on DS, and it seems like they’re finally starting to trickle in.

2005

• The double-whammy: Webkinz and Club Penguin launch, creating in their wake a frenzy of imitation virtual worlds for kids. Even today you can’t shake a stick at the Internet without hitting a kids’ virtual world.
• Sweet, sweet YouTube. Where would we be without you? Ever since she was a baby on my lap, Olive has been watching clips on YouTube: classic Sesame Street, music videos, funny cats, skateboarding dogs, and rollerblading babies.

2006

• One word: Wii. With a single console, Nintendo gets two-year-olds playing video games with their grandparents. It also seems that finally a console maker is paying attention to women gamers. I love you, Nintendo.

2007

• Yo Gabba Gabba premieres. I should really talk about all of the excellent shows that have premiered over the past decade in the explosion of children’s televisions, but this one remains a favorite.
• Apple gives us the first iPhone. Initially, no one would have thought of this as a children’s platform, but as harried parents handed their phones to their kids to play with koi in a pond an endless stream of kids’ apps have followed.

In the past few years, everyone has been innovating on these platforms, and we can expect more innovation in the decade to come (Apple tablet?). If it comes as quickly, the future will be mind-boggling.

Help me out. What am I missing? What has changed your child’s life in the past decade?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Mobile, Music, Software, Television, Toys, Video Games, Web Games, Web Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.