Cloudbabies is a new series on CBeebies featuring Baba Pink, Baba Blue, Baba Yellow and Baba Green whose job is to look after the sky and their Sky Friends, Sun, Moon, Rainbow, Fuffa Cloud and Little Star. They live with with Bobo White, a mischievous little Sky Imp, in a house on a big fluffy cloud and spend their days riding around on colourful legless sky horses. It’s all quite sweet really and my kids were quite enchanted with the whole thing, even my nearly five year old son, who is becoming less keen on things on CBeebies, seeing them as too babyish now that he’s at school.
The programme is gentle and fairly slow paced, but seems typically CBeebies in that it has a lesson or moral without being too preachy (as opposed to the rather heavy handed way some American programmes tackle making television educational for kids. In this episode, the friends decide to paint their door, and all want to paint it their favourite colour. Let on by the cheeky Fuffa Cloud, they all paint the door, then paint over each other’s efforts, before finally realising that it’s much nicer if they paint it in all their favourite colours. Aaah.
Even a hardened cynic like me found it rather nice and I wondered if my kids took it on board, as they are constantly arguing about which colours are acceptable. Actually my son isn’t too bad with this, though since starting school has declared that pink is for girls. My daughter on the other hand, is a nightmare. I am not a fan of pink, nor am I especially girly, yet she is obsessed. I hoped she might watch this and take away a little lesson about all colours being nice, that it’s okay to have a favourite but that doesn’t mean it always has to be that one, but instead the first thing she said was “I liked the pink one. The cloud was great too”. The cloud was also pink, of course. Sigh. I rather wish they’d opted for a Baba Red instead of a Baby Pink as it does seem to pander a bit to our increasingly pink-obsessed nation of little girls, but maybe that’s why.
When I asked him what he liked, my son said “I liked when they painted the door in all of their favourite colours because they were sharing colours. I loved the rainbow.” and they both agreed they would like to see the programme again. Which is convenient as it starts today!
Cloudbabies is on at 11.25 every morning on CBeebies. Check out their website for more details.
