‘Good for kids, very funny for adults’: Disney’s Bluey is so popular a ‘lost episode’ about flatulence is being released
- Bluey, a Disney cartoon about a family of Australian dogs, has struck a chord with viewers young and old alike – and contains jokes that only adults pick up on
- The show has grown so popular that Disney will release, later this year, an unedited episode that it banned because of jokes about flatulence
Bluey, an animated series about a playful family of Australian cattle dogs, has become Disney’s first hit children’s show of the streaming television era.
The programme, which began airing on the Disney Junior cable channel and the Disney+ streaming service in 2019, surged in popularity last month when the third season came out.
Bluey briefly passed long-time kids streaming leader CoComelon, which airs on Netflix, generating more than 900 million minutes of viewing the week of August 8 alone, according to television ratings data.
A kids’ hit is a financial feast – for the studios that make them, the networks that carry them and for companies that sell plush toys and other knick-knacks. Licensed merchandise sales of all kinds hit a record US$316 billion globally last year, with entertainment characters being the largest piece.
With Bluey, the BBC controls the merchandise rights, while Disney gets a royalty. The show led to a nine per cent increase in the BBC’s consumer-product sales last year. Moose Toys, an Australian company, is the main toy licensee.
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“The franchise is hitting all of these categories in the toy department,” said James Zahn, senior editor of the Toy Insider, which offers industry news and reviews. “That’s when you know it’s a true hit.”
Bluey is produced by Ludo Studio, an Australian company that got initial funding for the show from the BBC, Australian governments and the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Disney acquired the rights to air the programme in all but a few countries, most notably Australia and New Zealand, edging out other media companies.
In the United Kingdom, Bluey appears on both Disney+ and later on some BBC outlets.
The show has struck a chord with viewers because the episodes, just a few minutes in length, show both the dog parents and pups playing games and being silly.
“It’s good for kids, but it’s also very funny for adults,” said Mariel Monteagudo, an actress from Staten Island, New York, who watches the show with her eight-year-old son.
In the very first episode, Bluey and her sister, Bingo, play a trick on their dad that leaves him frozen with a garden hosepipe spraying him in the face. Another episode portrays the parents as hung over from a night of partying.
The show is so cheeky Disney and the BBC have caused fan uproar for sometimes censoring the content.
Disney has been promoting Bluey in short clips on YouTube and has run marathon sessions on its cable networks. The company has also been scheduling Bluey in the afternoon and evenings, so older kids and families can watch.
Brumm modelled the dog family after his own children, adopting what he calls a “grounded yet wild tone”. He said he was a little surprised by the success of the series, “though it’s testament to the fact that kids are pretty similar the world over”.
In Australia, where young children now go to bed with Bluey stuffed animals, the programme is the No. 2 character behind Paw Patrol in the preschool toy category, according to market researcher NPD. In the US, it ranks 5th.
An album of music from the show was the first kids record to hit No. 1 in Australia last year.
Normally a hit show at Disney would lead to merchandise being sold at its theme parks, website and stores, but the company has not given Bluey that extensive a push in those outlets. That may be because Disney does not own the brand, notes Zahn, the Toy Insider editor.
