Ok, (yes I know most of my posts start with “Ok”, deal with it) Declan’s been enjoying watching some cartoons recently. His favorites include, rather unremarkably, Dora and Diego. I’ve been trying to get him hooked on Gatchaman and The Tick, but it just ain’t happening.
So Dora seems fine enough, she does all sorts of things that are fun and adventurous, uses her backpack and map a lot, and has to avoid swiper. Great, Declan loves it and is responsive to the educational content.
Then comes Diego, if you don’t know, Diego is Dora’s cousin. He lives in the rain forest and helps rescue various animals in trouble.
Diego is so much cooler than Dora.
Firstly, he takes a zipline everywhere he goes. So much cooler than walking or riding an ice cream truck.
Next he has this vest. He pulls a cord on the collar and the vest turns into whatever he needs. It’ll grow sleeves if it’s cold, or a hood if it’s raining, even turns into a life jacket when Diego needs to hit the rapids.
But this is the coolest part of all:
Dora has backpack, Diego has Rescue Pack. First off, Rescue Pack is a messenger bag. Ask any employee at Abercrombie and, if you can hear them over the blaring music in the store, they will tell you that a messenger bag is way cooler than a backpack. As if that’s not enough, where backpack can carry things, like a bananas or sticky tape, Rescue Pack turns into stuff. Not boring stuff, cool stuff, a snowboard, a mountain bike, a hang glider, climbing gear. I’ll take a kayak over a roll of tape any day. And just to rub it in, Rescue Pack gets this cool song and dance number every time he is deployed. It’s this salsa thing with spotlights and everything. I sing it all day.
So all this adds up to Diego being cool, in fact too cool for Nick Jr. I predict that soon Diego will have a new show. This show will be called Diego After Dark and will be set in Diego’s secret grotto deep in the rain forest. This will be a cool show, and it will be that kind of cool you don’t find anymore. Movie stars and playmates will hang out at the grotto with Diego. Diego will arrive, pull the cord on his vest and it will turn into an embroidered black silk shirt, casual, cool, and sexy. Rescue Pack will be there, wearing sunglasses, playing piano for Miss March and Miss October while sipping his martini. Diego will just walk around and chat with his friends, pouring Cristal as he wanders. Occasionally he’ll talk straight to the camera as if you are there with them all.
Yes, this is a blatant ripoff of Playboy After Dark from the 60s-70s. However, I think Diego can inject enough novelty into it to make it work again and who knows what Rescue Pack can do … after dark.
We shall see.
