this isn't what I meant by "a new fandom"

[vaznetti]

In a moment of weakness, I looked up Thomas the Tank Engine videos on YouTube, because Spartacus has an unbelievable obsession with it; now he thinks that my laptop is another of his toys! All the time it's "Pictures of Thomas!" or "Pictures of Emily Train

Comments

[cschick]

Just wait until he discovers Dinosaur Train. The Henson Company project that must have emerged from a brainstorming session called "How to completely obsess the brains of little boys."

[vaznetti]

We may not get that here -- right now we don't have any of the "pay" children's channels, since we can watch CBeebies all the time. But it sounds dangerous!

[cschick]

Dinosaur Train is on PBS, so it may eventually follow Thomas over there.

It's actually a pretty good show, once you get beyond the basic WTF? of dinosaurs riding trains and time-traveling (the train is the method the dinosaurs use to visit different periods over those 120-odd million years they ruled the earth). Its scientific information about paleontology is quite decent.

And your 4-year-old being able to pronounce the tongue-tangling names of a whole collection of dinosaur types is always interesting.

[vaznetti]

Oh God, dinosaurs riding trains? Spartacus will be ALL OVER THAT. He can already say "dinosaur" and he isn't even two yet.

[cschick]

http://pbskids.org/dinosaurtrain/videos/index.html

(if you can access, they actually have a few full episodes online)

[vaznetti]

Alas, blocked at this end. Well, there's always YouTube or DVDs.