Oh, I’ll return you to your regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow. Pinky swear! But I can’t help it; I just enjoy Halloween. I like the dressing up, I like the permission to be silly or spooky or whatever, I love watching my kids have a good time, I love seeing what people can do with pumpkins (because whose idea was that, anyway, to start carving up a pumpkin and then light it from the inside?).

(And I also happen to like candy. Though that’s just a side benefit.)

I don’t know what you’re doing today, but I’m finishing up a few costume details and trying to find my feather wig. (I haven’t seen it since we moved. Do you know where it is?) And I’ll be doing my regular work, of course, but also spending some time on some of my favorite Halloween-time sites.

The Wallace and Gromit pumpkins pictured above are just one of the many amazing creations by Scott Cummins, the Pumpkingutter. If you’ve never been to his site, prepare to be amazed.

Prefer quantity over quality? Check out The Great Pumpkin House in West Virginia. (I kind of wonder what that guy does to top it at Christmas.)

Ah, but is it cinematic pumpkins you crave? Over at /film they’ve rounded up movie-related pumpkins for your viewing pleasure.

Had enough of the pumpkins? Maybe you want to thinking about yucky candy you hope you don’t get in your treat bag.

Make it educational: Maybe your kids will be interested in Halloween customs around the world. (Reading that totally offsets a handful of fun-size candy bars.)

And finally, you don’t want to miss any magical moments tonight: Here’s some Halloween photography tips you might find useful.

Happy haunting!

Let’s be realistic: If you’re not ready for Halloween today, you’re pretty much out of luck. At the very least, I hope you don’t have any other plans for the day, like, I don’t know, working or eating.

But don’t despair! If somehow you’ve managed to find yourself with a small person or two following you around but no Halloween costume plans, I have a few suggestions, because I care deeply about your Halloween needs. And it’s a terrible thing when a kid has to go costumeless.

So here’s your handy Toy Box Mommy’s Guide To Last-Minute Halloween Costumes:

1) Ghosts are so last year. Sure, a white sheet turns a kid into a ghost, but that’s so done, don’t you think? Dress a kid in white and glue cotton balls all over her hat and her shoes, though, and she’s a Q-Tip! Dress a kid in white and run a few lines of painter’s tape down her body and she’s a drinking straw! Think outside the box, is what I’m saying.

2) It’s in your closet. That old suit Daddy refuses to get rid of will be an excellent hobo costume on a kid half his size. One of Mom’s floaty tops will go great over leggings… throw on a belt and some leggings and voila! Instant hippie!

3) If I say it’s a costume, it’s a costume. My daughter is going out this year dressed as she normally does, but with a baby doll pinned to the seat of her pants. She’s a babysitter! (Duh.) Tell your kid to talk into his watch and look furtive—he’s a secret agent! As long as they play the part, it’s a costume. Trust me.

There. Now don’t say I never gave you anything.

A couple of other things to note, on the day before the big event:

You know when the very best time to buy a Halloween costume is, right? That’s right—right around or just after Halloween. Then you save money and put it away for next year, secure in the knowledge that you won’t be scrambling at the last minute. (Well, not unless you can’t remember where you put it. That I can’t help you with, sorry.) Anyway. Right now all of the costumes in Ty’s Costume Shop are marked down by 20% to 50%. Pick something up now for next year, and you won’t be left gluing cotton balls the day before.

If you plan to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown this year (and if you don’t plan to watch it, I’m not sure we can continue being friends), it’s on ABC tonight (October 30th, 2007) at 8:00 Eastern, 7:00 Central. I highly recommend introducing your children to this fine tradition as soon as possible if you haven’t already, even if only because it will spice up your trick-or-treating when they learn to look into their bags and intone, “I got a rock.”

The next big DreamWorks film will be Kung Fu Panda, and this weekend Animated News pointed out that there was a new teaser trailer available over at Animatie. The clip heavily features Jack Black (who voices the title character); perhaps you, like me, feel like as an upstanding adult you really ought to dislike Black on general principle, but you can’t because he’s just really funny. Every time I see him I think, “Gosh, I can’t stand that guy, he’s just—” but then generally I am laughing too hard to finish the sentiment.

Ahem. Anyway.

Watching this trailer got me thinking about the rise of martial-arts-themed entertainment for our kids (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Xiaolin Showdown and Skunk Fu come to mind), and about on-screen violence in general. Last week marked a breakthrough in television research, some say—a longitudinal study out of the University of Montreal found that television violence does not make children become violent. This flies in the face of the oft-accepted wisdom of the last twenty years or so, but I believe that everyone of my generation always knew this to be true.

To wit: I spent countless Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons in my childhood fairly marinating in Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry and the like. I am here to tell you that I never once dropped an anvil on someone’s head, placed a rake in an unsuspecting enemy’s path, or whacked an adversary with a mallet twice my size. Not once.

This is not to say that I let my children watch any old thing on TV; I do, of course, like to keep the violence to a minimum. But I also never really believed that a cartoon that showed fighting would inspire kids to emulate what they see except as an exercise in make-believe.

Back when I was a kid, the popular cartoons had ridiculous violence (see: anvil, mallet) that resulted in things like gigantic lumps popping out all over a character’s head. Nowadays, as more and more shows espouse the values of regimented fighting systems—martial arts, sure, but even on Pokemon there are stringent rules of engagement—I wonder if the end result is programming that is, overall, less violent than ever before, even while the fighting remains.

And then when we’ve come around to having a movie about a big fluffy panda who becomes a fighting machine… well… I’m sure that says something about our society as a whole and our views on violence. I’m just not quite sure what.

Way back last March, I told you about the first Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy movie, and also mentioned the upcoming crossover event, The Grim Adventures of the Kids Next Door. Back then, the news was that the crossover would be happening this summer, but as these things sometimes go, the current air date is now November 11th for the event.

In preparation, Newsarama’s Steve Fritz is back, with both a teaser summary of the Kids Next Door’s visit to Endsville and an interview with KND creator “Mis-Tah” Tom Warburton.

First you can read all about the episode:

[Billy is] panicked, and wrecking just about anything that is within a radius of six feet from him.

So Billy calls for help. Ed, Edd and Eddy refuse his pleas when they realize Billy doesn’t have a quarter. They tell him to call some other kids who will work for nothing.

Shortly thereafter, the Kids Next Door appear. When Billy says he asked for the PowerPuff Girls, Nigel Uno states that the Girls won’t come to Endsville. Too many weird things happen here.

A more prophetic thing couldn’t have been said. Before this 30 minute special is over, Mandy will be in charge of the KND, a monster called The Delightful Reaper Down The Lane will be terrorizing the world and Uno will be tortured by no less than Fred Fredburger. Yes, it’s the end of the world as we know it and you WILL feel fine. If not, you’ll have to contend with Mandy.

Now, had you asked me before I read that if I was interested in watching the crossover, I would’ve been non-committal. But I’ll admit that this write-up has already piqued my interest. As I moved on to the interview, however, I fell hook, line and sinker for Warburton. Just a sample:

NRAMA: Who wore the pants in this team up?

TB: Pants? We were supposed to be wearing PANTS?

NRAMA: Er, yeah. How did you come up with the basic story line?

TB: We had stufisticated computers do that for us while we were hitting each other with rubber chickens. Every once and while we’d stop and add in a joke or two when we were tired.

Catch The Grim Adventures of The Kids Next Door on Cartoon Network on November 11th, and enjoy the ready makings of a fan-crush on Tom Warburton by checking out the whole interview.

Back in my early days of parenting— when I was still feeling guilt over how I’d vowed never to let my precious children watch television and yet I was known to let my toddler babble at the Teletubbies every single day so that I could shower in peace or drink an entire cup of coffee which was free of Legos—I often lamented how PBS had the audacity to often show non-child-oriented programming during the day. And I couldn’t possibly allow my child to watch a channel other than PBS. Those other channels had commercials.

(I know; wasn’t my conviction that I could shield my kids from the world adorable?)

And then one day I discovered Noggin. Noggin had little kid shows all day! Noggin didn’t have commercials!

I had another baby. This baby had colic. I’m not going to lie to you; my first baby (now a toddler) spent a lot of quality time with Noggin while I tried to get her brother to stop crying.

My kids have more or less outgrown the Noggin demographic, now, but I still have a very soft spot in my heart for their programming. Ah, would that life was still so simple as “Let’s watch Little Bear and then have dinner” to cap off the day.

And while my children noodle around on Webkinz or Discovery Kids, now, your preschooler can start getting online and having fun and (shhhh, don’t tell them!) learning over at the brand new myNOGGIN. It’s aimed at ages 3 through 6 and is a pay subscription site. If you’re willing to commit to a year, it’s just $5.95/month. Month-to-month it’s $9.95/month with no obligation.

I think it looks pretty interesting, but then again, I sort of love Noggin. Regardless, you can check out a demo and try it for a week for free. It may be just what you and your little one have been needing for a rainy day.

Bee Movie has big plans beyond hitting the big screen.

First, apparently the union of Shrek and McDonald’s Happy Meals (remember that?) went so well, the happy hawking of apple slices and milk along with your chicken nuggets will continue along with promotion of Bee Movie:

“The ‘Bee Movie’ promotion at McDonald’s delivers great quality food choices, fun toys and a meaningful way for kids and families to learn about and positively impact the environment,” said Neil Golden, vice president, U.S. Marketing, McDonald’s.

[…]

“DreamWorks and McDonald’s have clearly demonstrated our commitment to making a difference,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive officer, DreamWorks Animation. “Our partnership is just one example of how entertainment properties can inspire and motivate kids and families to get involved in important topics like the environment and their own well-being.”

An, the environment. It’s really the new black, you know, being interested in this world we live in. (Okay, I’m not knocking eco-friendliness at all, it just cracks me up how it’s so en vogue nowadays to get on this particular bandwagon. Whatever works, I guess.) And apparently McDonald’s has been doing good works behind the deep fryers for a while now:

McDonald’s and Conservation International have worked together on environment issues since 1990, collaborating on multiple short-term and long-range projects with both local and global impact.

Under the expert guidance of Conservation International, McDonald’s has successfully developed a global sustainable supply chain vision and specific adjoining guidelines that have contributed to continuous improvement in environmental performance throughout the McDonald’s supply chain. Most recently, McDonald’s is supporting their efforts to preserve precious bee habitats in Mexico and South Africa.

“As our first corporate partner, McDonald’s has demonstrated ongoing environmental commitment and leadership by improving their own business practices, talking to their customers about the environment and supporting conservation efforts directly in the field,” said Peter Seligmann, chief executive officer and chairman, Conservation International. “We’re so pleased to extend our long-term relationship with McDonald’s in this important effort to protect vital bee habitats and inform children about the small things they can do to make a big difference for our planet.”

That’s almost enough to make me want a Bee-themed Happy Meal, right there.

I loved Curious George when I was a child, and so when I became a mother, myself, I of course picked up those ubiquitous yellow books, eager to share them with my own children. Perhaps you can imagine my surprise to discover that the lovable little monkey I remembered so fondly was… well, he was a lot bigger troublemaker than I remembered.

Every story follows the same basic structure: George is left alone when the Man with the Yellow Hat has to go off somewhere (and doesn’t have money for a monkeysitter?); George cannot resist either touching something he shouldn’t or wandering off somewhere he wasn’t supposed to; something catastrophic happens; George is scolded; George cries; something marginally good comes of this; everyone laughs and forgives George.

That George was kind of a hoodlum, honestly. But you couldn’t be angry with him for long, because he’s a cute monkey. Which is more or less a summation of most people’s parenting experience, come to think of it….

Anyway, I got over my horror at what a terrible role model George is (and really, there’s an argument to be made for not looking to primates for your role models), I found myself reliving how hilarious his adventures are. My kids were hooked.

When the animated show came to PBS, it’s true that my kids were already a little bit too old for it. But you know what? We watched it anyway. Just because it’s funny, and George is irresistible. Oh, sure—my kids tried to pretend they were watching something else, sometimes, until finally we all had to admit that it’s just the sort of show that’s funny no matter how young or old you are.

And now there’s a whole new Curious George Store at Ty’s Toy Box and I’m nostalgic for the days when my kids were really little, again. I can’t help it. I mean, yes, I suppose that technically sending my son to school in these would be tantamount to taping a “Kick Me” sign to his back, but is that any reason not to offer them in his size?

Welcome to Ty’s, Curious George. Don’t ever stop being cute. (You might want to stop flooding the house, causing chaos at the hospital, sailing away on a kite, and letting all the baby bunnies out, though.)

I was five years old when I saw the movie Grease for the first time. I’m sure a lot of it went over my head (at least, I’m sure that’s what my mother was hoping when she found out that on a rainy day at camp, they’d loaded us all up and taken us to a decidedly PG-rated movie), but I loved it. I wanted to be a pink lady (not because of anything that meant, but because I liked their jackets) and I spent a lot of time singing “Look at me / I’m Sandra Dee” to my dolls.

After a while we bought the record (yes, the record) and I often lay on the floor of the living room, hairbrush held up to my mouth in lieu of a microphone, crooning “Summer Nights.”

The point is, I was hooked.

And so it’s possible that I was teasing my daughter just a little bit about her infatuation with High School Musical, because she’s not even in high school and whole parts of the story go completely over her head, I’m sure, when she pointed out that the music is just fun. And didn’t I remember being a kid and liking something like that?

I suppose I do.

And so I was not terribly surprised to learn that High School Musical has taken to the stage with roaring success. Disney had always planned to license it for school/amateur productions, but when the property proved such a smash hit, they went ahead and expanded into professional production as well. The results thus far have been very positive. (The effort I’m expending not to type “duh” at the end of that sentence is substantial.)

But if Disney runs out of HSM-themed avenues, my offer of the synchronized swimming idea still stands. You know, just in case they need it.

I think it’s time for a little bit of reader participation out here. (People, I see you. You’re not a very chatty bunch, but I know you’re out there.)

Anyway, listen. Last week was Fall Toy Fair in Dallas, and do you know who was there? The Wiggles! Possibly to promote their latest DVD, I don’t know. (I wasn’t there. I am but the lowly Toy Box Mommy, and if I go off to these sorts of events, chances are excellent that the Toy Box Children will eat nothing but breakfast cereal until I returned with the mighty power of my maternal glare and “You know, there are starving children in Darfur who would kill for that fish stick, kid.”)

Now, anyone who knows the story of Ty’s Toy Box knows that it all started with the Wiggles, long ago. And now they have Wiggles merchandise along with a billion other licensed lines, but the Wiggles, people, they’re the reason Ty Simpson got started on this.

Anyway. As I was saying, last week: Fall Toy Fair, The Wiggles… and then guess what happened. Go on, guess!
(more…)

The phenomenon that is The Naked Brothers Band is continuing to grow. In addition to the continued popularity of their tween-aimed show on Nickelodeon, brothers Nat and Alex Wolff have just released a music CD.

If you’ve ever watched the show (and I’ll go on record right here as confessing that I adore this show, in all its campy glory—I think creator Polly Draper is a genius), you know that the Wolff brothers actually write and perform their own music. And it’s not half bad.

The Wolff boys’ CD offers poppy two- and three-minute ditties about puppy love, aliens, cars and banana smoothies, perfectly suited for kids their age.

In fact, Nat’s knack for hooks and harmonies is impressive for fans of any age. Clearly inspired by their heroes, the Beatles and Bob Marley, the boys paint a vast musical landscape, ranging from the introspective, Nat-penned ballad “I Indeed Can See” to the whimsical electronic comic relief of “Alien Clones,” courtesy of Alex.

My daughter hummed “Crazy Car” for about a month after we watched the debut Naked Brothers Band episode earlier this year. Trust me, this stuff is catchy.

So anyway, this is all well and good, but why is it significant? Take note:

The Naked Brothers Band CD release marked the boys’ first step toward Hannah Montana-like multi-platform stardom, but Wolff would quickly point out that that’s where the similarities end: “The boys have always been natural musicians who just happen to be on TV.”

Although also weary of comparisons, Nat is encouraged by the recent achievements of his Disney channel competitors because, as he sees it, “now kids can actually make their mark.”

Geoff Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst at Billboard magazine, agrees.

“They could really do well,” he reasons. “In the past, Nickelodeon properties had done OK, but they have not really had huge successes like Disney’s ‘Hannah Montana’ or ‘High School Musical,’” he says, “but the viewership numbers for the Naked Brothers are promising and they could be the ones to break through.”

The rise of kids’ television series with attached music—in an age where kids are buying their own music at younger ages than ever before—is a big deal. The article characterizes the CD’s debut as “respectable but not blockbuster,” coming in at the 23 spot on Billboard’s top album charts and 34,000 copies sold.

I’m no industry expert, but I think that’s pretty good. And I think the Wolff brothers will be ones to watch over the next few years; if this is what they can do at 9 and 12, who knows what the future holds for them. Rock on, boys.