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Madeline Fretz - Parents and Kids Share Together is turning two at the end of this month, so I thought I'd do several posts on this blog commemorating the occasion. Now, I know we don't turn two until the 28th, but, like Sprout's first anniversary, the celebration starts much early. This post will be the first of a series of anniversary articles. Alright, Sprout fans, sit back, relax, and enjoy as I count down the top ten moments of Parents and Kids Share Together!
Please note that I tried doing a "Top Ten Songs" series on this blog, starting with songs from The Sunny Side Up Show, but abandoned it after that one post, probably because I'm not a pro at doing top ten (or similar) lists. I'm going to try my best with this post.
Before I started this blog and became an admin on PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki, I was an American CBeebies fan with a fake wiki. Given that CBeebies and Sprout have aired the same shows and are very similar to one another, I wrote a post comparing the two brands to commemorate the former's 20th anniversary in the UK, and noticed how different they are. Differences aside, at the end of the day, CBeebies and Sprout have completed their mission - to do good things for kids. Isn't that the most important thing?
9. Which is Better?: Sprout's Signature Blocks
Sprout has had seven programming blocks over the years, and the two longest-running (as well as the only two blocks that aired during the third generation) were The Good Night Show and The Sunny Side Up Show. Now, you may be wondering which one is better. For those of you who wonder too, read this post and find out. In the post, I compare the two blocks' hosts, characters, openings and closings, shows aired, themes, and, of course, premises. Which one is better, and which one do you like better? Read ahead!
My post about my life as a Sprout fan (more on that later) was so popular, that I made two "sequel" posts on this blog, but this time about Sprout fan memories and confessions. The confessions one, this is the second of these posts, and is about how I was scared of The Sunny Side Up Show, how I confused two male hosts, and how Sprout inspired me to host inspired children's shows at a young age, amongst other things. You may have shared my thoughts in this post with me.
Being a lifelong Sprout fan, I remember several things from watching the channel and surfing the internet a few years ago, and wrote about my memories in a post. In fact, some of my memories are super rare, that I, for one, have been begging to find them. Some of my memories may sound familiar, and some may seem, obviously, pretty rare and obscure. If you have any of the things I mentioned in the post, please DM or email me. Thank you.
Now, you know me as a big Sprout fan and all-around aficionado, but do you know the true story? This post, which I wrote the day before I started high school and constantly updated, is about my history as a Sprout fan - from my childhood Sunny Side Up Show-phobia to a historian with a fan blog. This is probably your story too. You'll love it, I swear!
5. So…What Now?
As you probably know, the people at NBCUniversal have not acknowledged the Sprout name at all since 2018, and us fans (especially myself) have been waiting and begging for something new. Just this month, I wrote about possible ways for a new, official Sprout project in the future - could it be a reunion, app (looking at you, Noggin!), movie, new show? I wrote a similar post on the same blog earlier, but this time about possibilities to celebrate 15 years of The Sunny Side Up Show. Come on, NBCUni, do you even read this blog? Or anyone I know who used to work at Sprout for that matter? Well, I contacted NBCUniversal in several ways as well as Sprout people about possibly making a Sprout movie with the same plot as my fanfic (more on that later in this post, I promise), so we may be getting a live-action theatrical film sometime in the future. I know some of my ideas will never happen, but, as I always say, "never say never." What do you hope will happen with the Sprout name in the future?
If you know me, you know that, before Parents and Kids Share Together, I started another Sprout fan blog called Let's Grow, after an old fan YouTuber. I started this blog in February 2020, and named it after an obscure slogan that debuted way back in 2007. You wanna know what it is? And why the blog goes by that name? Read the post and find out!
I've always wanted to publish a book about Sprout's history, something I've been working on since 2020 (AKA the year I started this blog). Until the day the book finally gets published (which will probably happen by the time I'm an adult), my Sprout fanfic, appropriately(inappropriately?) titled, you guessed it, Sprout, is my biggest Sprout project yet (well, I did make a Sprout coloring book, does that count as the biggest?). You see, my favorite movie is Jason Segel's The Muppets (2011), which is about The Muppets getting back together to save their old studio from being demolished by an evil oil baron, and I've always wanted both to make a Sprout version of the story and Apple TV+ to bring back the Sprout brand (and you probably know why), so I tweaked Segel's script and wrote about how myself, Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba!, and my mom reunited the Sprout gang for a telethon to, instead of saving their old studio from an evil oil baron, bring back their shows on Apple TV+. As crazy as it may seem, I did it, and published the fic online on November 23rd for all to see, Sprout fan or not. The day before it was published, I wrote about my new story on the blog. Parents and Kids Share Together is not a place for fanfiction, never has, but still, I wanted to grab fans' attention.
2. Guess What?
I've been a Sprout fan for as long as I can remember. In fact, I can't remember a time when the brand hasn't been a part of my life. As the world's biggest fan, I'm quite lucky. I have several Sprout people liking my tweets on my old Twitter account (which is no longer up), following me on Instagram, and becoming friends with me on Facebook. Speaking of Facebook, I have started and am a member of several Sprout fan groups. One of those fan groups is "I Love Universal Kids Sprout," started in 2008, and many Sprout employees are members. You see, one day, I wrote on that group about a Sunny Side Up Show dream I had - Emily and Chica were linking into The Good Night Show at 6PM after The Sprout Sharing Show ended. The dream was like a Sprout time continuum - Emily joined The Sunny Side Up Show in June 2014, and The Sharing Show dissolved a month earlier. Steven "Toaster Steve" Binnig, someone who worked on Sprout and The Sunny Side Up Show, saw my post and commented on it, complimenting me for knowing a lot about Sprout, and I quickly became friends with him, as well as a few other former Sprout employees, such as Brianne O'Neill, Tara Murphy, and Nafeeza Hassan. It was 2021. That Christmas, the Fretz family received suitcases and headphones and learned we were going to NYC on an airplane. Also on Christmas Day, Mom received an email from Steven that had a video on Drive - just for me. The video contained the old gang, all names I already knew at the time, wishing me merry Christmas, even knowing my name and that I was their biggest fan. It was amazing. It took my Sprout fandom to the next level. Before the video, I wanted to go on a cross-country trip to get everyone back together so bad, and, well, Steven and I did it - and we didn't need to drive cross country. It was all we could talk about for days end. I sang about the video in an original song of mine about Sprout, "Childhood."
Before we move on to our number one pick, here are a few honorable mentions (WatchMojo, eat your heart out!):
- The History of Star
- Overthinking It: Where are Star's parents?
- Knee-Deep in the Hoopla
- Sprout Might-Have Beens
- Sprout History Lessons
- The Last of Arthur
- Sesame Street: Should It End?
Ha! I'm sure you knew this was coming at one time or another. Why? Well, I founded the Parents and Kids Share Together blog on February 28th, 2020, a day I'll never forget, and this was the very first post I published. The post explains why I started this blog - in reality, I adored Guy Hutchinson's Big Bird Bridge, a fan blog dedicated to Sesame Place in Langhorne, but given Sprout's quite small fanbase, I found myself unable to find any Sprout fan blogs or fansites in general on the worldwide web, so I decided to do the next best thing and start my own fan blog, and the rest is history. Please note that this post is a direct (carbon?) copy of the first post on Big Bird Bridge, as, at the time, I mainly copied from other people's sites and blogs. Nowadays, I rarely do that. Wow, I'm being original! Anyways, the very first pictures on this blog were from the Sprout launch party in 2005, as I felt those pictures would be an appropriate way to kick off the blog. Just this month, I found a rare photo of the launch party not on Flickr and posted about it here.
Anyways, that's my personal top ten moments on this blog. I hope you enjoyed! What are your favorite moments?
Click here to look back on two years of posts on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum!
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