In 2005, when Sprout was still a sprouting seed, it hosted a holiday stunt called The Let's Snow Show, hosted by The Birthday Show's Kevin Yamada and The Good Night Show's Melanie Martinez, their two on-air hosts at the time.
In between Sprout Christmas specials, Yamada and Martinez showed craft snowflakes sent in by Sproutlets like you, and a craft PDF on Sproutletsgrow.com showed Sproutlets how to make them.
We don't have any footage or promos of this event, but if we do get any, it’ll be quite a Sprouterrific surprise.
Click here to show craft snowflakes on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum!
Madeline Fretz - As we all know, PBS Kids Sprout launched as a video-on-demand service on Comcast in April 2005, and as a digital cable channel on September 26, 2005. Every year since then, Sprout has done something to celebrate, and here's a list:
As mentioned in a previous post, Sprout has done a series of things to celebrate its first birthday in 2006, but most of them were prior to September 26.
The next year, in 2007, Sprout had launched two new blocks, two new shows, and the fourth season of The Good Night Show on the 26th. Musical Mornings with Coo premiered at 6AM ET with Bounce, a direct-to-video series aimed at the autism spectrum, and The Sunny Side Up Show, a LIVE successor to The Birthday Show, premiered at 9AM ET with Play with Me Sesame, which was carried over from NOGGIN.
When the clock struck 6PM ET, it was time for Season 4 (or two, if we're not counting Melanie and Leo's tenures) of The Good Night Show. This new season introduced Lucy Light the Way, a game starring Lucy the Firefly, and real kids took part in stretches and interviews.
On September 26th, 2008, Chica celebrated her birthday, which I'll get to later today. On the same day, Sprout debuted HiT Entertainment's Roary the Racing Car.
In 2009, Sprout didn't do anything on the 26th, but rather then 21st. It rebranded with new graphics and bumpers and Season 5 of The Good Night Show premiered. This new season, which Nina appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show to promote, introduced Rubbadubbers.
In 2010, Sprout celebrated its fifth anniversary on the 25th. It introduced weekend editions of The Sunny Side Up Show, which took place in a refurbished Sunshine Barn set, and its first long-form original series, Noodle and Doodle, which aired on weekends.
In 2015, Sprout hit the big 1-0. And what did it do to celebrate? As celebrity Alyssa Milano became the channel's new "mom-bassador," the channel once again rebranded with new graphics and bumpers, dropping a few of its launch day shows. In addition, Nina's World premiered and The Sunny Side Up Show became Sunny Side Up, "moving" to an apartment in the big city.
PBS Kids Sprout launched on September 26th, 2005. Prior to that, it launched on Comcast on Demand in April. Every September 26th, Sprout has done something new (which I'll focus on later this week). However, it celebrated its FIRST anniversary in 2006 much earlier. Here's what happened…
Leo (played by puppeteer Noel MacNeal) was the guest host of The Good Night Show while auditions were still being held…
Firefighter Dayna Hilton, real kids, and Sparkles the Fire Safety Dog shared some fire safety tips leading up to the premiere of Fireman Sam in October…
PBS' Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks premiered with the "Grand Tails Day" marathon hosted by Grandpa Piggley…
…And finally, The Birthday Show (which I talked about yesterday) became a programming block on the 21st. So that meant it was not just Kevin Yamada reading birthday cards, but each (usually birthday-themed) show would be introduced by Mr. Mailman handing a child a birthday present, and Sprout characters like Big Bird or Angelina Mouseling would drop by to say happy birthday.
Well, I hope Sprout had a great birthday. They did lots of things at the time, maybe even more than the 10th anniversary! (Well, that was the day of the rebrand…)
In 2005, Sprout launched with two original content airing between shows - The Good Night Show with Melanie Martinez and The Birthday Show with future Sunny Side Up Show host Kevin Yamada.
In The Birthday Show, host Kevin Yamada read viewers' birthday cards delivered to him by Mr. Mailman (a trait later carried on by The Sunny Side Up Show), shared real people doing party activities like making crafts and recipes or playing games, and showed us how to send in a card, while some Sprout characters would sing a catchy original song.
The Birthday Show was also a block when Sprout turned one in 2006, but we'll focus on that later this week.
The Birthday Show ended sometime in 2007 when The Sunny Side Up Show debuted. Both Yamada and Mr. Mailman would appear on the new live block. Yamada said he was excited about doing birthday cards live. Currently, Tim Kubart of The Sunny Side Up Show hosts a series of the same name on the Hellosaurus app.
Here's something new I'm trying out. Each Wednesday, I focus on a different Sprout character, talent, or executive in a series I like to call "Weekly Character/Talent/Executive Wednesdays." Don’t worry, this won't affect My Week. My Week will still keep going. I’m a big Muppet fan, so just as My Week was inspired by the Muppet fan site ToughPigs, Weekly Character Wednesdays is inspired by "Weekly Muppet Wednesdays" from former fansite The Muppet Mindset, which is now owned by ToughPigs.
Who will I focus on first? Well, first we're focusing on Sprout's resident postman - Mr. Mailman!
Mr. Mailman began on Sprout's The Birthday Show, in which he would tell the date and hand host Kevin Yamada the birthday cards.
In 2006, he was the star of Sprout's first original series, The Many Adventures of Mr. Mailman. In the series, he would deliver letters and packages to real kids' (animated) friends or family in different parts of the world. Despite the series' removal on TV in 2009, it still had a podcast on iTunes and episodes were available on the Sprout Player app.
In 2007, he moved to The Sunny Side Up Show when it premiered, and once again delivered cards to the hosts in the Sunshine Barn. Here, he rode a tractor, a double decker bus, and a helicopter. Mr. Mailman was dropped during the Sunny Side Up refresh in 2015.
Well, Sproutlets, that's all the time I have! Stay tuned for more Weekly Character Wednesdays in the coming Wednesdays! But I gotta catch a helicopter now! Bye!
Madeline Fretz - In 2001, there was a website called Sproutonline.com. The website included "About Us" and "Mission" sections. It became Sprout.us sometime in 2004. Today, the website is now known as Finagle.com, which was originally under "Projects & Productions" as under final development.
A year later, PBS, HiT Entertainment, Sesame Workshop, and Comcast launched PBS Kids Sprout - a new 24-hour channel and video-on-demand service on Comcast with a website - Sproutletsgrow.com. The website launched alongside the channel on September 26, 2005.
Here, you could play games, look at TV schedules, make crafts, read and submit birthday cards, and learn more about Sprout.
Hosts Kevin "The Birthday Show" Yamada and Melanie "The Good Night Show" Martinez shared the website link and Sprout's address on-air when telling viewers about how to send in birthday cards and artwork to Sprout, and there was a commercial about the link (see above). The website was also included in PBS promos about Sprout and in news articles and/or press releases.
In December 2006, Sproutletsgrow.com became Sproutonline.com, and it is unknown what happened to the former domain regarding the domain switchover that year. That’s why this post is called a "mystery."
UPDATE: We Share was a Sprout campaign that was introduced in 2007, but two pictures of it feature the Sproutletsgrow.com domain. So does this mean it was introduced in 2006? Hmm…
