My Week with 2009: Fire Prevention Week

 

September was Fire Prevention Month, which I missed a mark on, but still mentioned in a post. Sprout celebrated Fire Prevention Month with a week on fire safety on The Sunny Side Up Show all the way back in 2009, which was probably a little while after the network rebrand.

I'm guessing this picture was from that week.

The week was hosted by Kevin Yamada (during his last few Sunny hosting months) and Chica, with special guests firefighter Dayna Hilton and Sparkles the Fire Safety Dog, who I mentioned in the aforementioned Sprout birthday post, and the CGI episodes of Fireman Sam commenced. Previously, only the stop-motion episodes of said show aired on Sprout.

Hilton and Sparkles also hosted fire safety tips sponsored by State Farm (the videos are from 2010, but whatever).

Anyways, for Sprout this was a great start to airing new episodes of Fireman Sam! Though the Sproutlets probably wouldn't notice the animation change… The Sam CGI episodes aired until May 11, 2014, the day The Sprout Sharing Show dissolved and a day before Lily's Driftwood Bay premiered.

Weekly Character Wednesdays: Banjo

 

BANJO

PERFORMED BY:

Ali Eisner

FIRST APPEARANCE:

The Let's Go Show (2007)

BEST KNOWN ROLE:

Banjo player, preschool doppelgänger

WHO IS BANJO? The co-host of The Let's Go Show, Banjo is a pink dog puppet played by Ali Eisner. She is very spunky and loves to play the banjo, hence her name. The puppet was recycled, albeit with altered features, as Meeka on Sprout Control Room in 2014.

WHY DOES THE LET'S GO SHOW NEED BANJO? Banjo represents the age and humor of the preschool viewers at home.

My Week with 2009: Trace Pictures

 

Madeline Fretz - With the Sprout rebrand in 2009, there were some network rebrand pitches (including this one), but the company who made the final idents and openings was Trace Pictures. 

Trace's Sprout work includes the Cloud ident, the Tree opening, the Pinwheel opening, the Rain ident, the Bubble ident, and the openings to Sprout's programming blocks as well as ¡Hola Sproutitos!.

My Week with 2009: Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies

 

In January 2009, Sprout introduced Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies, a British animated animal show from PBS. The show aired during The Sprout Sharing Show, but the Sprout airings cut out the "Monkey Minutes" segments. The main character was voiced by Baroness Floella Benjamin in the UK and Vanessa Williams in the US, attracting many adult viewers.

The show later aired on The Good Night Show in 2010, replacing Dragon Tales. It aired on Sprout until October 2012.

Sprout YouTube channel URL changed

 

Madeline Fretz - Sprout became Universal Kids in 2017, and its YouTube channel became Universal Kids Preschool after a while, and once again became Peacock Jr. when the Peacock streaming service launched. Even with those channel changes, its URL hasn't changed a bit. Until now.

Apparently, according to a user on Discord's Sprout fan server, the Sprout channel's URL has been changed to PeacockJr. The Sprout URL, like I said earlier, has been there for years, even after the Universal Kids switchover.

Anyways, despite this, some Sprout videos are still up on the Peacock Jr. YouTube channel … for now. They might become private or get deleted someday. A few months ago, the Peacock Jr. channel has made some Sunny Side Up Show videos private. Don’t despair, some of us may reupload them.

My Week with 2009: The Mighty Jungle

 

For Earth Day 2009, a new puppet show called The Mighty Jungle came to Sprout. The program started a meerkat named Babu, a rhinoceros named Rhonda, and a gorilla named Bruce, whose stories real kids would tell. The show premiered for "Mighty Earth Week," and a giveaway was held.

After that, the show aired daily during Sprout's Wiggly Waffle, The Sprout Sharing Show, and The Super Sproutlet Show. It left the channel in 2015, along with Justin Time.

William Shatner

William Shatner is a Canadian character actor perhaps best known for his role as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek franchise.

For many Sprout fans, their first exposure of Shatner was seeing him narrate Clangers, which aired on Sprout from 2015 to 2017. The original UK version was narrated by Michael Palin of Monty Python's Flying Circus fame.

To promote Clangers, Shatner appeared on The Sunny Side Up Show twice - once for a Sprout Today segment, another for a segment where Carly Ciarrocchi and Chica show him viewers' drawings asking if those are the Clangers.

Image from Vimeo

Shatner also hosted the "Clangers Imagine" spots to promote the show.