Rastamouse Follow-Up

At the beginning of the month, Gabe (via @bridgetorr) introduced us all to the fantastic children's show Rastamouse. Since then, there's been 15 episodes, the majority of which are available to watch on the BBC iPlayer (of course, UK only) and probably a few on YouTube if you can be bothered searching. I've watched most of them, usually with a few of my friends despite us all being a bit over the target age of under 6. Apparently we're not the only ones, at least according to the Daily Mail (who we all should usually be cautious about trusting) who say the show "has garnered a cult following not seen since the Teletubbies, with a single - 'Ice Popp' - already recorded... and has been sold to international broadcasters, with a range of merchandise in the pipeline." My birthday is in a week, could you all get me some of that merch please?



Anyway, here's the video for Ice Popp, which my friend said was a disappointment, but I thought it was quite good and far too catchy.




Of course, being a TV show aimed at children and featuring puppets in the form of mice who've adopted a Rastafarian culture, a few people don't like it. First of all, right-wing white mothers who think the language of a programme their child watches for ten minutes four days a week will cause the kid's brain to forget all of the English it's been hearing around it for years and decide to adopt the language of the characters. Then there are the complaints of racism because portraying an ethnic group using mice puppets might bring connotations of vermin etc. Maybe I'm stupid, but I didn't even think of this until I read it and I doubt the kids will either. They suggest a lion would have been more appropriate, due to the large connotation the lion has with Rastafarianism. And I think we all got the "cheese = weed" references (I can't really imagine "zebra carcass = weed"), but would a 4-year-old, the show's target audience? I think it's charming, cute, educational and some of the best stop-motion animation I've ever seen. All I can think of that's on par is probably Wallace & Gromit but I think I like Rastamouse better. It's one of those things I wish was around when I was a kid.


I'm Niamh, this is my first post here and I comment on Videogum sometimes if I can think of anything a wee bit amusing. I used to have the "Tyra-Banks-fires-lasers-and-lightning-from-her-eyes-and-mouth" avatar but now I have the "Tyra-Banks-looks-down-at-a-sheet-of-paper" avatar. Here is my crap tumblr, my crappy blog and my crappier twitter.