Yo Gabba Gabba! is a kids' show on Nick Jr. with a whole lot of content that doesn't exactly seem oriented towards kids. It was co-created and is written by Christian Jacobs, also known as MC Bat Commander of The Aquabats!, and directed by Matt Chapman, co-creator of Homestar Runner.Each episode focuses on DJ Lance Rock's magical toys; Muno, Foofa, Brobee, Toodee and Plex; playing together and learning new things. Their adventures are loosely connected by a single theme, and are separated by trippy filler segments, including:
Story Time: A Flash-animated segment where a girl reads off a short story, usually leading up to An Aesop. Occasionally done as a comic book featuring a character named Super Martian Robot Girl.
Biz's Beat Of The Day: Biz Markie beatboxes to a different rhythm each time.
The DJ Lance Dance: DJ Lance makes up a simple dance and tells how to do it.
Cool Tricks: Featured kids (and sometimes adults!) show off their talents.
Mark's Magic Pictures:Mark Mothersbaugh shows how to draw a simple picture, which comes to life.
Other segments have the main cast asking you to join in an activity: Color With Brobee, Listen With Toodee, Learn With Plex, et cetera.
The series is largely music based, with frequent musical numbers and rhythm-driven activities. Once an Episode the characters watch a music video, with guest appearances by popular indie rock acts like The Shins and Of Montreal. This has helped it build up a Periphery Demographic of college kids.
Yo Gabba Gabba has examples of:
Acid Trip Dimension / World of Chaos: Almost everything in Gabbaland has a face and can talk, including a piece of toast with bat wings. Yes, really.
Broken Aesop: In "Differences", Muno gets glasses (or rather, a glass, because he has only one eye) and learns that it's okay to look different. At the end of the episode, he decides to use a contact lens instead because the glasses keep falling off his face, so he looks no different than he did before.
Callback / Continuity Nod: Several songs are reused or at least referenced in later episodes, and minor characters such as the Spooky Toast continue to get cameos throughout the series.
Captain Ersatz: Plex bears a strong resemblance to the original Getter 3, particularly the design of his head and arms.
Gentle Giant: Muno, a huge fanged cyclops with a friendly and overly enthusiastic personality. Also, DJ Lance, who is quite literally a giant next to the main cast.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: In an extremely literal sense. One animated short involving an animated character's newly cleaned car and said character dodging eggs from birds that lay egg in mid-flight or perching.
Mood Swinger: Brobee, at least compared to the other main characters, who are almost always in a good mood. Brobee is the one who most often gets upset, and is also the only main character who changes his facial expression.
Retraux: If the 8-bit sounding chiptunes incidental music isn't enough, try playing "guess the games this filler section is homaging" with some of the Idiosyncratic Wipes in the show.
Shaped Like Itself: In "Imagine", Plex dressed up as a wizard, making him a magical magic robot, and Toodee dressed up as a dragon, making her a cat dragon dragon.
Shout Out: Lots of references to 80's video games.
In Adventure, Muno pushes a stone out of the way to unveil a stairway. The Zelda "stairs revealed" music plays, and as they enter the dungeon, a few bars of the original Zelda dungeon theme plays.
The title is one, a variation of The Ramones chant "Gabba gabba hey" (which itself was adapted from the 1930s horror movie Freaks).
0 reviews 