The Wiggles are an Australian children's band, founded in 1991 but gained international popularity during the 2000s. Greg Page, Anthony Field and Murray Cook met as early childhood education students at Macquarie University in the 80s, while Field was a member of 80s rock band The Cockroaches alongside Jeff Fatt; the three classmates undertook a university project of their own design intended to create music aimed at children with educational value, and Fatt was brought in as a pianist. A few years and a deal with
The ABC later, and The Wiggles were born.
Over the years they have produced forty-eight albums, several television series and two films, one live action and one animated. The ABC has traditionally broadcast all their shows and been in charge of distributing all their albums and films in Australia. In the United States, the program initially aired on
Playhouse Disney, but was supplanted by the
Imagination Movers. The Wiggles now have an expanded role on PBS Kids Sprout, with both their show airing and them hosting interstitial segments during programming in the morning called
The Wiggly Waffle Show.
Sadly, 3 original members, Greg Murray and Jeff, have left the band now, so we'll see how the new band goes, especially with a female member now.
Tropes:
- Big Eater: Anthony.
- Carnivore Confusion: Dorothy's a Dinosaur, obviously a tyrannosaurus rex sort, but it's OK because she eats... roses.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: That's Murray in the red skivvy, Jeff in the purple, and Anthony in blue. Greg wore the yellow skivvy until 2006, when he turned his skivvy over to Sam.
- Cover Changes The Meaning: They've done a few covers of songs aimed at older audiences, both written by the band themselves pre-Wiggles and by other artists.
- One that stands out is Monkey Man, originally done by The Maytalls. The original version appears to be about a man telling someone (a girlfriend?) that he's heard rumors of her "hugging up the big monkey man", though he can't confirm it. The Wiggles version, featuring Kylie Minogue, is about... an actual Monkey Man.
- Excited Kids Show Host: Everyone, of course.
- Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Dorothy the Dinosaur, evidently a 'Rosasaurus'.
- Everything's Squishier With Cephalopods: Henry the Octopus, who likes to be under the sea, in an octopus's garden, in the shade.
- Fanservice Extra: Your Mileage May Vary on this, but The Wiggles are one of the very few children's music groups to sometimes include attractive (and legal) female dancers in some of their videos, thus catering a bit to the fathers out there stuck watching the videos. After all, when some married couples are in their "having several babies in the space of a few years" you have to excuse a guy for being a guy.
- Five-Man Band
- Four Temperament Ensemble: Greg is sanguine, Murray is choleric, Anthony is melancholic and Jeff is phlegmatic.
- If we're also counting Sam, he's a cross between sanguine and supine (he seemed a lot more introverted than a usual Hero would be).
- Heavy Sleeper: WAKE UP JEFF!
- Long Runners: Got their start in 1991, and are still well and truly around.
- Memetic Hand Gesture: You'd be hard-pressed to find an Australian child of the nineties or later who doesn't recognise their signature pointing-wiggling.
- The Pete Best: Phillip Wilcher, the other original member, who played on their first album in 1991 and was in their first two videos. He left (or was kicked out, depending on whom you ask) the next year, and went on to a successful career in classical music. Effectively Unpersonned from the group, with the first album later re-recorded and the videos redone. He had no color-coding, as he left before the group adopted their trademark shirts.
- The Pirate Who Doesn't Do Anything: Captain Feathersword.
- Red Shirt: Averted with Greg Page.
- Revolving Door Band: This
, especially occuring so soon after this. - Romance on the Set: Of Dorothy the Dinosaur, between Sam and Lyn Stuckey, Dorothy's actress (now his wife).
- Self-Deprecation: In interviews, Jeff has said that his role as the one who always falls asleep and needs to be woken up derives from his lack of background in early childhood education, and that it's a way to get him involved in the shows without him actually needing to do anything.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: From 2006 to 2012, the original Yellow Wiggle, Greg Page, was replaced with his understudy, Sam Moran, due to Page's illness.
- The Voiceless: Wags the Dog.
- West Coast Team: Besides the imitators, there were attempts to form overseas counterparts of the wildly popular group in Latin America and Asia. They didn't work.
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