Trivia / The ClueFinders

• Technology Marches On: The kids keep in contact with each other using "videophones" invented by Santiago. At the time the games were made, commercial camera phones did not exist in North America and regular cell phones were not widely used by children anyway.
• What Could Have Been:
  • This 2001 interview with Kenny Dinkin recounts the origins of the series. As you might imagine, it came about because the Learning Company's flagship franchise, Reader Rabbit, was too childish to appeal to older preteens. Dinkin says, "the full development took 16 months, which is unusually long. We knew we needed to set aside some time to create a whole new brand." Early ideas involved "animals, rock stars, FBI agents." However, their kid testers wanted "adventure stories where kids would go out and do adventures on their own." At one point, the protagonist was a teenage girl named "Indiana Joni," but she came off as a "baby-sitter" to the kid testers, so she was aged down to match the target audience.
  • An animated ClueFinders TV series was planned during the brief period when The Learning Company was owned by Mattel.

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