History YMMV / BluesClues

* ReplacementScrappy: Many fans of the show do ''NOT'' like Joe. Why? ''Because he isn't Steve''. To be fair, though, he does just as good a job as Steve, he's just a little more enthusiastic about it. It didn't help that the show underwent some major retooling not long after he was cast. Naturally, the actor took the brunt of the backlash despite having nothing to do with, say, live-action puppet sequences.

* OnceOriginalNowCommon: With a lot of preschool shows that came afterwards (notably ''WesternAnimation/DoraTheExplorer'' and the like) used FakeInteractivity to try to teach children lessons, ''Blues Clues'' doesn't seem like anything too original. But back in the 1990s, there was hardly anything like it with the way Steve (and later Joe) would interact with the audience.

* LesYay: A lot of adult watchers think of Magenta as Blue's girlfriend. Of course, it didn't help that a good amount of people [[ViewerGenderConfusion thought that Blue was a boy.]]

* FandomEnragingMisconception: Blue is '''not''' a male puppy, and Magenta is not her sister, girlfriend, nor best male friend. The rumors are so persistent that they bug fans.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
** Both theme tunes.
** The "Glasses" song from "Magenta Gets Glasses".
** The "Puppyville" song in ''Meet Blue's Baby Brother''. "Look at all these puppies, this must be Puppyville!"
** Every song from ''[[TheMovie Blue's Big Musical]]'', Especially "I Can Be Anything That I Wanna Be" and "There It Is!".
** The 100th episode includes delightful instrumentals of several the show's best songs.
** Perhaps most awesome of all, ''every'' episode uses a different variation of the closing credits music, often matching the theme of the episode in some way when possible.

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: "Blue's Big Musical" has a subplot where Steve is determined to find a clue and, after a song, he is able to find it by himself. In ''WesternAnimation/BluesCluesAndYou'', Steve is now a detective meaning he is capable of finding clues on his own, we hope.

* SignatureScene:
** Steve's farewell from the show as he hops on a bus for college.
** Steve finding his first clue in ''Blue's Big Musical''.

* TheWoobie: Poor Sidetable Drawer in ''Blue's Big Musical Movie''. She wants to sing in the musical Steve and the others are putting on, but she's [[ShrinkingViolet too shy to actually ask]]. [[spoiler:Luckily, not only does she eventually work up the courage, but the movie's sequence of clues point to Blue wanting her to fill in for Tickety Tock, who lost her voice shortly prior, as lead singer in her act.]]
** Also Steve in the movie. He's always the last one to know where the clues are, as his goal in the movie is to find one of the clues before the viewers do. Despite him being determined to find them first, he ends up being the last one to find them like he usually does. With him not being able to find the last one and knowing that Blue and the others are depending on him to find it before the music show starts, he eventually begins to suffer from a DespairEventHorizon over his failure to find the clues. Even though he does come through, it's still one of the few moments where we see a usually happy-go-lucky Steve become sad and despondent that's pretty much one of the series' most tearjerker moments.

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: Steve is commonly theorized by fans to be on the autism spectrum. Among Steve's characteristics that fit the spectrum, the most visible are his fixation on anteaters, [[SociallyAwkwardHero difficulties understanding social cues]], need to follow a routine, [[SarcasmBlind blindness to sarcasm]], [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny problems with attention]] and coordination, and the fact that he has been stuck with the [[ConsistentClothingStyle same type of clothing since his early childhood]].

* FridgeBrilliance:
** Why a sock in a bakery? Well, it was the third clue. So maybe Blue [[GuileHero left it there herself]].
** Tickety being the only one in ''Blue's Big Musical Movie'' to lose her voice due to singing so much before the music show makes more sense if you listen to the official soundtrack- Tickety gets a song at the beginning ("Today's The Big Day") that wasn't included in the movie. So of course her voice would go out before the others- she was doing a little more singing before them!
* FridgeHorror: In a later episode about patience, Joe helps Periwinkle -- the neighbor cat -- be patient while waiting for a bird's egg to hatch.

** Steve - cheerful inhabitant of a colorful house full of talking objects, or friendless schizophrenic whose loneliness has led him to populate his home with chattering hallucinations?

** Shovel is not easily distinguished as being male. Same goes for Pail, who is not easily distinguished as being female.
** It doesn't help that in one episode, Steve refers to Green Puppy (another girl character, and a friend from Blue's school, but voiced by a [[CrossDressingVoices male voice actor]], Adam Peltzman, head writer in later seasons) in pronouns twice: once with a male pronoun, and again with a female one. ''And this was the only indication of Green Puppy's gender for a while.''
** Anyone else think Periwinkle was a girl when they were a kid? [[ShesAManInJapan This is true for the UK dub in which Periwinkle actually is a girl]]. However, in the US version, he's a boy.
** Magenta is often mistaken for a boy from people who think the show is inverting gender roles. She's just as female as Blue and Green Puppy.

* FandomEnragingMisconception:
** Blue is '''not''' a male puppy, and Magenta is not her sister, girlfriend, nor best male friend. The rumors are so persistent that they bug fans.
** "Steve and Joe are schizophrenic/use drugs" theories/jokes will commonly be met with anger. Especially because over time this type of theory started to be seen as a form of ableism and are in general considered annoying.

* NightmareFuel: In "The Wrong Shirt", the picture frame shakes, warps, and inverts colours while making horrid gurgling sounds before one character of the day skidoos out of it. This would be a bit unnerving, but what seals the deal is that it's strong enough to shake the room and warp reality, like elongating Sidetable Drawer until she can reach Steve's height and turning the outside world upside down. It can make even older viewers let alone adults uneasy.

* FandomEnragingMisconception: Blue is '''not''' a male puppy, and Magenta is not her sister, girlfriend, nor best male friend. The rumors are so persistent that they bug fans.
* FanNickname: Fans have dubbed the {{leitmotif}} that plays after all three clues are found "Race to the Thinking Chair". It's often associated with the version that plays when the host needs to skidoo back home.
* {{Fanon}}: The fictional Steve's last name [[NoFullNameGiven was never mentioned]], but many fans assume it's [[TheDanza Burns]] (which would make Joe's full name Joe Burns).

* ReplacementScrappy:
** Many fans of the show do ''NOT'' like Joe. Why? ''Because he isn't Steve''. To be fair, though, he does just as good a job as Steve, he's just a little more enthusiastic about it. It didn't help that the show underwent some major retooling not long after he was cast. Naturally, the actor took the brunt of the backlash despite having nothing to do with, say, live-action puppet sequences.

* ToughActToFollow: The case of Joe compared to Steve is pretty self-explanatory, since Joe didn't ''quite'' have the same kind of charm Steve had.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: With a lot of preschool shows that came afterwards (notably ''WesternAnimation/DoraTheExplorer'' and the like) used FakeInteractivity to try to teach children lessons, ''Blues Clues'' doesn't seem like anything too original. But back in the 1990s, there was hardly anything like it with the way Steve (and later Joe) would interact with the audience.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Steve is commonly theorized by fans to be on the autism spectrum. Among Steve's characteristics that fit the spectrum, the most visible are his fixation on anteaters, [[SociallyAwkwardHero difficulties understanding social cues]], need to follow a routine, [[SarcasmBlind blindness to sarcasm]], [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny problems with attention]] and coordination, and the fact that he has been stuck with the [[ConsistentClothingStyle same type of clothing since his early childhood]].

** Magenta didn't appear as often as the rest of the main characters, but was just as popular with fans of the show. She ends up making more frequent appearances in the reboot. In fact, when the extended opening for the reboot was uploaded to Youtube, many of the comments (before the feature was disabled due to the Elsagate settlement in the fall of 2019) exclaimed joy when it was confirmed Magenta would be returning.

** Are Steve and Joe really as [[TheDitz absent minded as they seem]]? Several moments imply [[SmarterThanYouLook that they are more intelligent and aware than they appear to be]]. [[BunnyEarsLawyer Is it possible that they are intelligent men who function in peculiar ways?]]? Are they really missing incredibly obvious clues, or are they [[ObfuscatingStupidity playing with the viewer and trying to make them feel smart]]? Or perhaps the difference in the [[POVCam viewer's field of vision]] helps a little? As evidenced in "Blue Big Musical Movie" where Steve is only able to find the clue because it is out of the viewer's field of vision.

** Are Steve and Joe really as absent minded as they seem? Are they really missing the clues or are they trying to make the viewer feel smart? Or are they [[AbsentMindedProfessor peculiar mentor figures]] who are smarter than they look and just have trouble expressing themselves? The fact that the viewer can see from a different point of view could be an explanation? Maybe a mix of one or more options?

* {{Adorkable}}: Steve is cheerful, friendly, and a little naive, with a tendency to start rambling things that may or may not make sense in the context of the episode.