Pocoyo; Great TV For Even the Tiniest Tots

If you, like me, find it hard to think of things to do with a very young baby, you should take a look at the Pocoyo series.  My baby is 7 months old and I’m pretty much constantly changing whatever basic object it is in his hand every 5 minutes because that’s how long it takes for him to get bored.  He can’t crawl yet, build blocks, draw or doing anything particularly engaging and I had thought that it was far too early for television.  But he actually seems to love Pocoyo.

The white background, bright colours and lively music of Pocoyo have just enough sound and movement to capture the interest of the youngest infants.  It’s a welcome addition to the arsenal of entertainment tools with which I am constantly attempting to kill the boredom.

The best part is that I think it’s really cute and funny and enjoy watching it with him.  The narrators are delightful in both Spanish and English.  Stephen Fry does the English version.  Parents generally seem to find the shows pretty entertaining – evident from comments on websites and forums, which is a quite an accomplishment when it’s a programme that’s made for the very youngest infants.

The story behind the name is as cute as Pocoyo himself.  One of the creators of the series’ daughter (there are three Spanish creators  David Cantolla, Luis Gallego and Guillermo García Carsi), when reciting a popular and widely known children’s prayer, which says in part;

Jesusito de mi vida (Little Jesus of my life)

Eres niño como yo (You are a child like me)

Instead always said

Eres niño poco yo (You are a child little me)

Hence Pocoyo.  Cyyuuutte. No?

You HAVE to check out the episode in which there is a dance-off between Pocoyo and Pato (duck) in series two. It’s priceless.  And you’ll find yourself doing Pocoyo’s arse-wingling moves in no time.

You can buy the series on Amazon both in the UK and USA (not yet available for download via itunes unfortunately).  In Aus it’s available through the abc shop