I am going to be a father and am making a jellyfin setup for my child. I want to start early to make a good collection of movies and shows. So I am interested in knowing what other people experienced as positive influences in their lives.
Edit: English and Norwegian is fine, but I can always get dubbed versions of other languages. We will be speaking English and Norwegian with our child from birth. But want to introduce our child to many types of cultures, religions etc.
Most anything NRK makes will be what you want watch. Minibarna mostly at first. All the Fantus stuff is good. Especially “Fantus of maskinene”
Tbh when hen reaches the age where hen will understand the more neuanced elements of a story you will have to fight off Paw Patrol and Spidey and his amazing friends with a stick. Whatever the kids in the kindergarten speaks off. Your old dusty slow shit will not be appreciated until much later.
Edit: Bluey! Bluey is amazing. Well written, funny, reflective and is engaging for both children and adults.
The episode with no dialog when it rains and they make a dam is perhaps the best TV I have seen in years.
I’ll not repeat what I’ve already seen listed, just wanted to add Castle of Cagliostro. Not quite as innocent as Disney’s Robin Hood (which is an all time favorite of mine, wearing a shirt right now with Skippy and his wooden sword with the words “DEATH TO TYRANTS”). It’s another great rogue with a heart of gold taking down the bad guy story though. I feel like we need stories like these now more than ever.
I really like the pokemon show/anime. At least the original seasons (I kinda followed it until the sinnoh region
Other than that:
Ducktales (1987)
Avatar the last Airbender
Nils Holgersson
Weihnachtsmann und Co KG (original title: Le Monde Secret du Père Noël)These are the shows I keep dearly in my heart
As for movies, I don’t really have any recommendation besides “Wall-E” :(
But that’s a phenomenal movie!
Just kidding. Don’t show your kid this movie unless it’s as a joke when they’re older. This might have been a Psyop.
I do actually recommend:
Brave little Toaster and Fivel Goes West. Those seem to stick out as most positive that I remember.
We swear we won’t go rooooamin’
For a slightly different take, I was mesmerized watching New Yankee Workshop and the old This Old House seasons as a kid and often wonder how much they contributed to practical skills and hobbies I have as an adult.
Surprised PBS shows aren’t mentioned more here, especially not Mr. Rogers Neighborhood being mentioned.
So in no particular order:
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Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood: great show for teaching kids to how to navigate emotions and complex situations like death and discrimination but in ways they can understand
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Sesame Street: similar to Mr. Rogers but more for younger children
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Bill Nye the Science Guy: Made science accessible and fun for children. Good way to build a sense of curiosity and desire for experimentation
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Zoom: similar to Bill Nye in that it made me what to try all the activities they shared. Lots of fun games, recipes, brain teasers etc to keep kids busy. The fact that it had an all kid cast made it more accessible as a kid. Highly recommended since it seems less remembered than other PBS shows
Non-Educational:
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The Simpsons: this may be divisive but I grew up when they were super popular and I believe it helped develop my sense of humor. The earlier episodes were also pretty wholesome
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The Avatar (Last Airbender and Korra): well written show that is based on many East Asian cultures and touches on themes of depression, genocide, war, and hope (among many others). One of my favorite shows to this day
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Patch Adams
From a purely positive influence? Anything on PBS (wasn’t allowed to have cable growing up)
- Sesame Street
- Mr Roger’s
- Any documentary with David Attenborough
- same with Jane Goodall
- Nova
Bill Nye would be the one non-PBS show I remember having an impact
Modernish stuff? Bluey, Miss Rachel, Pixar especially Wall-E, Brave, Coco, Soul, Encanto, Toy Story, Inside Out (when a little older). I like Coco, but Book of Life is an underrated alternative too.
Maggie and the Ferocious Beast (the first English cartoon I remember watching), Rolie Polie Olie, Martha Speaks, Franklin, Little Bear, Total Drama Island/Action, and 6Teen taught me English when I came to Canada.
Star Trek got me started on my path to tankiehood and sci-fi writing. Futurama also significantly contributed to the latter.
Pokemon, Wonderpets and Redwall (and many of the cartoons from the learning English category) got me interested in writing animal characters. Zootopia pissed me off so much with its inconsistent world building that it sealed the deal and made me obsessed with perfecting my own fictional animal world.
Family Guy taught me how not to write characters and their interactions.
How It’s Made is just awesome and satisfying, no further comments.
The Iron Giant for sure
Supaman!
You stay… I go.
I may be a grown ass adult, but that scene always gets the waterworks going.
A gun who chooses not to be a gun. As someone who’s still dealing with their history as a soldier in the war on terror, I empathize with him more than I ever could as a child.
Roseanne, the first few seasons showed a poor family which I was at the time.
Has there ever been another live audience sitcom that was as down to earth as Roseanne?
grounded for life
Everything by Don Bluth. Literally everything his name on is childhood gold. Sometimes a little scary, but in a modern fairy tale sort of way.
An American Tale
All dogs go to Heaven
The Secret of NIMH
The Fox and the Hound
The Land Before Time
His movies never treated children like fools, a sentiment that’s only recently becoming the standard for children’s entertainment and he was doing it in the 80s.
It’s mildly flooding in my area right now so I just watched Rock A Doodle the other day, one of my faves as a kid.
Chanticleer! Out of all his movies that was the one I followed the least as a kid. It confused me in a way it never really went away. I came back to it as a kid and I still don’t really get it, but it has such a fairytale feeling to it.
- The Lion King (original)
- Mulan (original)
- Jurassic Park
- Princess Mononoke
- Castle in the Sky
- Spirited Away
- Forrest Gump
- Aladdin (original)
- Men in Black
- Galaxy Quest
- Home Alone
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- The Matrix
- Toy Story
- Top Gun
- The Terminator
- A Charlie Brown Christmas
- Yu Yu Hakusho
- Cowboy Bebop
Princess Mononoke might be a little dark for an earlier age. There’s some really brutal scenes in it.
Of course that didn’t stop it from being my favorite from age 8 onward, but still.
I’m picturing a toddler seeing a soldier get beheaded by an arrow from horseback, looks over at Dad for emotional support, and Dad looks on with an approving grin, comfortable that he’s made the right choice of early childhood films.
Also, The Matrix/Terminator as a suggestion for a small child is a big lol.
Yeah there’s literal dismemberment in the early scenes, plus thematically it’s pretty mature too
Hell yeah yu yu hakusho is so good!!! So much raw emotion with great story telling and cool fights. I know he’s the bad guy but when younger toguro turns down a ticket to heaven so he can suffer in purgatory cuz he thinks he doesn’t deserve it gets me so hard everytime.
Funny that you point out the originals Disney movies, that made me think, did the remakes made any impact on the younger generation or is too soon to know that?
Man, I really hope those were just forgettable for them. The Lion King live action remake is so damn disappointing. All the emotion, all the storytelling, just gone. It’s a very poor imitation of the original.
Remakes can be good. The new Dune movies are worlds better than the 70s movie; that is a movie that needed a proper remake. The new ones actually do the books justice.
As a relatively new father (my daughter is around 2.5 years old), you have plenty of time. They’ll be a loving little lump for a while.
What she has loved so far:
- Bluey (a beautiful show about parenting in disguise as a kids show)
- Mister Roger’s Neighborhood (all episodes available on archive.org, but they have to be reorganized/renamed at least for Kodi tagging)
- The Mhppets Show (and anything else muppets)
- (Modern) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (cg show, and Clubhouse+, the short renewal)
- Dragon Prince
- Sesame Street
- Moana (2 to a lesser extent)
- Finding Nemo/Dory
- Lion King
- Little Mermaid
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks
- Mary Poppins
- Aladin
- Frozen (and all the spinoff stuff)
- Mickey Donald and Goofy: Three Musketeers (this is her current obsession, probably watched it 10 times in the last week)
I’ll come back and edit this with my own shows later.
Good on you for setting up the Jellyfin early, it’s still on my to-do list
My personal favorite childhood movies/shows that made a real impact:
Fern Gully, the Disney animated originals (not remakes) mentioned elsewhere in the thread, Nightmare Before Christmas, Princess Bride, Neverending Story, Star Trek 4 (the whales one), Toy Story
Star Trek TNG and TOS, the old school B/W Addams Family, OG Looney Tunes, Nature on PBS, Nova on PBS, Mr Rogers, Arthur
Additional stuff I’ll be adding to my own kid’s Jellyfin (when I get to it)
Avatar the Last Airbender, Kipo and the Wonderbeasts, She-Ra:PoP (the Netflix one), Bluey, Storybots, Puffin Rock, Lucas the Spider, Trash Truck, Ms Rachel, Daniel Tiger, Elinor Wonders Why
