Fan Video Friday: "Oobi & Kako Watch YouTube"

Grady, aka Baseballfan2413, made a video last month where he and his friends rocked out to the Oobi theme song. It was pretty weird but funny. Now they've made another Oobi video... this time, Oobi and Kako look through what YouTube has to offer! Watch it below!

UPDATE: Is Oobi still being made?

Not too long ago, I made a Q&A post about whether or not Oobi was still being made. It's pretty clear that it's not, but staceysimgirl sent me a more definite answer.

I am so addicted to that show (in fact I'm taping episodes off of my tivo onto a VHS tape right now :) I wrote to their production company and asked them if they were still making episodes and the person who wrote me back was Josh Selig, the show's creator :) He told me that they were no longer in production and he didn't see it coming back. :(

Yeah. Not great news, but it gives us some closure. And it's so cool that Josh Selig wrote back to her! I'm thinking of sending him a message myself, but I don't even know where to begin... I don't want to overdo it or embarrass myself. My husband says I'm probably a bigger Oobi geek than anyone at his company!

Q&A: Is Oobi still being made?

Another question I see a lot online: is Oobi still being made? Noggin doesn't make it clear when their shows end.

The answer? No, it's not. The last premiere episode was the Valentine's Day episode which aired way back in February 2005. Since then it's just been rerun after rerun! There are 52 segments in total of the full-length show, plus around 50 shorts (nobody really knows for sure).

But hope isn't lost for more Oobi. It recently started airing internationally, and new foreign-language dubs crop up every once and a while... who knows, maybe foreign demand will get Noggin to order more Oobi!!

Q&A: Where are Oobi and Uma's parents?

silver_faerie wrote to me:

...where in the world are Oobi and Uma's parents? Did they ever address this issue? If they have I must have missed it. Not a big deal but I alway's wondered. Any insight would be cool.

The answer? Their parents are never mentioned on the show, not even in passing. Personally, I really like how Grampu is their only guardian. Lots of kids grow up without two parents, and it's nice to see some representation of a non-traditional family on a show that so many little kids enjoy.

It's interesting to note that we actually see a photo of baby Oobi and Uma in the background of a few episodes. Grampu is younger in the picture -- with a sleek head of hair! -- but no parents in sight. So for all those Oobi analysts out there, we do know that Grampu's been taking care of his grandkids since they were babies.

Thank you!!

I decided to check the blog's hits this morning. And I got a nice surprise: the episode guide page has 25,892 pageviews as of right now!! It's one of the top results on Google for 'oobi episodes' too! It makes me pretty proud. Thank you so much to everyone who follows this silly little blog, and to all of the families out there who love Oobi as much as we do.

Q&A: What's up with the 'Oobi Shorts'?

Almost every TV show, whether it be for adults or little kids, starts out with a pilot episode: a first episode that the show's creators pitch to a TV network, in hopes of getting it turned into a full show. Oobi doesn't exactly have a pilot episode -- it has a bunch of short, 2-to-5-minute pilot episodes.

Well, not exactly. If you've been following Oobi for a long time like me, or if you just happen to watch the Noggin Network a lot, you might notice that the first episodes of Oobi were just shorts. The shorts are wonky and weird, and they just have this loose, energetic quality to them. Thanks to this interview with Josh Selig (creator of Oobi), now we know why Oobi started out with these shorts and not just a regular pilot!

The story: Noggin was looking for new shows, and Josh Selig pitched them the idea of Oobi in 1999. He was a good friend and longtime employee of Sesame Workshop, which co-owned Noggin. As a proof of concept, Noggin asked his studio to make a series of interstitial shorts with the Oobi characters. They wanted to have some content to play during commercial breaks, and the Oobi shorts fit the bill perfectly. If the shorts were popular with kids, Noggin told Selig, they would greenlight it for a half-hour series. And that's exactly what happened a few years later in 2003. And the rest is history!

Oobi on "The Soup!"

Does anyone here watch "The Soup"? It's a talk show on the E! Channel with Joel McHale as the host. He takes random-but-funny looks at stuff from pop culture. In a couple of recent shows, he featured clips from Oobi!

It was shown as part of their segment "What the Kids Are Watching." They showed the Showtime and Bathroom episodes. Check it out on YouTube! (Click link)

A scene of Oobi on The Soup!