Higglytown Heroes: How To Make Your Formulaic Baby Show Good

10:31 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "kip's dad lives in a hot dog cart..... divorce theories lemme have em"
10:31 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "newest higglytown hero: divorce lawyer"

Content Warning: This blogpost will discuss natural disasters, both in general and specifically Hurricane Katrina.

Higglytown Heroes suffers from a lot of the same issues Playhouse Disney shows suffered from through the past and continue to suffer from to this day: It's formulaic down to the letter, and it brings down the show.

4:25 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "im gonna hate higglytown heroes i can feel it"

The difference is Higglytown Heroes actually pulls it off.

Usually when you think of a formulaic show that does it well, your mind goes to Phineas and Ferb, which spent half a season creating a formula only to spend the remaining three and a half seasons ripping it to shreds. That kind of subversion in the formula is great. It's something I really like about Phineas and Ferb, but about 80-90% of the time, Higglytown Heroes plays it straight so I wanna get into the knitty gritty of "Why does this show out, of all of them, work for me?" It can't be the music. The songs outside of the theme and Someone Special range from decent to hilariously bad. It isn't story. The show doesn't have much other than episodic plots. The characters are fun, but most of them are pretty flat. So what is it?

I think it has to do with the mood of the show. Everyone in the show is very excited and happy, and it sort of catches. You can usually see positivity in baby shows pretty often. I'm currently making my way through Alice's Wonderland Bakery for example, and you can see Alice showing a lot of unconditional positive regard for others (Something also present in Higglytown Heroes that I'll get back to). Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was an interactive show, so it made sense that Mickey and the others would show you, the toddler viewer, their best face. Jojo's Circus (which btw, makes a cameo in Higglytown Heroes) also has a lot of goofball positivity, that comes from the setting of a circus town.

 Hate this btw.

The excitement from the Higglytown Heroes kids on the other hand, feels like a genuine childish excitement. It's not motivated by kindness or setting. They're just like this. You see these kids so excited to do all these great things and you don't really care that one of the things they're excited about is wearing seatbelts and getting their parents' permission. Like, no. It makes sense. They're excited about anything and everything!

One of the things that makes the Higgly kids so excited is to see their good friend Pizza Guy. Their excitement toward seeing him was catching, but he's ultimately the best character in the show.

6:21 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "you have done so much for the lgbt community"

I originally got the idea that Pizza Guy was a cool dude and role model for the kids, and while this is true, I realized he was a lot more. He has the same infectious enthusiasm the kids do, and unironically shares their overactive imagination. He cries at the end of picture books. He loves pizza more than anything. He can be kind of clueless and goofy sometimes. Yet, he's also a capable adult, making him simultaneously the comic relief and a role model for the kids.

6:27 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "list of oomfs i can see kinning pizza guy"
8:22 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "pizza guy....... makes me want pizza........"
10:11 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "guys im so happy to see pizza guy..... :-)"
8:08 AM · Feb 3, 2021 "you're so talented...."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8:49 AM · Feb 3, 2021 "if pizza guy invited me to his mountain cabin i would go bc i love mountain cabins and pizza guy is a great guy"

And throughout season 1, I had one thought about Pizza Guy. When is this guy going to be a Higglytown Hero?

6:05 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "IM REALLY UPSET I THOUGHT THE HERO WAS GONNA BE THE PIZZA GUY BUT IT'S THE DENTIST"
6:17 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "rob paulsen is the barber.... when will pizza guy get the respect he deserves"

Finally, in season 2, we got "A Totally Secret Valentine," Pizza Guy's hero episode. In the episode, everyone in Higglytown gets these personalized Valentine cards from a Secret Valentine Friend. Eventually the kids find out that Pizza Guy sent out all the Valentines, and he sings his hero song about how Valentine's Day is about making your friends feel special by reminding them you care about them. It's really sweet.

6:50 PM · Jul 27, 2022 "genuinely though i've been thinking a lot about pizza guy at first he seemed like a cool dude who is full of unconditional positive regard toward others and he is that! he is! but also he has some desperation in his heart and some nothing in his brain."
6:57 PM · Jul 27, 2022 "pizza guy may just be the most fascinating character in all of higglytown. he is a higglytown hero, but not for being the pizza guy. he's a higglytown hero because he reminds every person in higglytown that they are loved and they have special qualities about them."

Also worth noting, Fran the Squirrel was the Higglytown Hero in the other half of the Valentine's Day episode, "A Valentine for Miss Fern," which focuses on romantic love rather than platonic love.

Also Miss Fern's fiance is the Electrician Hero, played by Lance Bass.

8:06 PM · Feb 5, 2021 "LANCE BASS?????????????"
8:06 PM · Feb 5, 2021 "FROM ON THE LINE?????????????????? 2001??????????????????????"

The casting choices for Higglytown Heroes are something. Some of them are voice actors, while others are Disney showing off their money by getting musicians, sports stars, and... televangelists?

11:55 AM · Feb 7, 2021 "1. the higglytown hero sounds familiar.
2. i look on the cast list
3. it's a popular celebrity/singer from the aughts
4. disney?"

Honestly, it's a delight to watch while high, because it feels like a celebrity guided meditation, especially with the Twinkle idea bits.

6:03 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "dislike that the girl's personality is Girl but she's voiced by panini from chowder"

My first impression was so foolish. Twinkle was literally the best character other than Pizza Guy. But yeah, Twinkle's character is essentially the girl who likes pink sparkly things. In addition, she has the most overactive imagination of the bunch, coming up with wild solutions to problems and having Fran bring her back down to earth. In fact, one season 3 episode has Fran cut Twinkle off before she gives her big idea, which was pretty funny.

As for the other kids...

6:02 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "man the height difference like i know they're nesting dolls and the joke is they fit into one another but still this is like two 6 year olds"

 

 

 

 

 

8:02 AM · Feb 3, 2021 "i think all the higglytown heroes kids are trans."
1:57 PM · Feb 5, 2021 "i dont think the higglytown kids really have set in stone personalities except eubie has depression, wayne is kinda nervous, twinkle is crazy, and kip is like 2 feet tall"

Eubie is sort of a quiet kid, who lives with his Aunt Mellie and Uncle Zooter, who speak like a hivemind and complete each others sentences. Eubie and his entire family are obsessed with birds. Wayne is Twinkle's brother, who likes clowns and toast (especially toast), and he's always well prepared for any situation. He also tends to believe Twinkle's stories are possible, which is kind of funny to me. Twinkle and Wayne both live with their mom, and occasionally hang out at their Uncle Lemmo's diner. Finally there's Kip. He's kind of the most normal of the bunch, interested in robots and superheroes. He has two older sisters (Wiki and Tini) and one younger sister, and he lives with both his parents, who were rarely if ever on screen together at first, but I assure you they probably love each other.

I think behind Pizza Guy and Twinkle, Fripp (Kip's dad) takes yet another favorite character spot. He's a bit of goofball like Pizza Guy, and he gets a lot of focus later on in the show.

Another fun aspect of the show is trying to guess what hero the episode is going to be about. Sometimes it's painfully obvious, and other times the hero comes out of left field.

10:07 PM · Feb 2, 2021 "dang they had me for a second. today's higglytown hero is a dog"
8:07 AM · Feb 3, 2021 "for the record it's hard to tell what higglytown hero will show up in one episode. twinkle lost her tooth and i was like "oh she's gonna go to the dentist" but no.... it's a plumber......"
8:11 AM · Feb 3, 2021 "the episode is called soup with stars. they have to make soup and they forgot to help cook.... our hero will be either an EMT or a chef i bet!"
8:13 AM · Feb 3, 2021 "ok they're going to the grocery store... could we finally be getting the retail hero we need?"
8:17 AM · Feb 3, 2021 "GROCERY CLERK HERO"

Fun fact: The plumber hero was featured as a hero twice (or perhaps even thrice, depending on how you look at it), suggesting they were running out of episodes.

The show is also very fun to get no context screencaps of.

One more episode I want to talk about is what I assume was meant to be the series finale, but ultimately aired with three episodes left, "Calling All Heroes." The episode aired in August of 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina. I don't want to say this was necessarily inspired by Hurricane Katrina, but I think the topics in the episode were really important to cover in the aftermath of Katrina. Especially since, to this day, people in Louisiana still talk about Hurricane Katrina, the less than ideal response to it, the trauma that it caused, and things we can learn from it.

Anyway, "Calling All Heroes" is about the kids dealing with a natural disaster. It's raining pizza dough and it's too dangerous to go outside. In addition, the power lines and the phones are out of commission, so now all the Higglytown Heroes have to help save the day and come together to rebuild the town in the wake of the pizza dough storm. It's idealistic, yes, but it's the sort of thing that might help make a kid feel hopeful for the future after a natural disaster.

Overall Rating for Higglytown Heroes: A Tier