Mega Blocks WorldWorld set

PBS Kids airs an educational program called WordWorld. It’s pretty crappy looking as far as animation goes, but it does seem to do a good job of teaching kids the basics of spelling and phonetics. You might think a show trying to teach kids how to spell would be, you know, spelled correctly, but that’s not the case with WordWorld. All the characters and most of the props are made out of letters. When they have challenges or adventures, the characters have to collect and place letters together to physically make the items they need to overcome their obstacles. WordWorld’s opening sequence has a brief bit where a bear rides a skateboard. The bear is a regular, but the skateboard isn’t a constant companion. In fact, I’ve only seen one episode where the bear rides the skateboard outside of the opening sequence. Why do I know so much? I’m not developmentally delayed (much), but I do have three year old kid. As with any vaguely popular TV show aimed at children, WordWorld has merchandising.

This is the Mega Blocks WordWorld Bucket House set.

Although Bear’s skateboard on the show is one of the fiew items that isn’t actually made out of letters, her skateboard for the Mega Blocks set spells it out nicely. Somewhere out there, somebody is making boards with a handle like that, but probably not on the tail.

A lot of words don’t work for every angle. The end result is that you get characters that are almost always positioned facing the same direction.

The beauty shot.

Did you hear about the new skateboard park that just opened? It’s called Bear’s Skateboard Park, and it’ s not so great. I think they hired Purkiss Rose to build it.