elaborateHappenstance

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

You may all remember the Finger Family conspiracy, wherein cr1tikal stumbled upon a set of bizarre “children’s edutainment” animations, and tumblr user @wolfnanaki hit upon the answer that they were auto-generated to be advertised on. To me, it all seemed like a cut-and-dry example of how we live in the stupidest cyberpunk future … until I found Ellie Sparkles.

These follow the Finger Family pattern - an inordinate amount of views for something nonsensical, buckets of similar videos, lots of ads in the videos, a subscriber count greater than one million, all comments disabled - but what made me think to watch it was the length: these are far longer than Finger Family videos (and also I had a suspicion that the haircut videos could be a fetish thing. They’re not, but it would’ve made the world make sense).

As it turns out, Ellie Sparkles videos are live-action.

Well, for a given value of “live”.

(I’d make a joke about there not being humans in there, but with something like this, empty mascot costumes would honestly be a letdown.)

(Side-note: PJ Masks apparently has a villain named Luna Girl who dresses like a god tier Homestuck character.)

(This is the most frightening Peppa the Pig I’ve ever seen. This coming at me in a dark hallway would be less scary than seeing it in broad daylight.)

(Also of note: the Hulk actor appears to be significantly smaller than the others, even with perspective taken into account.)

The content is overall inoffensive and has the same general tenor as the kindergarten-demographic cartoons it takes from, narrated in English by a nonthreatening female voice with a mild accent. What baffled me is the amount. The Ellie Sparkles team produces multiple videos a week, going back since October 2015.

Looking up the length they’ve been active made me look again at the channel header, and I figured out what’s going on (with Ellie Sparkles at least).

Ellie Sparkles is licensed.

Specifically, to WildBrain, a Europe-based digital media concern. Taken verbatim from their website:

YOU KNOW WILDBRAIN

We’re the media company managing the digital rights of some of the most popular children’s television series ever. We’re part of DHX Media and manage a collection of over 12,500 half hours of high-quality children’s TV parents and kids love, including Teletubbies, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Arthur and Inspector Gadget. We also work with other content owners (partners), running an international channel network featuring over 450 brands.

WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT?

We’re the largest YouTube kids specialist in Europe. We understand what kids want to watch and engage with. We specialise and stay focused on the kids entertainment space. We know what we’re good at and where we can add real value, this is how we’ve built global audiences of loyal viewers. Our services and tech are optimised for a children’s audience.

ORIGINAL CONTENT

We produce short form video content for YouTube, creating professionally produced videos using our experience in adapting TV content for YouTube. We commission specialist insight and research on preschoolers and children. All the content on our network is curated by our enthusiastic team of online experts.

GLOBAL REACH

We offer content and channel localisation capabilities in 22 different languages. We run and develop multi-territory channel management.

BRANDS

We make videos designed for consumer brands appealing to children and their parents. This includes toy manufacturers, toy retailers and children focused consumer products. Our videos entertain and educate. These include; toy unboxing videos, early learning animations, craft and creative guides and book read-alongs.

The Ellie Sparkles team are publicists. This baffling, unsettling content is some media maven’s idea of a way to draw in a larger television audience. I don’t know whether Ellie Sparkles and her team rank among WildBrain’s sinister henchpersons or if they’re gaming the system and earning an honest wage by making things no human would ever watch, but the knowledge that this is produced in association with the people who manage the properties being used still gives me an unreasonable sense of dread.

The voiceless humans wearing PJ Masks mascot costumes are coming from inside the house.

You don’t. But you *did* is the thing. On the uzumaki scale this is burying the needle all the way to hospital mushrooms. 

Women Who Dare: St. Vincent