Linny, Tuck, and Ming-Ming, too. We’re the Wonder Pets and we’ll help you. We’re not too big and we’re not too tough, but when we work together we’ve got the right stuff!
“Wonder Pets!” is all about three preschool classroom pets — a guinea pig, a turtle, and a duckling — who go around helping animals in trouble. At the beginning of each episode, once the classroom is cleared of students, the pets usually get a call on their tin-can phone. Then sing a song about the phone ringing and that there is an animal in trouble. Linny is the one who answers the phone to talk to the animal.
Once the Wonder Pets talk to the animal and know where they need to go, they all jump into the Flyboat which just happens to be made from toys in the classroom. The Flyboat is exactly what it sounds like — it is a small boat that flies and is just big enough for the three of them. The Flyboat takes the Wonder Pets to the scene of the animal in trouble where they have to figure out how to solve the problem. On the way to the scene, they sing their famous song, some of the lyrics of which you can see above. The entire purpose of the Wonder Pets is that they use the powers of teamwork to get help to the animal that needs it. Sometimes Ming-Ming tends to get a little headstrong and tries to do some of the work himself. Of course, he finds out that teamwork is the way to get the job done. And by the way…most of the dialogue in the show is sung!
There are a couple of things that I find particularly interesting about this show. The first thing is that Ming-Ming has a slight speech difference — nothing that I would call an impediment exactly. He just tends to say his “r”s as “w”s, so he says “twouble” instead of “trouble” and “sewious” instead of “serious.” I think this is actually typical of some children when they are still learning how to speak properly, so it’s pretty cool that they did that for this character. The other cool thing is that this show uses a really neat form of animation called photo-puppetry animation. This means that the animators use photographs of real animals and then create the animation around that. Pretty fascinating, huh?
I really like this show because I think it is great for teaching children about teamwork. The characters are fun and original and the animation keeps the attention of my daughter and me. I highly recommend this show to the preschool-aged and their parents.
“Wonder Pets!” can be seen on Nick Jr. and NOGGIN. Please check your local listings for show times.
Jaime’s Score: 7 for Education, 8 for Entertainment, and the Parent Annoyance Factor is 1.