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Comment by benologist | Hacker News Reader

That sounds like my 4 year old, right down to the finger song she can sing along with in like 5 languages now lol. Those youtube videos of people with toys are nuts, some of them are like a modern form of story telling and really well made.

Some shows I like of hers:

- Miles from Tomorrowland, a family adventuring in space with bits of science and physics thrown in

- Lost in Oz, it's decades later and Dorothy's daughter is into making gadgets and stuff, ends up in Oz. There's only 1 episode now but it's about to be a whole series on Amazon

- Wishenpoof, another Amazon title , little girl can make wishes come true with magic but she's constantly discovering she doesn't need magic to solve problems

- Barbie Spy Squad, it's decent even though all the other Barbie stuff I've seen is pretty fucked-up.

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We recently started 'Barbie - Life in the dreamhouse' on netflix for giggles and found it to be an actually decent show. The plot is what happens if you give the barbie dolls and merch to a bunch of nerds and give them free reign.

You get Glados running the automated closet and plotting for world fashion domination, only to be stopped by the evil switch being turned off again, a large part of the first episode is modelled on an Indiana Jones temple exploration, they often handle things like batteries and glitter in the real size form (so the battery is about half the size of the people).. it's surprisingly funny.

My daughter went through that show for a while, and we found the same enjoyment. It's self-referential enough, and plays their inanity clearly enough that even the youngest kid can tell it's not behavior to emulate.

I think you may have solved a mystery for me. For weeks our daughter has been talking about someone named "Bobby SuhMEEsa" and we finally gave up and decided he's Keyser Soze, but I think it may be a corruption of "Barbie's Dream House". I kind of liked the mystery better.

Regardless, I'm using it as my alias from now on.

Now that I think of it, the closet basically proposed to use its vast database of good fashion (formed from Barbie's timeline) to generate new excellent fashion - a machine learning problem plus capable AI.

I wonder whether someone is working on that, it really sounds like a good and interesting idea. Is there a system to parameterize clothes? Hm.. I would have joined the closet if I was Barbie, despite the relation with the 'evil' switch.

Why can the little girl only do magic on the weekends - is that some nod to the contemporary assumption that everyone works 5 / 7 days, with the other two nominally for personal (fun / satisfying) time?

The w/e was 'whatever' not weekend, updated to be more clear.

My kids are learning english from youtube. My 7 yo son like watching Sonic Adventure easteregg videos and try to replicate them on my Dreamcast. He is getting good.

>Those youtube videos of people with toys are nuts

What is this referring to, exactly? Videos of (adults?) playing with toys?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItXVHSeTd7o

Over 17 million views on...this. Wow. Good on her. Thanks for clueing me in to the genre.

There is a woman who calls herself "Ms. Hands" (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV6P5rRVmiTL637byUZBTrQ) and I can only assume she's a billionaire given how often I hear her awful voice as she pops toys out of Play Doh "eggs". I find the whole genre depressing as hell because I can't help but think of kids watching the videos who have 0 hope of ever actually playing with those toys.

OTOH, I've been thinking off and on about how to start a channel since it's clearly a great way to pay for kids' toys based on the one show we watched where a kid and his dad assembled a gigantic Spider-Man drivable car.

> I've been thinking off and on about how to start a channel since it's clearly a great way to pay for kids' toys based on the one show we watched where a kid and his dad assembled a gigantic Spider-Man drivable car.

There's your self-licking ice cream clone. I wonder why it's so pleasurable to watch these kind of unboxing vids. Mirror neurons?

I think watching people play with toys ~= playing with toys,

It's not all unboxing though, whole stories get acted out with toys and different camera angles and lots of editing. There's a lot of elaborate music video reenactments too, like the songs from Frozen.

> I find the whole genre depressing as hell because I can't help but think of kids watching the videos who have 0 hope of ever actually playing with those toys.

To be completely fair, I subscribe to more than a few blacksmithing, metalworking, machining, woodworking, and other heavy-duty crafty channels, and there's little-to-no chance that I'll ever get a lathe or a mill.

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