The Electric Company (1970s)

I used to eat up this show when I was a kid. I love the educational information it had. Very good for kids to see. I actually learned grammar from this. Also, the sketches were really cool to watch.

I actually had a hard time deciding where to put the green light- at age 5 or age 4. The educational content certainly will go over the heads of some 4 year-olds, but not ALL. I first discovered this show at around that age, and I learned to read right at that time from watching the show. I've read similar stories from others who started watching at age 4 as well. Even when we get older, we can occasionally all benefit from some of the show's lessons, like the ones on punctuation, as it's sometimes easy to forget when we should just use a period as opposed to an exclamation point. This show is entertaining as well. If you watch the show now as an adult, you'll get some of the references to movies, tv and literature that you missed when you were a kid. Spiderman was a popular part of the program. Because he doesn't have a mouth on THE ELECTRIC COMPANY, what he says is put on the screen in a balloon, forcing kids to read his mind. The stories are entertaining too, often with a moral. Letterman was also popular. It was always exciting to see the Spellbinder change a letter or letters in a word, and then wait for Letterman to arrive and triumph over the Spellbinder, the best part in those stories. It's a shame that the company that distributed the 2 DVDs has no interest in making more. So now Children's Television Workshop will just have to look hard for a new distributor. Still, the 2 DVD sets that are out right now are worth your money, as the show will bring back memories. If you have children or if you're a teacher, all the better, as the kids will learn something. And if this show was before your time, but you get introduced to it by someone who used to watch, you'll thank that person.