Parents' Guide to The Minimighty Kids

The animation is charming and the jokes perfectly pitched at a second-grade level (i.e., gross body humor), but the messages in this French import are so iffy that parents may want to think twice. In the anonymous big city they live in, each anthropomorphized animal character feels alone at the start of each episode, marooned in solitary misery over their physical, emotional, and/or character flaws. By the end of each episode, they've come to appreciate, sometimes even to celebrate, the things they once lamented. So far, so good; self-acceptance is a message most can get behind.

But it's all the stuff in the middle of The Minimighty Kids that's problematic. Characters are painted in an awfully stereotypical way: unsympathetic characters are ugly, good characters are cute (and usually white to the dark-furred villains). Female characters are rare, and usually depicted as admirers and helpers for the male characters; if they star in their own segment, it's often for a classically female problem like being an "airhead" or a "motormouth." Some animals are mocked for their physical size, for atypical gender presentation, for physical problems that in real life would merit a trip to the doctor (persistent gas means a child has gastrointestinal issues, not that he's vulgar). Sophomoric gross-out humor is at Garbage Pail Kids levels, with many episodes focusing on body issues like farting, a runny nose, stinky feet, etc. One episode features a character with the "super sniffles" splattering everyone in sight with bright green mucous, and using ropes of it to rescue a girl from a burning building. Yikes. Shakespeare this is not.