Zoboomafoo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zoboomafoo
Genre	Childrens
Starring	Chris Kratt Martin Kratt
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	65
Production
Executive producer(s)	Leo Eaton Chris Kratt Martin Kratt
Running time	29 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	PBS
Original run	January 25, 1999 – April 22, 2001
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Zoboomafoo is an educational PBS Kids television program designed to introduce preschoolers to the animal world. It aired from 1999 to 2001 and is still shown today in syndication. A total of 65 episodes were aired. A creation of the Kratt Brothers (Chris and Martin Kratt), it features a talking Verreaux's sifaka lemur (appropriately named Zoboomafoo, or Zoboo for short) and a collection of repeat animal guests. Every episode begins with the Kratt Brothers in Animal Junction, a peculiar place in which the rules of nature change and wild animals come to visit and play. Each episode has a theme — for example, baby animals, frightening animals, or the importance of play.

Zoboo is mostly played by a puppet, but often after a camera cut, is substituted by a real lemur jumping or looking around, improving the illusion that the puppet is real. At first, Zaboo is an actual lemur, but after being fed some garbanzo beans (or another food), he turns into a puppet, after spinning on a turn table. Though mostly live-action, Zoboomafoo makes occasional claymation forays into the world of Zobooland, a magical place where Zoboo and his animal friends tell brief stories related to the episode at hand. Chris and Martin also leave Animal Junction during each episode to better demonstrate the theme of the day, traveling to exotic places like India or Africa to visit the creatures there. A running gag involves everything falling out of the closet when they open it.

One segment, entitled "Who could it be?", has Zoboo describe the "mangatsika", or mysterious, animal that he saw while a cartoon is played where the animal is put together. Once the cartoon is complete, the actual animal (or animals) come into Animal Junction, prompting the Kratts to talk about that species.

One episode was about dinosaurs and incorrectly focused much of its time on the "fictional" Brontosaurus.

The show ended in 2001, though many educational networks continue to air reruns. In 2003 the Kratt Brothers committed to a new show, Be the Creature, on the National Geographic Channel.