Oobi

Oobi is an American children's television series produced by Little Airplane Productions for the Noggin channel. The show's concept is based on a training method used by puppeteers, in which they use their hands and a pair of glass eyes instead of a full puppet. The main character is a bare hand puppet named Oobi. The first season was a series of two-minute shorts. For its second and third seasons, it became a long-form series, with episodes lasting 13 minutes each. The show originally aired from 2000 to February 11, 2005, with reruns continuing through March 18, 2013.
The series was created by Josh Selig. He came up with the idea for Oobi while watching bare-handed puppeteers audition for Sesame Street. The main characters were played by Tim Lagasse, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Noel MacNeal, and Tyler Bunch. All of the puppeteers were veteran Muppet performers.
Oobi was a breakout success for Noggin. It received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the puppeteers' performances, the visual style, and the show's appeal toward multiple age groups. The Age reported that the show developed a strong cult following among older viewers, and Noel MacNeal has said that the show's fans range from amateur puppeteers to "college-age stoners." In 2008, a fan site called OobiEyes.com ran a YouTube promotion, which inspired a community of early YouTubers to make videos with their own Oobi-style puppets.
The show received a variety of awards, including from the Television Academy and Parents' Choice. Oobi had a Nielsen rating of 2.35 among Noggin viewers by 2004, becoming Noggin's highest-rated series at the time. It is the most widely distributed Noggin show, having aired in over 23 markets worldwide by 2005. A foreign adaptation called Oobi: Dasdasi premiered in 2012 and ran for 78 episodes in the Middle East.

Plot

The show takes place in a quaint, old-fashioned neighborhood where hand puppets live and act like people. The main character is a curious 4-year-old named Oobi who likes to explore the outside world. He lives in a single-story house with his little sister, Uma, and his grandfather, Grampu. Uma is very overdramatic and, depending on the day, she can be either excited or completely stressed out. Grampu is laid-back and encourages the kids to learn new things, but he is also rather unlucky and always has to clean up the kids' messes. Oobi has a best friend, Kako, who lives across the street and likes to visit.
Most episodes are about Oobi learning about something for the first time, like a new place, a new game, or a holiday. According to Noggin, the show was meant to mirror the stage of early childhood "when everything in world is new and incredible" and "when each revelation helps build a sense of mastery and self-confidence." The characters only talk in simple sentences, based on the speech structure of a child just starting to talk. For example, "Uma, school, first day" is said in place of "It's my first day of school." The show was meant to help develop social skills, early literacy, and logical thinking.
In season 1, the episodes are simple shorts about Oobi making new discoveries. In season 2, the episodes were extended and followed a format made up of three parts. The first part is a story like the earlier shorts. The second part is a set of interviews between the puppets and human families, centering on the main story's topic. The last part is an interactive game. When Oobi started a third season in 2004, the game segments were dropped and replaced with longer stories. Interviews were still an important part of the show, but instead of being shown after the story, these segments were shortened and played as transitions between scenes.

Characters

Main

Oobi is a 4-year-old boy who is very curious and always excited to learn something new. Unlike the other characters, he is a completely bare puppet aside from his eyes and wears no accessories or clothes, except on special occasions. Oobi dreams of becoming a piano player when he grows up, and takes piano lessons from an old woman named Inka. He is very protective of his favorite toy, a red model car. He acts as a role model to his little sister, Uma.
Uma is Oobi's 3-year-old younger sister. She is shorter than Oobi and loves singing, dancing, and pretending. Chickens are her favorite animal, and she likes to talk about and imitate them, which sometimes annoys Grampu. She has a habit of overreacting a lot to small changes or problems. Her catchphrases are "Nice!" and "Pretty." Because she is so young, she has trouble pronouncing long words.
Kako is Oobi's excitable, confident, and sometimes arrogant best friend and next-door neighbor. Kako has a very playful attitude and likes to make lots of jokes, but he can prove to be quite insightful and sincere whenever Oobi needs advice. His catchphrase is "¡Perfecto!", the Spanish word for "perfect". Kako lives with his parents, Mamu and Papu.
Grampu is Oobi and Uma's very wise and sometimes rather unlucky grandfather who is their caregiver and mentor. His appearance is different from that of the kids; four of his fingers are curled instead of being extended, making him look taller and possibly signifying his age. His favorite pastimes are cooking and gardening. He develops a very romantic relationship with Oobi's piano teacher, Inka, throughout the series. His catchphrase is "Lovely!"
Recurring
Inka is Oobi's Eastern European-accented piano teacher and Grampu's girlfriend. She often takes Grampu on dates and flirts with him a lot when she visits Oobi's house. She has visited Paris and likes to try many different foreign foods.
Angus is a high-strung friend of Oobi's whose eyes are strangely under his fingers rather than on top. He talks in a nasal voice and usually worries a lot about how he looks in front of others. Amusingly, he is a very good actor and has a talent for singing, but he gets lots of stage fright when he has to perform in front of an audience.
Mrs. Johnson is Oobi's elderly neighbor and one of the few left-handed characters on the show. She has a pet cat named Kitty who likes to climb up trees.
Mamu and Papu are Kako's parents, who appear whenever Oobi visits Kako's house. Papu is a homemaker and a cook. Mamu works at an office and is usually away from home, but she still finds time to spend with her family.
Maestru is Oobi and Kako's singing teacher who works at the local community center. He is also in charge of the town events. His index finger is always extended and he uses it as a conducting baton.
Frieda is an upside-down foot puppet. Oobi and Frieda like to play with each other a lot at the park and teach each other how to play different games. She represents a person of a different race or culture from the hand puppets.
Moppie is Uma's best friend from preschool. She is very high-spirited and energetic, but also afraid to try new things. She is an artist and likes to draw portraits of her classmates.
Bella is an Italian-accented grocery store owner and one of Grampu's close friends. She brings fruit wherever she goes.
Production

Concept and creation

Oobi was made by Little Airplane Productions, a studio co-founded by Josh Selig and Lori Shaer. Both co-founders started their careers working on Sesame Street. Selig was inspired to create Oobi after watching puppeteers perform with their bare hands on the set of Sesame Street. Each puppeteer used their hand and a pair of ping pong balls instead of a full puppet. This is a common technique among puppeteers in training, as it helps them learn the basics of lip-syncing and focusing the eyes of a puppet. Selig noted that the more skilled actors could convey lots of emotions with their hands, and it gave him the idea for a series that showcased the "raw emotion" of bare-handed puppetry.
In 1999, Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop created a cable channel called Noggin. At first, the Noggin channel mainly showed reruns from Sesame Workshop's library, so both companies started to look for pitches for new shows. Josh Selig pitched Oobi to them under the working title Pipo, which he wanted to name the main character. He decided to rename the show Oobi after he found out that "Pipo" was already trademarked by an Italian brand of jeans. The new name was meant to mirror the characters' eyeballs with two O's.
The pitch was successful, and Oobi entered production. For the first season, Noggin ordered a collection of 48 shorts, which lasted 1 to 2 minutes each and would play during commercial breaks. Josh Selig said, "I set up a shop to produce that series. So we just signed a one-year lease, it was really an experiment for us... and after the first year we found that we loved having a company." The first season of shorts was filmed in 1999 and started airing in 2000 on Noggin.

Assembling the crew

Tim Lagasse was chosen to play Oobi because of his previous bare-handed puppetry in A Show of Hands, a series of short films he made in the early 1990s. The show's main cast and crew members were all Sesame Workshop alumni. Kevin Clash, best known for being the original performer of Elmo, was an ensemble puppeteer on Oobi and guest-starred as Randy in the episode, "Babysitter!". Matt Vogel, the current puppeteer for Kermit the Frog and Big Bird, played Oobi's friend Angus. Martin Robinson, who plays Telly Monster on Sesame Street, built the puppets' glass eyes and accessories on Oobi. Lisa Simon, who won 20 Daytime Emmys for her work as a director of Sesame Street, was the producer for Oobi.
The show's background music was created by Sacred Noise, a music production company in New York. Additional music was composed by pianist Marianna Rosett and Christopher North Renquist. A few other composers were brought onto the crew for special songs. Jared Faber wrote the theme song. Broadway orchestrator Larry Hochman wrote songs for the "Theater!" episode, which was a ten-minute musical.