![]() The pastel colour palette of the characters and backgrounds, the cutesy addition of faces to inanimate objects and the conflict-free plot-lines all speak of girly stereotypes. As mentioned above the show was clearly written with a female audience in mind. The food is visually in-keeping with the adorable landscape but doesn’t exactly promote healthy dietary choices. Healthy Lifestyle: True is very active and dynamic and Bartleby the cat is even more so, but all the main characters are obsessed with ice cream and cake.Taking a calming breath is something we like to practice with my son. My favourite take-away has so far been to take a deep breath before explaining a problem. The main educational focus of the show appears to be how to solve problems and respond well in friendship situations. This is definitely something the writers could have considered but didn’t. All the human characters have the luminescent pink glow of a Caucasian Barbie doll. Lots of the wackier side characters are pleasingly gender neutral (in a way that Pokemon tried and decidedly failed to acheive). ![]() The main character is female but her main sidekick is male and so are several of the side characters. It’s fairly obvious that ‘True’ was designed with a female audience in mind but don’t let this put you off. As a parent who has had to put up with a lot of this kind of play over the last few months I’m really happy with that. ![]() In complete contrast to Pokemon, however, the absence of conflict in the show means that kids can mimic True by activating wishes without then needing to commence a Pokemon battle. True even stores the wishes in the form of little balls (admittedly not quite Pokeballs) which go in her backpack and she activates them by saying “I chose you!”. The ‘wishes’ also seems to take a little inspiration from Pokemon with their special abilities and tendency to say their own names as catchphrases. There’s something of Rainbow Bright or Sailor Moon about True’s design which might help tick some parental nostalgia boxes but fans of Adventure Time will also find a lot to enjoy here (brightly-colored fantasy kingdom filled with wacky kings and princesses anybody?). ![]() It is exactly as sweet and sickly as the character design suggests, but there’s also plenty of humor in the script particularly from Bartleby the Cat. Examples of my son’s role-play inspired by watching ‘True’ include accidentally baking a cake that is too big and activating ‘wishes’ to help plan a birthday party.Īs an adult you can probably judge for yourself whether you’d enjoy this show based on the artwork. True as a character takes a very gentle approach to conflict resolution and ultimately the problem will turn out to be an accident or a misunderstanding, probably by characters with the best of intentions. Problems often arise in ‘True’ thanks to the misadventures of characters like Princess Griselda, the Rainbow King and other Rainbow citizens but the overwhelming message of the show is that no one is ever truly at fault. She is assisted by friends like Cumulo, a magical cloud which she often rides, and Zee, a zen-like ‘wishologist’ who helps train wishes and teach True about their powers. True’s super power is that she has access to ‘wishes’, tiny magic beings who live in her backpack and each have a special ability such as freezing, bouncing and blowing bubbles. ‘True and The Rainbow Kingdom’ follows the adventures of hero True and her best friend Bartleby the cat as they solve problems in the adorable Rainbow Kingdom. True with Griselda (left) Bartleby the cat and Zee (right) It has rapidly become one of his new favourite TV programs. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that not only did it provide him with some much needed calm time but that it was actually really great. He liked the look of the cat in the thumbnail and I thought it might help him calm down so I agreed. Earlier this week he had just finished watching Skylanders for the first time (another review of this to follow) and he was all hopped up on the more violent themes when he asked to watch an episode of ‘True and the Rainbow Kingdom’. My eldest, who is just about to turn 4, loves Netflix children’s programming.
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