I am going to be a father and am making a jellyfin setup for my child. I want to start early to make a good collection of movies and shows. So I am interested in knowing what other people experienced as positive influences in their lives.
Edit: English and Norwegian is fine, but I can always get dubbed versions of other languages. We will be speaking English and Norwegian with our child from birth. But want to introduce our child to many types of cultures, religions etc.
Edit 2: Thanks so much for so many great responses. Some of you must have spent quite some time compiling the list. Truly appreciate that ♥️
Anything and everything on pbs
The Iron Giant for sure
Supaman!
You stay… I go.
I may be a grown ass adult, but that scene always gets the waterworks going.
A gun who chooses not to be a gun. As someone who’s still dealing with their history as a soldier in the war on terror, I empathize with him more than I ever could as a child.
Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli For Younger Kids:
- My Neighbor Totoro
- Ponyo
- Spirited Away
- The Secret World of Arietty
- Kiki’s Delivery Service
- Pom Poko
For maybe when they’re getting older?
- Howl’s Moving Castle
- The Wind Risees
- Castle In The Sky
- Princess Mononoke
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Some other decent ones for kids of various ages:
Animated/Claymation
Series:
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
- Alvin & The Chipmunks
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers
- Ducktales
- Gumby
- Inspector Gadget
- Rugrats
- Rescue Rangers
- Scooby Doo
- Yogi Bear
Movies:
- Alice in Wonderland
- All Dogs go to Heaven
- An American Tail
- An American Tail: Fivel Goes West
- The Black Cauldron
- Charlotte’s Web
- FernGully
- James and the Giant Peach
- The Land Before Time
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Peter Pan
- Pinochio
- RobinHood
- The Rescuers
- The Rescuers Down Under
- The Secret of NIMH
- The Sword in the Stone
- Thumbelina
- Wallace and Gromit (All of them are great)
Live Action Series:
- Bill Nye The Science Guy
- Beakmans World
Movies:
- Beetlejuice
- Casper
- Ernest Goes to School (and all the other ones really)
- Honey I Shrunk The Kids
- Hook
- Jumanji
- E.T.
- Edward Scissor Hands
- Flubber
- Ghost Busters
- The Goonies
- Labyrinth (Creepier vibe than I remember)
- The Little Rascals
- Mary Poppins
- Mr. Mom
- Mrs. Doubtfire
- The Never Ending Story
- Operation Dumbo Drop
- Patch Adams
- Sandlot
- Short Circuit
- Space Jam
- Toys
- Tron
- We’re back a dinosaur story
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Animated and Live Action)
Edit: awful formatting… And typos
god beakman’s world was amazing.
i’d also suggest bobby’s world, which was on around the same time
I’ve tried finding good episodes to show now and it’s been pretty hard. There are a few smatterings on youtube. The video quality is very low. Niche enough that there aren’t many sources.
I was also amused to learn that when I was a kid I thought they were just talking like crazy freaks with a weird funny way of talking. As an adult, they’re just new yorkers.
there’s a good complete series torrent out there that i got; there’s also a good complete series upload on archive.org too! for both beakman’s world and bobby’s world
All the ghibli movies
My all time favourite Miyazaki series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Boy_Conan It impacted me so much Istill think about it 40 years later…
- The Lion King (original)
- Mulan (original)
- Jurassic Park
- Princess Mononoke
- Castle in the Sky
- Spirited Away
- Forrest Gump
- Aladdin (original)
- Men in Black
- Galaxy Quest
- Home Alone
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- The Matrix
- Toy Story
- Top Gun
- The Terminator
- A Charlie Brown Christmas
- Yu Yu Hakusho
- Cowboy Bebop
Princess Mononoke might be a little dark for an earlier age. There’s some really brutal scenes in it.
Of course that didn’t stop it from being my favorite from age 8 onward, but still.
Yeah there’s literal dismemberment in the early scenes, plus thematically it’s pretty mature too
I’m picturing a toddler seeing a soldier get beheaded by an arrow from horseback, looks over at Dad for emotional support, and Dad looks on with an approving grin, comfortable that he’s made the right choice of early childhood films.
Also, The Matrix/Terminator as a suggestion for a small child is a big lol.
Terminator, the matrix and cowboy beebop are to much as well
Aladdin (original)
The original you say.
Hell yeah yu yu hakusho is so good!!! So much raw emotion with great story telling and cool fights. I know he’s the bad guy but when younger toguro turns down a ticket to heaven so he can suffer in purgatory cuz he thinks he doesn’t deserve it gets me so hard everytime.
it gets me so hard everytime.
Phrasing! Hahaha
Lots of episodes can get a little violent but the first episode is golden for teaching perspective and that the “bad guys/good guys” dichotomy isn’t what it seems, and to be kind to everyone, in a way that is a little easier to digest when they’re little.
Funny that you point out the originals Disney movies, that made me think, did the remakes made any impact on the younger generation or is too soon to know that?
Man, I really hope those were just forgettable for them. The Lion King live action remake is so damn disappointing. All the emotion, all the storytelling, just gone. It’s a very poor imitation of the original.
Remakes can be good. The new Dune movies are worlds better than the 70s movie; that is a movie that needed a proper remake. The new ones actually do the books justice.
Everything by Don Bluth. Literally everything his name on is childhood gold. Sometimes a little scary, but in a modern fairy tale sort of way.
An American Tale
All dogs go to Heaven
The Secret of NIMH
The Fox and the Hound
The Land Before Time
His movies never treated children like fools, a sentiment that’s only recently becoming the standard for children’s entertainment and he was doing it in the 80s.
Maybe not everything, there were a few less-than-greats in his catalogue. It’s been a while, but I can’t imagine The Pebble and the Penguin or A Troll in Central Park being particularly good as an adult.
It’s mildly flooding in my area right now so I just watched Rock A Doodle the other day, one of my faves as a kid.
Chanticleer! Out of all his movies that was the one I followed the least as a kid. It confused me in a way it never really went away. I came back to it as a kid and I still don’t really get it, but it has such a fairytale feeling to it.
The Animals of Farthing Wood was a banger show. It’s because of that show that I began drawing as a kid. I love how epic it is and how it comments on deeper themes that are still important today. Among other things, it’s all about how the animals are forced to immigrate to another park after their forest is turned into a highway for humans. That even after the arrive after a horrible migration, their presence isn’t welcome because they disturb the old ways in the new park. How wars break out, friendships and alliances are formed and how everyone has to find a way to coexist and also keep the ever looming presence of humans at bay. It is truly a brilliant show that teaches you so much about life, death, nature and tolerance. And you know, you can also just watch the show as an entertaining epic for kids about animals without looking into all the political stuff, because it never really tries to cram all it’s themes down your throat in the annoying way that a lot of media does nowadays.
Maybe hold off on showing the little one this show until they are at least kindergarten age. It’s a bit rough sometimes, but it is not damaging.
Also, congratulations on becoming a dad! Glædelig jul ❤️
EDIT: FRIENDS! I LITERALLY JUST FOUND A REMASTERED VERSION OF THE WHOLE SERIES ON YOUTUBE!
Whoaaaaaaa…this show…best environmental education a child can get from TV.
But seriously heartbreaking, I remember crying A LOT as child (maybe still would TBH).
Yeah I agree. It’s really brutal. As a kid I was especially heartbroken over Fox’s son’s storyline. The one with the wounded leg who goes to the city for awhile. His story was so friggin tragic, omg.
I was exactly looking for the name of that show in English as it is the one that instantly came to my mind when I saw the post. It’s in no small part thanks to this one, and a couple of others (the magic school bus and once upon a time… life) I decided to do a PhD in animal behaviour.
Cosmos
Sesame Street, Muppets, The Electric Company.
Completely dated, but these older shows introduced a white kid in whitesville to a completely different world. Plus fun, educational in a way that kids don’t mind.
Fraggle Rock as well!
Same Robin Hood as in the thumbnail for sure.
Also not yet listed, heavily 80s titles:
The Princess Bride
The Neverending Story
Beetlejuice
Big
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
The Dark Crystal
The Rats of Nimh
The Last Unicorn
An American Tale
Batteries Not Included
Fiddler on the Roof
Ghostbusters
Anything with the Muppets up to Treasure Island.
Back to the Future (2015 no longer the future fantasy it one was)
The Muppets Christmas Carol is downright perfect. Merry Christmas!
100% yes. Best version of the story ever made. Second to last good Muppet movie.
From a purely positive influence? Anything on PBS (wasn’t allowed to have cable growing up)
- Sesame Street
- Mr Roger’s
- Any documentary with David Attenborough
- same with Jane Goodall
- Nova
Bill Nye would be the one non-PBS show I remember having an impact
Modernish stuff? Bluey, Miss Rachel, Pixar especially Wall-E, Brave, Coco, Soul, Encanto, Toy Story, Inside Out (when a little older). I like Coco, but Book of Life is an underrated alternative too.
I’ll second my hero Mr Rogers.
We should all want to be like him.
Avatar the last Airbender taught me to think when in conflict
Bluey. It’s a really positive modern show , so not really from my childhood but it beats everything else from my childhood.
Bluey is a fantastic parenting manual. Seriously, it should be required viewing for anyone considering having a kid.
Surprised PBS shows aren’t mentioned more here, especially not Mr. Rogers Neighborhood being mentioned.
So in no particular order:
-
Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood: great show for teaching kids to how to navigate emotions and complex situations like death and discrimination but in ways they can understand
-
Sesame Street: similar to Mr. Rogers but more for younger children
-
Bill Nye the Science Guy: Made science accessible and fun for children. Good way to build a sense of curiosity and desire for experimentation
-
Zoom: similar to Bill Nye in that it made me what to try all the activities they shared. Lots of fun games, recipes, brain teasers etc to keep kids busy. The fact that it had an all kid cast made it more accessible as a kid. Highly recommended since it seems less remembered than other PBS shows
Non-Educational:
-
The Simpsons: this may be divisive but I grew up when they were super popular and I believe it helped develop my sense of humor. The earlier episodes were also pretty wholesome
-
The Avatar (Last Airbender and Korra): well written show that is based on many East Asian cultures and touches on themes of depression, genocide, war, and hope (among many others). One of my favorite shows to this day
elephant show and reading rainbow <3
also wcvb in boston had a show similar to reading rainbow called a likely story
"Zoom zoom zoom! " is still stuck in my head to this day
-
Growing up I really loved the animated series Alfred Jonathan Quack or Alfred Kvakk in Norwegian. It’s about a duck, his farther (I think) is a mole and the antagonist is a nazi-styled crow called Dolf. My favourite episode was about this island they visited which turned out to be the shell of this gigantic turtle.
Another favourite was The World of David the Gnome. It’s about a gnome who lives in or under a tree and has all sorts of adventures with animals. The books it’s based on are also great, I still have them.
I don’t know if you can still find these series since they’re pretty old.
It’s not Jonathan, but Jodocus.
But I agree, Alfred J. Kvakk is legendary and very much recommended.
Oh, I copied the English name from Wikipedia, suppose that’s wrong then.
It really is. I wish I could rewatch it, but it’s not on anymore unfortunately.
I dunno, I haven’t found that version on wikpedia. But I know him by that name from the German synchro and afaik the Dutch original also calls him that.
Yeah, he is called that in Dutch as well. I got the English name from the Dutch page, but there’s no source mentioned.
Looking through the titles in different languages, it seems wild to me how different they sometimes are. Polish and Serbian also use some variant of Jonatan. Makes me wonder why, they felt the need to change that.
I don’t know, but wouldn’t have guessed that Jodocus was a common name in Dutch either, that needs translation to be more common sounding in another language.
To me it sounds like a made up name, that vibes with the character being a duck.I always thought it was a made up name too, but apparently it’s an archaic Dutch name. German version is Jost, which I imagine sounds like the Dutch version Joost, which is fairly common (I now one).
The English version is Joyce, which became a female name, which could explain why they didn’t want to use that and chose Jonathan instead. Maybe other languages just followed that choice? I don’t know. I much prefer Jodocus though.
