History of Oobi

This is a history of Oobi.

Sources[]

Info about the show's creation/history is taken from these articles and interviews:

Origins[]

Josh Selig was a longtime writer and actor for Sesame Street. He was interested in watching Muppet performers practice for the first time. When a puppeteer is first learning how to focus the eyes of a Muppet, they use their bare hands and a pair of ping-pong balls as "eyes" instead of a full puppet. Josh noticed that more skilled puppeteers could convey lots of emotion with their bare hands, and this gave him the idea to make a TV show about "the raw emotion of bare-handed puppetry." He started working on this idea in the late 1990s with Martin Robinson, another Sesame Street crew member.

In 1999, Josh Selig pitched the show to Noggin, a cable channel co-founded by Sesame Workshop and MTV Networks. Josh wanted to call the show "Pipo," but this name was already trademarked by an Italian brand of jeans. He came up with "Oobi" as a different name, which he liked because the two O's mirrored Oobi's round eyes. His pitch for the show was successful, and Noggin ordered a series of two-minute shorts featuring Oobi. To make the show, Josh co-founded a studio with his former business partner, Lori Shaer: Little Airplane Productions.

Camera tests[]

The first thing that was filmed for the show was a series of camera tests. These were made as an experiment to see how Oobi would look and act on screen. For these tests, Josh and Martin hired a few Muppet performers they knew from Sesame Street, as well as Tim Lagasse. Tim was chosen because he had previously made a short film called "A Show of Hands" that was all about bare-handed puppets. During the camera tests, Martin Robinson was originally going to play Oobi, with Tim Lagasse playing side characters. However, Tim was so expressive that Martin decided to give him the role of Oobi.

Tim "pushed the envelope" of what a hand puppet character could do. Instead of just talking and moving like a regular puppet, he thought Oobi should point, wave, clench, give a "thumbs-up," and make other hand gestures to show his emotions and ideas.

Season 1[]

The first season of Oobi was a series of two-minute shorts. These shorts were played during commercial breaks on Noggin. Unlike the later episodes, the shorts were filmed at real-world locations around New York. The sets were constructed on movable carts, and the backgrounds were actual places in New York. The puppet costumes were very simple: none of the characters had any accessories aside from their glass eyes.

The shorts were meant to parallel the stage in young kids' lives when everything in the world is new and incredible. Each episode of season one is organized around Oobi discovering a simple topic like a new food, a new game, or a new way to make art. Noggin's website, Noggin.com, made a series of Oobi online games that were advertised after each short.

Season 2[]

For the show's second season, it became a long-form series with each episode lasting 10-13 minutes. Each episode was divided into three parts: a story, a series of interviews, and a game segment. The stories usually focused on Oobi discovering something new. The interviews were unscripted talks with real families about the episode's topic. The game segments were interactive games where Oobi encouraged the viewers to play along with him.

The second season was filmed from January to February 2003. It premiered on Noggin on April 7, 2003. For this season, bigger sets were made for Oobi's house, and they were all indoors, rather than on-location. The puppets' glass eye props were all updated, and Uma and Kako were given their own accessories: a barrette and a hat. According to Josh Selig, the theme of the season was exploring Oobi's home life.

Season 3[]

The show's third season was filmed from January to February 2004. It premiered on Noggin on September 6, 2004, and the last episode debuted on February 11, 2005. This season made a few changes to the format. First, it removed the game segments so that each episode could include a longer story. The interview segments were also shortened, and they were played as transitions between scenes.

The third season also introduced a supporting cast of new characters, all played by veteran Muppet performers. They included Matt Vogel as Angus, Kevin Clash as Randy, and Jennifer Barnhart as Mrs. Johnson. In addition to the new characters, most episodes featured brand-new sets for locations around Oobi's neighborhood. Josh Selig said that this season's theme was going out into the neighborhood to meet new friends and experience milestone "firsts," like attending school, going trick-or-treating, and learning to use chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant.

Why was Oobi cancelled?[]

According to this press release, the third season of Oobi had the highest ratings out of any Noggin show at the time. However, the show didn't return for a fourth season. Noggin wanted to order more episodes of Oobi, but Josh Selig started working on a new show instead: Wonder Pets. He insisted that he should only focus on one show at a time, and he decided to stop production on Oobi to work full-time on Wonder Pets.

Oobi: Dasdasi[]

In January 2012, the Iranian channel IRIB TV2 announced that it was making a brand-new, localized adaptation of Oobi called Oobi: Dasdasi. None of the original crew was involved, and it was directed by two of Iran's foremost puppeteers: Amir Soltan Ahmadi and Negar Estakhr. In an interview with the newspaper Jaam-e Jam, Estakhr said that their company had screened episodes of Oobi in English and wanted to make their own tailored version for a new audience.

The puppet costumes on Oobi: Dasdasi were replicas of the props from the original show. Like the original show, it features brother and sister hand puppets who live with their grandfather, but the cast was expanded to include two parents. The three adult characters wore Arab garments. The show aired from September to December 2012, and it had 78 episodes in total.

After the show[]

By 2005, Oobi was sold to over 23 international markets, and a few foreign-language dubs were made.

Noggin played reruns of Oobi until the channel closed in 2009. After Noggin closed, the show reran on the Nick Jr. Channel from September 28, 2009 until March 18, 2013. In March 2015, Noggin was relaunched with the Noggin streaming app, and Oobi was added to the service in May. It was available on the Noggin app until March 2020. In January 2021, the show was added to Paramount Plus.