Oobi Stats

The Review

If a million monkeys working on a million typewriters for a million years will eventually produce the collected works of Shakespeare, one monkey scrawling with a pencil on a cocktail napkin for fifteen minutes will give you…Oobi.

Oobi is–get this–a hand. Not a hand puppet, not a sock puppet, not even a muppet. A freakin’ hand. Oobi and his cast of equally appalling peripheral characters are human hands with plastic eyeballs affixed to the top of the knuckles. The characters speak in fragmented, caveman-like sentences (i.e., “Me…Oobi. You…friend?”). No one really know the point of Oobi’s existence, and it seems no one really cares. We do know Oobi has a sister, Uma; a friend, Kako; and a grandfather, lovingly referred to as “Grampu” (rhymes with “shampoo”), which sounds more like a geriatric bowel disorder than a loving caregiver.

The disturbing aspects of Oobi are both obvious and many. For one, the characters use the thumb and fingers as a mouth, and yet they can only interact and manipulate their environment with the functionality of a hand. Therefore when Oobi flushes the toilet or scoops and bags doggie business , he is effectively doing so with his mouth. Furthermore, the “writers” have shown us on more than one occasion that when Oobi gets dirty, failing the ability to wash himself, he must exchange sponge baths with other characters. Yes, really. Simple hygiene lesson or something much darker? You decide.

Oobi is just not very good. Not even by a long shot. It was a scheme derived from the simple notion that gearing a show towards pre-schoolers while removing any element of production value will result in a hefty profit margin. It may have had some success in its infancy, but it now airs from 3 – 4 AM, EST which brings me to my next point: its only value now is to paint-huffing teenagers who want a cheap laugh while high. So if you have had the good fortune to never see Oobi, then you won’t likely come across it by accident these days. But you now know to politely decline your sister-in-law’s offer to let you borrow old VHS recordings of Oobi because her child loved it so much.


The Kids

Oobi’s key demographic is pre-schoolers and below: an audience that is still experiencing difficulty with depth perception, abstract reasoning, and discerning what they should or should not put in their mouth, let alone discerning quality entertainment. Some kids may like Oobi, but–like adults–some kids are morons. Moreover, allowing your children to watch Oobi is preparing them for a life of omitting verbs from their sentences and inappropriately touching other kids at preschool. Here’s an idea: you have Oobi’s entire production value attached to your right arm….use it to entertain your own children.

The Verdict: Cringe-Worthy–A Horrific 10!

Oobi is the sum of all my fears. You would be well advised to avoid this show at all costs. Oobi was the first on my list of banned television shows for my children. Not only for the good of their cognitive and emotional development, but also because I became enraged after simply watching the title sequence. To its credit, Oobi is one of only a handful of children’s shows Joel McHale in his infinite wisdom saw fit to feature on The Soup. After your first experience with Oobi, you’ll hope and pray he’ll go the way of Johnny Tremain or Luke Skywalker’s hands. You will want blood.

Bonus Content: Play The Oobi Challenge!

Here is a 10 minute clip of Oobi. How long can you make it through without shutting it off? Record your time in the comments section, and describe, as best you can, what it did to you.