#114: Anyone remembers Brainpop?
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Werty: Ok, urgent question: Who else was a BrainPop fan back in the day? It was such a huge part of my childhood. Picture: a kid with a voracious reading appetite who could only go to the library on weekends, (mostly) free use of the family desktop, a fairly reliable internet connection, lots of free time, no console games…
I had so cleanly forgotten about it until I recently came across this tweet, which is pretty funny in its own right, that reminded me of its existence. But I got blasted so hard back into the past that I got whiplash.
A quick rundown for the unacquainted - Brainpop is an educational website for kids that produces animated videos about a huge variety of topics from science, engineering, math, geography, etc. The videos involve a guy called Tim and his robot buddy, Moby, who talks in beeps which Tim can understand (they’re pictured in the tweet I mentioned above). The format of the videos is always the same: they read out what appears to be a letter from a curious kid (dunno real or not tbh) then Tim starts explaining stuff. Moby beeps here and there for Tim to respond to - making the video more conversational. Then it always ends with them doing something funny.
Which is why it was heartening and delightful to see that the site seems to be going strong today and continuing to produce new content, even on topics like BLM, COVID-19 and the US elections. And the format of these new videos is exactly what it was like back in my primary school days!
If you think about it, it was Youtube before Youtube. It was edtech before edtech. One can only imagine what the pricing model, growth funnel, monetisation strategy would be if it were launched today.
Brainpop didn’t have to release their videos for free consumption, without ads, but they did. And for that, young Werty is eternally grateful.
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Until next time,
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