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What The Heck Is This?

How do you get adults to sit down and watch television with their young kids? Simple. Stuff it full of the best musicians, artists and actors around, dip it in a little mayhem and cleverly disguise the whole thing as children’s programming. Pancake Mountain is a fun, imaginative melting pot of everything we loved about TV when we were kids—music, imagination and silliness—with an underlying lesson in good values and education. In short, we were tricked into learning by these shows...and darn it, we’re not letting future generations get off scot free.

Pancake Mountain is a children’s television show originally based in Washington, D.C., created by filmmaker, Scott Stuckey. The show is hosted by smart-aleck goat puppet and self-proclaimed entertainment expert, Rufus Leaking, and features the errantly-named superhero Captain Perfect and his more sensible foil, Sam, who serve as interviewers and dance party impresarios. It’s a conglomeration of music, animation, live action segments, learning, and what has become the hallmark of our show, dance parties featuring the hottest acts in music. We’ve had the great fortune of having access to some of the world’s most popular artists—who have lined up, unsolicited, to be part of what CNN’s Chuck Roberts called “a new genre.”

Why are so many top musicians clamoring to play for a room full of wild tots? Well, some do it because they have school-age children (or in some cases, grandchildren) of their own, and feel it’s a pathway to a better connection with their kids. But it’s primarily because, as it turns out, kids are a perfect focus group. They listen to music with no subtext, bias or preconceived notions. To them, good music is good music. If it’s good, they’ll dance. If not, they won’t. Pretty easy way to see if your music is resonating.

Ultimately, the way we see it, imagination is one of the best learning tools available and we encourage kids to push theirs as far as possible.

 

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