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
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 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.
- 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
Aladdin (original)
The original you say.
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.
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.
Yeah there’s literal dismemberment in the early scenes, plus thematically it’s pretty mature too
Terminator, the matrix and cowboy beebop are to much as well
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.
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.
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!
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.
Avatar the last Airbender taught me to think when in conflict
Cosmos
Anything Mr. Bean.
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.
Bluey and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (of not the remake) for kids shows. Bluey isa. Double hitter as it’s great for kids and adults as well. There’s a few tearjerker episodes in there for adults around life and kids growing up, along with just great ideas on how to parent and play. MMCH is great as it doesn’t subscribe to the overly energetic constant cutting camera angles bullshit that’s super addictive and bad for kids. Shows are calm, involve learning and problem solving, and are very much like ‘okay get up and expend some energy, go play’ at the end. Honorable mention to Tumbleleaf. It’s for kids that are a bit older, is a little more weird, but still fun. Art style is cool on it as well. Best of luck building your library and congrats on being a dad!!
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.
Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
Angry Beavers
Hey Arnold
Rocko’s Modern Life
Rugrats
Gullah Gullah Island
Legends of the Hidden Temple
Basically mid 90s Nickelodeon defined my childhood, and the media’s only gotten worse from there on out! :p
The Wild Thornberries
Franklin ( the one about the turtle ). For the most part, I feel like almost all the content is good enough to show a young child considering it’s one of those preschool age shows. May look a little old considering it’s 90s animation and also doesn’t have any traditional box sets ( it seems to be nothing but sets based around themes ), but I’m pretty sure every episode is on a Canadian company’s yt channel ( region locked AFAIK, so having a VPN is advised ). Treehouse Direct, IIRC.
Also, for a friendly enough way of teaching religious lessons in a non-preachy way that is actually not eye bleach or racist ( looking at you, FInding Jesus ) or low quality slop maid solely to profit off of religious parents, VeggieTales. There’s a reason why it was popular with Christians and non-Christians alike, besides the silly songs.
They can be fun to watch ( not including the 4th VHS episode where 3 characters get thrown into a furnace and magically survive thanks to a “glowing man” ( probably Jesus ) ) and can be good for opening a conversation on things like being nice to others despite differences or being thankful for what you have or a number of other topics they covered from the Bible. Honestly, one of the greatest Christian animated cartoons ever considering how it is probably the only Christian cartoon parents who are and aren’t Christian could probably both agree on letting their kids watch.
Cannot speak for modern VeggieTales, though, so take my words with a shaker of salt just in case modern VeggieTales isn’t as lesson oriented or anywhere near as good as the originals from the 90s and early 2000s.
