Britain’s toddlers and babies are making a beeline for the latest ‘must have’ home entertainment craze, following successful trials of the BBC’s new 3D children’s channel.
3D-eebies is available through Freeview, and promises to revolutionise the way children gawp at brightly coloured idiots. But some parents claim that a fully immersive world with undue focus on rainbows could create yet another generation of teenagers who are bored by reality.
The marketing campaign for 3D-eebies has been remarkably successful. “We reached our key demographic by paying midwives to demonstrate the technology to babies during home visits, while they talked to the mums about poo”, enthused the corporation’s Brian Caldwell. “They knew the children loved it because they sat their open-jawed and silent, apart from the odd scream of terror or thud when they toppled over.”
Initial feedback has been positive. “We’ve saturated the market to the point where many of our fans can no longer blink, we’ve got round that by fitting the 3D glasses with sprinklers”, exclaimed Caldwell. “More remarkable still, 85% of the audience are so engrossed that they refuse to breast-feed. That could really help to tackle the problem of baby obesity.”
Psychologists have noticed some fascinating side effects from immersing children into a highly realistic world full of clapping morons, singing haemorrhoids and other freaks of nature. “You might think that a child who’s monged out to ‘In the Night Garden’ for three hours hasn’t learned much, but you’d be wrong”, declared Dr Horsche, a doctor of commercial science.
“They may have learned to ignore two-dimensional images completely. Their amazing little brains develop so quickly, they actually learn how to not even see jigsaws, picture books or anything that doesn’t hurtle towards them, within just a few days”, revealed Horsche. “The brightest children can learn to not notice their parents, unless they run at them, dressed as a Tombliboo.”
All this has exciting consequences for childcare. “I used to worry that my little girl missed me when I dropped her off at nursery”, admitted young mum Cordelia Brown. “But thanks to their enormous cinema screen, she no longer recognises me at all. As long as it’s switched to the right channel and her glasses are taped on nice and tight, she’s more than happy sitting there, drooling and flinching.”
But the technology may have proved too convincing, and there is growing evidence that some parents have become hooked. “It’s easy to invest emotionally in this technology and allow fantasy to blur with reality”, claimed Caldwell, “although we’re surprised at just how active some young mothers’ imaginations can be. Mister Tumble has been hit with over 385,000 paternity suits.”
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