January 25, 1999 (1999-01-25) – November 21, 2001 (2001-11-21)
Zoboomafoo is a live-action/animated children's television series that originally aired on PBS from January 25, 1999, to November 21, 2001. After the original run on public television, reruns were shown on PBS Kids Sprout until 2012. A total of 65 episodes were aired. A creation of the Kratt Brothers (Chris and Martin Kratt), it features a talking Coquerel's sifakalemur named Zoboomafoo, performed by Canadian puppeteer Gord Robertson (who had also puppeteered on Jim Henson'sFraggle Rock), and mainly portrayed by a lemur named Jovian, along with a collection of returned animal guests.
Production
Zoboomafoo was produced by PBS Kids, CINAR Corporation (now folded into WildBrain), and the Kratt brothers' Earth Creatures company.[1][2] Paragon Entertainment Corporation, who previously worked on Kratts' Creatures, was slated to be involved with Zoboomafoo before being replaced by CINAR.[3]
Partial filming for the series took place on location at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina.[4] The claymation segments were filmed at a studio in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada. Although the last new episode aired on PBS Kids in November 2001, many PBS stations continued to rerun Zoboomafoo episodes in syndication through 2009. Select stations aired reruns as late as 2017. In addition, Sprout aired reruns until February 2012.[citation needed] The show was broadcast in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Middle East, and India.
Jovian (a captive Coquerel's sifaka housed at the Duke Lemur Center) portrayed Zoboomafoo in the live-action segments (with his parents Nigel and Flavia sometimes serving as stand-ins). On November 10, 2014, he died of kidney failure in his home at the age of 20.[5]
Zoboomafoo received the 2001 Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Children's Series[7] and a Parents' Choice Award for Spring 2001 and Silver Honor for Fall 2001.[8][9]
Other media
There are also several video games for the PC based on Zoboomafoo, where children learn the alphabet and animals that correlate to each letter. Some of the letters have interactive games to go with them, such as a coloring page.[10]
^Fries, Laura. "Zoboomafoo". Parents' Choice Awards: Television. Parents' Choice. Archived from the original on February 4, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2013.
^"Zoboomafoo". Parents' Choice Awards: Television. Parents' Choice. Archived from the original on February 14, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2013.
^"Old Games Finder". Old Games Finder. Archived from the original on November 7, 2017. Retrieved June 16, 2017.
Notes
^ abInformation is taken from the opening and ending credits of each episode.
