Blue's Clues (seasons 1-4)

Blue's Clues is an American children's television series that premiered on Nickelodeon in 1996. Producers Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn. It was hosted originally by Steve Burns, who left in 2002 and was replaced by Donovan Patton. The show follows an animated blue-spotted dog named Blue as she leaves a treasure hunt for the host and the viewers. Blue's Clues became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on American commercial television and was critical to Nickelodeon's growth. It has been called "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed, and ground-breaking preschool television series of all time." A spin-off called mh:mixedtvshows:Blue's Room premiered in 2004.

In March 2018, Nickelodeon announced a reboot of the series, which became titled Blue's Clues & You! which premiered on November 11, 2019.

Why These Seasons Will Figure It Out

 * 1) Simplistic, but well done animation styles, including Flash and CGI. In addition, the mix of live action and animation turned out to be pretty well done.
 * 2) Nice show intro and song.
 * 3) It actually taught kids healthy lessons.
 * 4) It was one of (if not) the first shows to incorporate American (or British) Sign Language.
 * 5) Steve Burns (or simply just Steve) was an awesome host and Kevin Duala (or simply Kevin, the host for the UK version of the show) was also good.
 * 6) The animated characters are cute and lovable, especially Blue.
 * 7) Catchy songs, like the Mailtime song and the So Long song.
 * 8) The episode, Steve Goes To College was pretty emotional, especially since Steve himself has been the host for about six years.
 * 9) The episode, Blue's Big Holiday, was nice because it went through each holiday one by one and gave all of them the same amount of respect, even calling Christmas a "birthday" instead of "Santa's day".
 * 10) Joe was likable in "Joe's First Day", "Joe Gets a Clue", "Steve Goes to College", "Blue's First Holiday", "100th Episode Celebration!".
 * 11) The show got a great reboot, called Blue's Clues & You!, which is an improvement over the last two seasons of the original show.
 * 12) The occasional celebrity appearances by the likes of They Might Be Giants, Toni Braxton, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, are quite clever and fun.
 * 13) The 25th anniversary of the franchise was great and it has a video where Steve talks to the older fans who grew up watching him, talking about how far he and the fans came.
 * 14) Blue's barks are cute. The fact that everyone can understand what she is saying is also very deep and touching.
 * 15) So many great and memorable episodes, such as “Snack Time” (the very first episode by the way), "Blue's Birthday", ”Blue’s Big Treasure Hunt”, ”Animal Behavior!”, "Blue's Big Pajama Party", "Blue's Big Musical Movie", "Blue's Big Costume Party", "Prehistoric Blue", "The Wrong Shirt", "Puppets", "Blue's Book Nook", "Blue's School", ”Joe’s First Day” (Joe's introduction), ”Joe Gets a Clue”, "Steve Goes to College" (a nice farewell from Steve), “100th Episode Celebration!”, “Blue’s First Holiday” and “Behind the Clues: 10 Years of Blue” (a nice documentary about the show).

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Some of the animated characters may look a bit like adults, but it's weird that they tend to have child voices.
 * 2) Seasons 5 and 6, although not terrible, are not as good as the previous seasons and caused the show to go downhill.
 * 3) *This includes the spin-off segment Mh:mixedtvshows:Blue's Room, which later became a full series after their show ended. It's not very good compared to the original show. It also nearly killed the Blue's Clues franchise, as it went dormant after its cancellation in 2007 until the announcement of Blue's Clues & You! eleven years later.
 * 4) * Joe, while a decent host, has his flaws:
 * 5) ** His shirt changes color in every episode without any explanation.
 * 6) ** He seems to be more goofy and immature than Steve most of the time, which may annoy some viewers.
 * 7) ** He feeds Blue and Magenta chocolate in "The Snack Chart", "The Scavenger Hunt", and "Soccer Practice". Chocolate contains what is called theobromine which can poison dogs (Though to be honest since Blue is a special form of dog she may be immune, but still.)
 * 8) *Several attempts to save time due to the Blue's Room segments were made.
 * 9) * Blue is shown going to the bathroom in "Morning Music", which is a bit inappropriate for the show's target demographic of preschoolers.
 * 10) ** However, this is probably because Joe and Blue want to teach kids how to use the bathroom.
 * 11) *The talking clues, introduced in late season 5. They can defeat the purpose of showing children (or even teens and adults) how to draw, but also can be annoying to listen to. Thankfully, this issue was fix by the final episode of the show.
 * 12) Quantity Over Quality: It ran for 10 years like Ed, Edd n Eddy and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. While not a bad run for a show like this, it jumped the shark a few times because of this.
 * 13) The show’s UK version wasn't as good as the original US version. Steve Burns and Donovan Patton were replaced with Kevin Duala (he was still good, even though they didn’t need to edit Steve or Joe out), made Sidetable Drawer sound like a young woman rather than a little girl and even cut out some episodes for no given reason.
 * 14) *They also never dubbed Blue's Big Musical Movie or Blue's Room, and obviously never dubbed "Joe's First Day", "Joe Gets a Clue" and "Steve Goes to College", due to Kevin never being replaced.
 * 15) **In addition, Kevin Duala didn't return on Blue's Clues & You! nor was it dubbed.
 * 16) Some bad episodes both during and before the Joe era, like "Blue's Sad Day" and "Love Day".

Trivia

 * Soo Kim, one of the members who worked on the show, later created Team Umizoomi.
 * Joe (Donovan Patton)’s stint on Blues Clues was initially criticized when he was introduced to the show in 2002, mostly due to bias from older audiences and changes to aspects of the show that weren't his fault. Kids who grew up watching Joe’s stint have no such bias, and as people started realizing that the changes made to the show were not his fault, they started to warm up to Joe. The reception of Joe is now largely positive.
 * The song "Up a Mountain and Over a Bridge" has been compared to a certain recurring music cue on Arthur, which premiered the same year as Blue's Clues did.
 * Season 5 was produced between late 2001 and 2002; it premiered on April 30, 2002, but took over a year to finish airing due to the gaps in-between episodes being very long.
 * To promote the episode Blue's Big Birthday in 1998, characters such as the Cat in the Hat and Morton from The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss showed up to wish Blue a happy birthday.
 * Joe (the host of Blue's Clues in Seasons 5 and 6) is a common victim of grounded videos.