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There are plenty of parents who don’t allow tv or cartoons to pollute their children’s minds. I have many friends who’ve thrown out their tvs. We’re not those parents.

The power of a good episode of Dora the Explorer has long been used in our household to facilitate showering, vacuuming, and other tasks impossible to do with twin toddler boys.

But a few months ago the boys came to a startling realization. Dora is a girl. Specifically, they realized, she has no penis.

Their mom and I had long been similarly frustrated with the purple and pink Dora stuffs hocked in every toy and clothing isle in every department store. They boys loved the show, but the girl was a girl!

Then came the Dora spinoff, Go Diego Go, featuring Dora’s adventurous little cousin. Not only is Diego a boy (!!!), but everything about the show is custom-made for the little energy balls I call kids.

Instead of Dora’s purple backpack, Diego has a orange shoulder bag - his Rescue Pack - who raps to a salsa beat and can turn into rocket-boards, para-sails, and kayaks to help D save exotic animals in the jungle. Instead of a couple of pansy friends and a room with his parents (like Dora), Diego has a pet jaguar and a fat tree house in the rain forest. And his bag raps!

From the website:

Each episode has four primary goals:

• To discover scientifically accurate facts about an animal

• To recognize the similarities between living things—such as the need for air, food, and water for survival

• To reveal important characteristics about an animal, such as the connection between an animal’s physical characteristics and how it lives in its environment

• Diego and the viewer use resources and scientific methods to discover and document information about the featured animal

The show is too new to have much to offer for toys and shirts for the kids, but you can bet I’ll be first in line to grab a pair of Spotting Scopes or Diego-branded all-weather sleeping bags.

Bottom line: great move by Nick Jr. to cater to the 3-7 male demographic and introduce crazy animals and the scientific method to boot. Plus it’s never a bad idea to make the parents happy in the process (I’d rather watch a white water rapids tree frog rescue than a jolly little blueberry hunt any day).