The Backyardigans

About

The Backyardigans is an Americans children's television program that aired on Nickelodeon from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s. The show featured five animal friends imagining places to explore in their backyard. The show featured a musical format, with each episode devoted to a specific genre of music. The music on the show began to trend on social media in the early 2020s, as those who grew up with the show developed newfound appreciation for its soundtrack.

History

The Backyardigans was created by Janice Burgess.^[1] The show debuted on October 11th, 2004 and ran for four, 20-episode seasons, with the final season wrapping on July 12th, 2013.^[2] The show followed five animal friends: Uniqua, Pablo, Tyrone, Tasha, and Austin. Each episode, the group would set off on an imaginary adventure in their backyard. Notably, the episodes all had unique musical numbers, which the friends would sing on their adventures (episode 1 shown below).

Online Presence

The Backyardigans developed a strong presence on social media over the course of nearly two decades. The series has over 180,000 likes on Facebook.^[3] While the show lacks an official presence on Twitter and Reddit, it is commonly discussed on both sites.^[4][5]

Castaways

Castaways is a song from The Backyardigans in which characters Pablo, Uniqua and Tyrone sing about being stranded at sea. Though initially released in 2005, the song saw an unexpected revival in the spring of 2021 after it grew popular on TikTok, causing it to top the US Spotify Viral 50 chart. While it's unclear what exactly sparked the renewed interest in the song in the spring of 2021, The Daily Dot suggested that it may have been an April 7th, 2021 TikTok video by user @swagsurfff hyping up the song. The video gained over 216,000 likes (shown below).

Why Aren't We Alive?

Why Aren't We Alive? is a memorable quote uttered by the character Pablo on The Backyardigans. Online, a screen capture of Pablo saying the line has been used as the punchline to jokes about death and exhausted trends. On October 25th, 2004, The Backyardigans' Halloween episode "It's Great to be a Ghost" premiered in the United States. In the episode, the characters Pablo, Uniqua and Tyrone are ghosts and Pablo (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen) asks, "Why aren't we alive?" 14 years later, on October 24th, 2018, Redditor ^[4] AWESOMEPRESTON used the image of Pablo asking the question as the punchline to the following joke: "parents: *refuse to vaccinate their kids* their kids." The post received more than 44,000 points (94% upvoted) and 470 comments (shown below).

Search Interest

External References