Bluey, an Australian cartoon about a family of cattle dogs, has become a global smash hit, attracting tourists to a theme park in its home town of Brisbane.REMCO JANSEN/Supplied
Australia’s most famous dog lives in a converted warehouse next to a park on the banks of the Brisbane River.
Sun-bleached and surrounded by concrete, the outside of Bluey’s World is less than impressive. But once through the entrance, where staff hand out pointy, brightly-coloured dog ears to guests of all ages, the interior is instantly recognizable as the home of a family of cartoon canines that have taken the world by storm.
Premiering in 2018, Bluey is Australia’s biggest cultural export since Steve Irwin. It was the most watched show in the United States last year, and the biggest show in the history of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which co-produced it with the commercial arm of the BBC.
Bluey’s World, an “immersive experience” a few kilometres from Brisbane-based Ludo Studios, creators of the cartoon, is just one tiny part of an estimated US$2-billion brand empire.
Unlike other hit shows for small children – such as Teletubbies, CoComelon and the Minecraft Movie – which can leave parents baffled and slightly concerned about the tastes of their offspring, Bluey has proven as popular with adults as its target audience.
Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical starts off a little flat, but leaves both parents and kids enthralled in the end
Created by Australian writer-director Joe Brumm, the cartoon follows a family of cattle dogs – parents Bandit and Chilli and daughters Bluey and Bingo – based on Mr. Brumm’s own pets, and his extensive reading of books on child psychology, particularly how children play and learn to co-operate.
“For the real core of the episode, it will often be from reading books and thinking about, ‘Oh, that’s what was going on in that game or that little conflict,’” the publicity-shy Mr. Brumm told Australia’s Saturday Paper in 2020. “Usually all the little conflicts or emotional stuff that’s going on is just from watching my kids.”
This can include weighty themes and topics that may go over smaller children’s heads – such as the challenges of co-parenting, death and fertility problems – but are reflective of the world they live in and issues they might have to deal with in the future.
At 14 and 12, Canadian Kulvir Gill’s sons are now too old for Bluey, but he still watches episodes by himself when he is travelling for work.
“It connects me to the wholesome purity of being a father and allows me to relive many small memories of my boys when younger, and live gratuitously through the far more creative and thoughtful parenting of Bandit and Chilli,” he said . “My wife thinks I’m nuts crying on a plane alone to a seven-minute cartoon about dogs.”
Bluey is the most successful show in the history of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and a top hit in the U.S. last year.REMCO JANSEN/Supplied
Bluey can help provide a vocabulary for adults to talk with children about how they’re feeling, said Kait Neufeld, an inclusive education teacher at a middle school in Victoria, B.C. After returning from a trip visiting family in Brisbane – where her children revelled being in Bluey’s home environment, replete with pesky magpies – Ms. Neufeld said she put up some Bluey-related photos on the walls of her classroom and discovered some of her students were fellow fans of the show.
“I have a lot of students that I support academically, but also many that I support with self-regulation skills,” she said. They now do a daily “Bluey check-in,” where “we each describe our emotional state in the moment as a Bluey character.”
Funding for Canadian scripted shows, children’s TV facing steep decline, report says
“I often get a lot of ‘Muffin when she skipped her nap,’ but sometimes it’s ‘Bingo with the onesie’ or ‘Pom Pom the tiny dog trying to jump,’ and so the character they choose sometimes is more revealing than many other check-ins,” she said.
There was undisguised panic from many parents last year when Ludo Studios unexpectedly released a special 28-minute episode called “The Sign.” Focused on the family moving house for Bandit’s work, and the sense of disruption and loss this engenders in the children, it seemed to serve as an ending to the show, and many fans took it as a finale.
While it has been followed up by a bonus episode suitably titled “Surprise!”, and a series of one-to-three minute shorts, no new mainline episodes of Bluey have been released since April, 2024. Mr. Brumm has said his focus is entirely on a Bluey movie, which is expected to hit theatres in 2027.
Bluey’s World is an immersive experience dedicated to Australia’s most famous cartoon dog, in Brisbane, Queensland.The Globe and Mail
Bluey is everywhere in Brisbane, and local tourism officials have said they expect it to contribute upwards of $16-million to the local economy this year. When U.S. President Donald Trump threatened 100-per-cent tariffs on foreign-made films earlier this month, Australian ambassador to the U.S. Kevin Rudd denounced the measure as a “tax on Bluey.”
Outside of Australia, Bluey is mainly distributed by Disney, which also has a hand in an endless stream of merchandising, encompassing everything from books and stuffed toys to a child-sized shopping cart replete with the ingredients for “fairy bread,” an Australian snack consisting of white bread covered in ice cream sprinkles.
Provided Mr. Brumm returns to writing the show, industry analysts have predicted Bluey could one day be as valuable as the current queen of cartoon animals, Peppa Pig, the rights for which sold to Hasbro in 2019 for US$4-billion.
Even if he doesn’t, Bluey may have significant staying power.
Canadian Sarah Avila started watching the show when her daughter was two. After her husband’s untimely passing, Bluey has provided comfort for both of them, and a connection to her daughter’s father.
“Any time my daughter doesn’t feel well, we always turn Bluey on since her daddy isn’t with us anymore,” Ms. Avila said. “My favourite Bluey episode – and I cry every time – is ‘Sleepytime,’ because as Mum says to Bingo: ‘Remember, I’ll always be here for you, even if you can’t see me, because I love you.’”
