TVSquad

We have now reached our official limit on the special 'Days' that the government puts on the calendar. I mean 'Take a Shower Day' is a good one and 'Touch Someone Else Day' sounds both pleasant and creepy, but 'National Flashlight Day'? I really have to put my foot down on this one. Especially when it's being honored by a television show, for Pete's sake!

No, NBC is not airing a 3-hour primetime special on the day (though, it certainly would help their bottom line). Disney Channel is actually the culprit this time around. On December 21st, the official 'Flashlight Day', Disney will be airing three back-to-back-to-back episodes of its Playhouse Disney series Handy Manny that feature the newest character, Flicker. For those of you who don't watch Manny on a regular basis, Flicker is a tiny Spanish-speaking flashlight that will, I guess, allow Manny and his tools to work in dark places from now on.

By virtue of the fact that I have both 1) two young boys aged five and under and 2) a bevy of cable channels to choose from, I wind up watching a fair amount of children's programming. Some shows are better than others, and some versions of shows are better than others. For instance, I don't mind Jo-Jo's Circus but want to tear my ears from my head during Dora the Explorer. I also could spend an hour laying out my feelings that Steve was by far the superior host of Blue's Clues.

What I had never really considered, though, was the effectiveness of the logos for each show. Thankfully Jason Spector has done so. He's looked at factors like design, emotional effectiveness and accurate representation of the show itself when analyzing the logos. For the sake of fairness he's excluded ones for shows like The Wiggles that contain the characters since they're too straight-forward and can skew things like emotional connection. Go read the whole thing for yourself.