![]() The episodes are shockingly long, at nearly 30 minutes each, and overstuffed with stimuli and information and social-emotional lessons that may be digestible for older children but could max out younger developing brains. Although I was entertained, I worried there may not be enough educational research or formative evaluation to back up some of the show’s composition. Waffles + Mochi has a very shiny shell but a slippery yolk. Obama and a functionary bee puppet who sneers at “Falafel and Mocha” like they’re a couple of rubes. Konner produced Comedy Central’s Drunk History and Another Period, which explains some of this series’ sophisticated alt-comedy pedigree, including the seemingly improvised banter between the cool-headed Mrs. ![]() Thormahlen, a former actress, has an academic background in education and initially developed a version of this series back in 2006 under a different title. If this sounds jam-packed, well, that’s because it is.Ĭreators Erika Thormahlen and Jeremy Konner come from disparate worlds. The show follows a loose structure, squeezing in two or three of these brief docu vignettes per episode while sprinkling in original song sequences, animated interstitials, dubbed interviews with children from all over the world and more. (Like Knight Rider‘s KITT, Magicart is kind of a salty bish.) The two puppets wander the salt ponds of Peru, attend kimchi festivals in South Korea and make pasta with Italian legends. He leads them in a call-and-response singalong that indicates Waffles + Mochi’s potential to become a new classic of children’s television.Įach episode, Waffles and Mochi find themselves in a work predicament, and soon they’re jetting off in their AI-manned magical shopping cart to traverse the globe to learn more about a single food, such as pickles or corn. was intrinsically linked to enslavement, gently alluding to the pain of the Middle Passage with warmth and frankness appropriate for a young audience. Twitty doesn’t shy away from talking to the childlike puppets about how rice cultivation in the U.S. I shed a few tears during the segment where Waffles and Mochi meet The Cooking Gene author Michael Twitty, a researcher of African and American foodways who studies his own family legacy through gastronomic history. It’s a clever but also resonant concept that takes him to satirized “food genealogists” as well as real-life culinary historians. The best episode of the season, themed around rice, features Mochi on a journey to learn more about his family heritage - in this case, finding out how his strawberry ice cream ancestors joined up with his Japanese mochi forebearers to create him. Michelle Zamora’s voicework and puppeteering render Waffles sweetly reactive, even if the character’s surfer dudette vocal fry doesn’t always jibe with her kawaii design. The DIY aesthetics of the miniatures, from the fabricators at animation studio Ancient Order of the Wooden Skull, make me want to live in this bright, pastel doll house world. Mochi’s plush sheen makes him look both huggable and delectable. The art direction team uses a mixed media approach to world-building, utilizing practical effects, stop-motion animation, a full cast of puppets and toy miniatures for set exteriors that create a wonderfully haptic and sentimental diegetic space that evokes the opening moments of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Waffles + Mochi is a feat of sensoaesthetics from the first moments of the pilot, when we’re introduced to our fabric friends trying to cook ice cubes in their igloo. You can imagine some other former first ladies casually squashing little Mochi beneath their stilettos. ![]() Michelle Obama, whose Higher Ground Productions produces the series for Netflix, plays their kind but dubious boss who often sets them off on ingredient-acquiring adventures. Don’t think about it too hard or you might accidentally liquefy your brain.) Waffles’ companion is a bite-sized pink velvet mochi ice cream confection who meeps and murmurs and generally plays straight-man to his exuberant buddy. (Her mother was a yeti and her father was a frozen waffle. Our chattier hero is Waffles, a fuzzy white-and-periwinkle woolen puppet with black button eyes, crispy waffle ears and just two adorable molars lining her mouth. In the luminous children’s food literacy comedy Waffles + Mochi, we follow two aspiring chefs as they venture from their homeland, a frozen food tundra where ice is on the menu each meal, to a sunny city where they soon get entry level jobs at a community-minded grocery store.
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