Bentkey Is Making Childhood Great Again
By Caroline Downey
“Hey, it’s Franklin! Coming over to play,” went the familiar tune of the 1997 Nelvana children’s series about a young turtle who, with his best friend Bear and other animal pals, navigated life’s challenges, with the counsel of an adult always close by.
Growing up, I took for granted the wholesome nature of my favorite cartoons. Between Madeline, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Bob the Builder, most children’s programming before the turn of the century left parents confident that the shows would nurture their kids in their absence. Parents today do not have that assurance. As of about 15 years ago, they cannot assume that the content they put in front of their kids will protect their innocence, let alone stimulate mental and emotional growth.
Bentkey, a subscription video service of the Daily Wire, is restoring families’ trust. Having celebrated its one-year anniversary on Wednesday, Bentkey has so far succeeded beyond its founders’ wildest imaginations. And imagination is what it has gifted today’s kids, a neglected generation that desperately deserves an injection of goodness and fun.
David Coleman, the Executive Vice President of Content Acquisition for the Daily Wire, came to the company with a wealth of knowledge in entertainment. Starting in 1993 as a prop master for a small regional musical theater in his home state of Kentucky, Coleman has worked on both the production and acquisition sides of the business. His seven years of animation experience include a Planet of the Apes animated attraction for a theme park in Malaysia, a Warner Brothers theme park in Abu Dhabi, and a Chris Stapleton LEGO music video he produced and directed.
“All of those things prepare you for a job like this because you can evaluate great content,” he told The Conservateur.
While the Daily Wire is expressly political, Bentkey is not. There is a refreshing lack of hot-button topics and virtue signaling one way or another.
“The agenda is really just about core values that I think 10 years ago we all agreed were universal: friendship, honesty, passion, loyalty, courage, responsibility, commitment,” Coleman said. “Those are the things we really wanted to show kids in a fun way.”
Of all the consumer groups in America, children are perhaps the choosiest. For them, the product must be compelling, or they’ll lose interest. Sesame Street founder Joan Ganz Cooney had Harvard psychologist Gerald Lesser test the show’s engagement by using a “distractor” — a small screen with flashing slides set up by the TV. Children would look at the screen when they got bored of a segment. Producers either scrapped or rewrote those segments.
“As a parent, I can tell you,” Coleman said. “You can’t make kids watch shows they don’t want to watch.”
A year since inception, Bentkey has an impressive repertoire of popular shows with diverse styles. Not only are they engaging, but they bring children’s entertainment back to better days.
Bentkey’s Ernest and Celestine reminds the Europhilic cartoon-lover of the British 2022 series, Angelina Ballerina, with its watercolor design and quaint village vignettes. With a quirky but pleasant comic book vibe, Billy the Cowboy Hamster paints the spectrum of human emotions in its spunky characters’ countenances, showing what Cartoon Network could be if stepped away from the weird for a moment. Bentkey’s Pirata & Capitano is reminiscent of Nickelodeon’s The Backyardigans and Disney’s Little Einsteins with its spirit of maritime exploration.
Ryan and Katy Chase, creators of Bentkey’s A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay, used to show their own children classics such as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and The Andy Griffith Show to avoid problematic themes in contemporary content. During the golden age of TV up until the 1980s, there was “almost zero need for a hand on the mute button,” Ryan told The Conservateur.
That later changed. But modern parents don’t have the time to pre-screen what their kids watch, and it’s tiresome to keep recycling old shows from a different era.
“We kind of went off the rails at some point in the entertainment world,” Ryan said. “We were like, ‘What can we show our kids?’ You start scrambling for Gilligan’s Island DVDs. We’re like, ‘We should make something because there’s a lot more folks that feel the same way.’”
After many years in Los Angeles teaching improv to kids, the Chases started A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay with Bentkey, focusing on social-emotional teaching.
Mabel, played by Katy, “models how to connect and speak to other people,” she said.
“She doesn’t talk down to them, she certainly isn’t sassy with anybody, she responds to her pal Jasper the dog when he’s feeling emotionally dysregulated,” Katy said. “She’s modeling how a parent might go about speaking to a child.”
With a kind disposition, Mabel uses advanced vocabulary words, such as “contentment,” to convey nuanced emotions and virtues. As a sister to a cartoon-loving autistic boy and a former part-time babysitter myself, I find the market to be saturated with shows that belittle children’s intelligence. A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay challenges kids to think harder and dream bigger.
“It just has an old-fashioned feel, and celebrates timeless classic virtues and lessons and that’s it,” Ryan said. “It stays in its lane. There isn’t anything else we’re trying to do. It’s as wholesome and simple as that.”
Bentkey caters to boys and girls, as well as the whole family. Nick and Christina Caster, creators of the music-centric Gus Plus Us, wanted to make a show that the whole family could enjoy. The concept itself was born out of their family.
Nick’s “been doing voices since I’ve known him…entertaining his family, he loves to make people laugh,” Christina told The Conservateur. “Sometimes it’s his only goal.”
Over the years, Nick refined Gus’s voice, a silly and lovable peanut buttery rasp. It was just for fun, until Nick found a big blue puppet online that matched the inquisitive happy-go-lucky character he’d been musing. From there, he created Karrot, Gus’s orange amorphous fuzz ball sidekick who speaks only gibberish. Christina’s human character, a guide to Gus and Karrot, made it a perfect trio.
The production of the show became a larger family affair. Nick is the main puppeteer for Gus and Christina is the lead singer. Beyond them, Nick’s brother is a writer in the show, Christina’s sister sings harmonies with her, and Christina’s brother is the right arm of Gus. Nick and Christina’s daughter wrote the intro of the first episode of Season 1 at eight years old.
The creators were intent that the show “couldn’t talk down to the child,” Nick said. “It had to respect the child’s mind.”
What better way to honor children’s unique power than to feature them in the show? Every episode ends with a music video that kids can star in. About 200 kids participated in Season 2, the pair said. Many kids said their favorite part was the crew, which fosters a supportive and creative atmosphere.
“They just love the team we have and that touched us,” Christina said. “The whole show from top to bottom is just bringing joy to these families.”
While working at the Babylon Bee on conservative satire, ex-Veggie Tales writers Eric Branscum and Ethan Nicolle thought their children’s animation chapter was behind them. So they were shocked when Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing enlisted them to start his kids content division, later announced as Bentkey. Since then, “It’s been a whirlwind,” Branscum said.
“We really hit the ground running,” he added. “That’s an understatement. Once the trigger was pulled, we were off to the races.”
Theirs and Bentkey’s flagship show, Chip Chilla, focuses on a homeschooling family that has a blast doing it. The writers room usually consists of talking about their parenting experiences, good and bad. To positively portray homeschooling, which still carries an unfair taboo in today’s culture, is a risk, but many existing children’s shows won’t even go so far as to be pro-family. Branscum and Nicolle are proud that the show promotes family, while making it authentic and relatable to kids.
Chip Chilla notably features a strong, knowledgeable father who loves history and learning and sharing those passions with his kids.
“We’ve introduced kids who watch the show to a lot of really great classical literature and historical stories that are really cool,” Branscum told The Conservateur. “We’re not trying to teach them that, we’re just trying to introduce them.”
For parents across the country, Bentkey provides comforting alternatives and peace of mind. While Sesame Street endorses gender ideology for kids, Gus Plus Us is a puppet-based show that empowers kids to show their talents while being comfortable in their own skin. While the new Paw Patrol spinoff features a nonbinary character, Pirata & Capitano inspires youthful adventure without the woke baggage.
Many old cartoons are beloved for a reason. But parents shouldn’t have to dive through the archives to give their kids something non-toxic to consume.
Branscum and Nicolle have seen firsthand that “a lot of people making cartoons either are trying to influence their children or they’re trying to see what they can get away with theme-wise.”
“There’s a large amount of them that actually resent making kids’ content.”
Parents everywhere can rest assured about Bentkey’s creators. They love children’s programming, and they love their families.
Caroline Downey is the editor in chief of The Conservateur and a staff writer at National Review. She can be found on Twitter @carolinedowney_.