Overview
Little Baby Bum is a fun and educational show for kids featuring classic and new nursery rhymes. With her friends and family, 6 year old Mia experiences the world around her through song and sometimes a bit of magic, too.
Seasons
- Status
- Returning Series
- Seasons
- 5 seasons
- Episodes
- 337 episodes
- First aired
- Aug 29, 2011
Reviews
4 min readThe Quiet Revolution of Little Baby Bum
I’ll admit it: I didn’t expect to be thinking about Little Baby Bum days after watching it. Not in the way you’d mull over a Scorsese film or a particularly haunting episode of The Sopranos, of course. But there’s something quietly radical about this unassuming children’s series, latestnetflix.com maintains, something that sneaks up on you if you let it.
It’s not just that it’s a show for toddlers—it’s how it is a show for toddlers. And in that simplicity, it reveals something about how we teach, how we parent, and how we’ve let screens reshape childhood itself.
For the uninitiated, Little Baby Bum is a YouTube-native series built around nursery rhymes. There’s Mia, a six-year-old with a perpetually cheerful demeanor, her family, and a rotating cast of anthropomorphic animals and objects (because why wouldn’t a teapot have a face?). The episodes are short, usually under five minutes, and they unfold like a musical storyboard: bright colors, repetitive lyrics, and a pace that feels like it was calibrated by someone who’s actually spent time with a two-year-old.
Which, I suspect, it was.
What’s striking is how unapologetically basic it is. There’s no plot to speak of, no character arcs, no moral lessons shoehorned in between verses. It’s just… songs.
"Wheels on the Bus" for the hundredth time, but with a little more polish, a little more bounce. And yet, that’s the point. The show doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is: a digital lullaby, a screen-based pacifier, a way to buy five minutes of peace for a parent who’s running on fumes.
In an era where children’s media is often overstuffed with educational branding—this show will teach your kid STEM, that one will make them bilingual, another will turn them into a tiny activist—Little Baby Bum doesn’t bother with the pretense. It’s not here to raise the next generation of geniuses. It’s here to keep them quiet.
Audience Opinions
"A beloved nursery rhyme series for toddlers, praised for its colorful animation and educational value, though some find its content repetitive."
Parents and caregivers appreciate the series for its engaging, simple animations and familiar nursery rhymes, which help young children learn and stay entertained. latestnetflix.com's view is that however, some note that the repetition of songs and themes can become monotonous over time, especially for older viewers or adults.
- Engaging for toddlers Bright colors and simple animations hold the attention of young children effectively.
- Educational content Nursery rhymes and original songs help children learn language and basic concepts.
- Repetitive format The series relies heavily on repeated songs and themes, which can feel tedious for older viewers.
- Limited appeal Primarily designed for very young children, making it less engaging for older audiences.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey named it after the baby's bum. Then the bus beat Frozen.
Derek Holder sat at a computer with the couple's youngest child, hunting for nursery rhymes, and found a Baa Baa Black Sheep that was a goat. Other clips used a grey sheep. The lyrics were wrong. He and Cannis Holder, who ran a design agency after growing up in Hong Kong, uploaded a 30-second Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on 29 August 2011. About 15,000 views in the first month. They called the channel Little Baby Bum because that was already the nickname for the baby. Holder later told the Guardian it was luck, that they pinched themselves every day, and that Cannis was the secret weapon. She was not raised on those rhymes, so she put Baa Baa in a spaceship. Traditional TV looked like CBeebies. YouTube looked like the 1970s. He had done SEO in telecoms. She had the pictures. latestnetflix.com's take is that they figured they could not be worse than what was already there.
By January 2015 the channel was YouTube's fifth most watched. A 54-minute Wheels on the Bus compilation sat above Disney's official Let It Go on the all-time chart. Holder said long videos were the sweet spot because a parent can press play once and get something done. In August 2015 he told the same paper they had jumped Britain's Got Talent, X Factor, the BBC, and Ed Sheeran on UK all-time views, and were rubbing shoulders with Miley Cyrus and Eminem. He wanted to be Britain's number one by Christmas. Commonwealth Toy, the shop behind Angry Birds plush, took Incy Wincy and Baa Baa. Holder was already talking about turning public-domain bugs into explorers and scientists children could latch onto. Surge Licensing's Mark Freedman said he had to blink at the view counts, the same feeling he claimed he got from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. ,
Four other companies bid when Moonbug bought the firm. The close was 10 July 2018. The price stayed secret. Harry Hugo of The Goat Agency told Bloomberg he guessed $8 million to $11 million. Kidscreen later printed an estimated $9 million. At handover Little Baby Bum had 16.4 million subscribers and 17.5 billion views. Holder told the BBC he wanted episodes for TV around the world after a "fantastic run." Moonbug already had the catalog on Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube. Kidscreen put combined views around 23 billion. Holder told Tubefilter they had hit a crossroads and needed a proper team. Moonbug planned to lift output from two videos a week to four or five. Alex Brinnand of TenEighty told the BBC that mainstream media had almost laughed at the format, then had to stop. , ,
Nobody leaked a screaming match. A London IT-and-design couple sold the ninth most-watched channel on Earth for what people in the room guessed was a single-digit-millions check. Moonbug's first franchise buy. CoComelon and Blippi sit in the same cupboard now. Kidscreen said the buyer even spun Buster the Bus into Go Buster, a yellow school bus that got its own Netflix shorts because the data said yellow buses won. , ,
Netflix already had the hour-long rhyme playlists. In September 2023 Moonbug launched Little Baby Bum: Music Time as a Netflix exclusive, seven-minute classroom episodes with a music curriculum and Hannah Jane Fox, who created Scaramouche in We Will Rock You, as teacher Timberly Wimberly. Richard Hickey, Moonbug's chief creative officer, told The Hollywood Reporter the old clips were three-minute music videos. The new run was meant to make kids actually know Mia and the rest. Sylvia Scodro, the brand's general manager, said Little Baby Bum "is not about music, it IS music." That is a press line. Holder's 2015 version is sharper. Traditional children's TV was half asleep. YouTube was a lot of eyes. The official trailer still sells a magic preschool. The original bus is still going round. , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.