Artzooka vs Art Attack

Early last year, Artzooka! came to be on Nickelodeon.  Miro and Kenji love it!  It's all about RecycleArt (or JunkArt or ScrapArt, if you're as old as I am), and you know how my boys are so into that sort of thing.

Artzooka!, hosted by the very amiable Jeremie Saunders, is a fun demo show that teaches kids how to make a flying dragon out of a discarded cardboard, rubber bands, and duct tape.

Or pretty painted paperclip holders out of old juice boxes.  And... how to make home movies.  Uh-huh.  Claymation.  That is soooo my boys!

So, ok... they have set the alarm clock to cause a racket whenever it's time for Artzooka!  But all throughout this hyped loyalty, Jing and I can't help but reminisce the good ol' days of Art Attack.

For those in-the-know (and of-age), Art Attack was a Disney show featuring the first and original RecycleArt for kids.  It enjoyed gargantuan popularity sometime 2005 --our boys were still babies then.

Hosted by the more animated and rich-in-personality (in my husband and my humble opinion), Neil Buchanan, Art Attack's projects included frame-making out of paper plates, how-to-draw sessions using a variety of media, making fancy head dresses and fantasy thrones out of cardboard, newspaper, paint, and a whole lot of other scraps.

Same format, same magical output.  Both shows prove to be helpful when us parents are clawing and grasping for indoor family projects over the weekend.

What puts Art Attack a notch higher, though, is its Art Attack Top Shot segment.  Here is where Neil would go outdoors --into a huge field or vacant lot-- armed with laundry, empty plastic containers,  forest twigs and what-nots.  To create a majestic collage of ...of... anything!

Artzooka does this, too, on a smaller, table-top scale.  But Art Attack pushes production value with its version.  Very impressive, massive, crop circle-crazy scale!

*sigh*

Art Attack is all in the past now.  So thank goodness Artzooka took the reigns of kiddie creativity from there.  And, true that Jeremie does have that hip-dude connection with kids these days.

For those who are wondering, by the way  --Art Attack ended its victorious TV time when the scrappy genius, Neil Buchanan, decided to trade his paint brush for grungy gigs with a Les Paul electric guitar.
Who's the hip dude now?  LOL!