Kollaboration Atlanta alums Jacob and Josh Fu, also known as The Fu, are no rookies when it comes to creating original songs and sketches for YouTube. However, the brothers are entering uncharted territory with their newly launched kids web series, The FuZees.
Similar to Sesame Streets, The FuZees is a weekly puppet web series that teaches children, ages 3-5, about social and behavioral issues through music, art and dance. Each episode is about 10 minutes long and features puppet avatars of the Fu brothers, who tackle the episode’s highlighted issue or theme with the help of a YouTube guest.
The pilot, which aired last Saturday, Nov. 8, featured Jen (From Head to Toe) as its first guest and focused on the issue of identity.
According to The Fu, the idea for the show stemmed from the brothers’ 2011 cover of “Man or Muppet,” an Academy Award-winning song from the musical film The Muppets. The Fu had built homemade puppets for the cover music video and since then had a kids puppet show on the back of their minds. But, they had no idea where to start.
“We had a desire and love for puppets in general but we had no background in what it would take to actually control and make the puppets,” Josh told New Media Rockstars (NMR). “We basically learned from scratch what we needed to do.”
It wasn’t until earlier this year that the brothers were able to find the right production team and puppeteers to help them bring their vision to life. They were also able to film the entire series at the YouTube Space L.A. for free, thanks to their 100,000 plus subscribers on their main channel, The Fu Music.
“We chose YouTube to be the place to put the show because we’ve been on it for a while,” said Josh. “We love the community aspect and the interactive aspect and we really wanted to take advantage of that.”
The Fu also said they decided to release The FuZees exclusively on YouTube because they wanted to create a show that was classy and solid in terms of music, set design, scripts and guests since there’s very few high-quality children’s content tailored for YouTube that is not taken from television.
“We’re really open to seeing what’s going to work with kids and we’ll definitely test stuff out,” Jacob told NMR. “We want to be able to introduce them to what the world of YouTube will look like as they get older.”
You can learn more about the making of The FuZees by watching the behind-the-scenes videos below!
The first season of The FuZees will have 16 episodes and will air every week on Saturday mornings. Follow the show on Facebook and twitter!