VIP Pets and Block Buttons Galore
On the world’s most irritating "influ-pets", and how to cast them into the void forever
We live in the age of cute. I foolishly missed the blockbuster cute-a-thon at Somerset House (or possibly subconsciously chose to miss it, because I see so much of this stuff in my everyday life). One of the twins is utterly obsessed with cute things: in her drawings, no animal is left un-please-faced. Anything that can have a cat-ear hoodie on it does, the ears have cute faces on them, everything that topologically can be a cupcake is a cupcake… Kawaii is the aesthetic of the age and there is no escape💖.
But what happens when there is too much cuteness? Where does the sparkle rainbow heart glitter princess magic go when every item has been turned into an ice-cream with sprinkles on it? For those of you at the back shouting 👏GABBY’S👏DOLL👏HOUSE👏 – I hear you, but there’s actually some pretty solid writing underpinning Gabby and her cats. Plus, it teaches a shedload of pattern recognition stuff which is actually going to be really helpful in the coding-filled job market of the 2040s. So we will discuss the Gabster and her cathouse (for that is what it is, when you think about it) another time.
Block Rocking Beats
Instead, buckle up my friends, for today we venture back into the world of…. IMC Toys. Last week, we talked about Cry Babies: Magic Tears, a show so bad it led to this household’s first use of the Netflix block button.
If you haven’t discovered the joys of the Netflix block button yet, welcome. The full instructions are here but once you’re in to the “settings” bit on your TV it’s pretty self-explanatory. It's brilliant, because once something’s blocked, it never appears in the choosing carousel – so you can just say that it’s gone as part of the natural Netflix cycle, which giveth and taketh away various series of Paw Patrol (and RuPaul’s Drag Race for the grown-ups, boo). I very occasionally hear the odd passing lament for CB:MT… but I have never had to watch it again.
Tom, who edits this newsletter (as well as writing awesome books), has gone above and beyond his remit and spotted this excellent advisory Netflix block list on BlueSky. People have also mentioned Dinotrux and Blippi as worthy recipients of the parental banhammer, so I pass that on without having seen them myself firsthand in the spirit of helpfulness.
God, I love a block button. Did you know Spotify has one too? But (this is crazy) you can’t go back and see who you’ve blocked or set your preferences upfront, you just have to do it on the fly. So if (e.g.) Lily Allen or George Ezra come on, click on the three dots above the song, choose “View artist,” click the three dots again, and click “Don’t play this artist”. Voila, you never have to listen to either of them ever again. Bliss. On Twitter, the “mute” button is better than “block” because you can selectively unmute the annoying person if they’re in the middle of an interesting conversation, AND they can’t see they’re blocked, thus minimising drama all round.
B*tch(es), Please
Alright Frances, I hear you say, if you’re so good with the block button how did you end up watching the entirety of another IMC Toys show? And that is a very valid question. Streaming platforms are fickle things. Once I'd deployed the Netflix block button, I thought I was safe, but it turns out we still had Amazon Prime. This was a hangover from the newborn “oh I didn’t know babies needed this essential thing, how can a new one arrive later today” era, so I went to check out the streaming service that is also part of Bezos’ all-day delivery empire. Big mistake!!! In the three seconds it took to load the landing page, a tiny voice piped up: “mummy, what's that cute puppy thing?”
By the time I'd clicked on VIP Pets, it was too late.
We are the VIP Pets! The coolest pets with a passion for hair! We are best friends and together we will discover lots of beautiful hairstyles and go on exciting adventures!
Imagine these mind-numbing words delivered at breakneck speed. If the voice acting in Cry Babies: Magic Tears sounds like the world's most vapid Valley girls on valium, VIP Pets features the voice talents of some women who went to the doctor in the 1960s and said they needed to lose a bit of weight and do the housework faster. These dogs (and, in later series, cats) cannot talk fast enough… yet they have nothing to say.
Taylor, Gwen, Juliet, Nyla, Tiffany, Lilith, Alexia and Lady Gigi (yes of course I had to Google their names) are coiffured, doe-eyed, over-accessorised pooches who frequent Fabio & Fabia's hair salon. Fabio is a walking stereotype of a hairdresser, and Fabia is his niece. The dogs communicate by smartphone, aim to become influ-pets (why not “petfluencers” kjdkdjsdkjasdk) and the screen is liberally peppered with emojis, reaction stickers and the visual clutter beloved of tween girls.
I couldn’t tell you which dog is which, but there's definitely a hippy yoga one, a sporty one, and one who likes “trap music.” Every episode involves a lengthy transformation sequence where a shallow, image-obsessed dog goes down a helter-skelter slide to have yet more make-up, hair dye and glittery accessories heaped upon her.
Swiftian, Sort Of
The Kennel Club is worried about health issues affecting flat-nosed dogs, but it doesn’t specifically mention excessive use of hair straighteners and glitter eyeshadow. I'm worried about the future of the human race, because if I was an alien who saw VIP Pets from space, I would not hesitate for one nanosecond before nuking this whole planet to kingdom come.
Are there any redeeming features? Well, it’s better than Cry Babies, because you can watch it as a sort of Hogarthian satire of influencer culture. The pups sometimes work through some friendship squabbles, usually with some listening and saying sorry, which is good to learn about.
There’s also an argument to be made along the same lines as the last three million Taylor Swift think pieces: that TS’s music is incredibly relatable for women and girls, her concerts bring people together with friendship bracelets etc., and it doesn’t really matter what men think, because it’s not aimed at them. In the same way, the animals’ aim to become influ-pets, master skateboarding or learn to paint is not aimed at impressing some dog. It’s purely for their own amusement. But “their own amusement” is just…. more makeovers.
This is longer than a candy-coloured, triple-plait, VIP Pet music festival special hair extension now – but with the summer holidays approaching, we should talk about what to watch, not just things to avoid… so next week we’ll return to more paw-sitive territory.
You either aren’t real, or you’ve been paid to promote something that you pretend to contend with. You actually embody everything I hate about The VIP Pets show.