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| Children aged three to seven years should get a kick out of a brand new album called The Kartoon Kids, an entire album presented in a modern pop style but containing only kid-friendly material presented by a host of cartoon characters that children will readily identify with. They'll meet the supercool James Blonde, Poopey Zoo the cuddly dog, skateboarder-snowboarder Tommy Magoo,brainer Cindy Loo, Piggy the Duck and of course Kimmy The Squeezetoy Girl. And then they'll get to sing some cool easy-to-remember ditties along with the cast. The Kartoon Kids are the brainchild of Toronto pop singer Kim "Squeezetoy Girl" Esty. It all came about after Esty was invited to sing on the debut album of the Boomtang Boys. Their dog had been playing with a squeezetoy in the studio, which inspired the dance-pop song Squeezetoy, on which Esty sung lead in a cartoony voice. While the songwas intended for an adult audience and went to No. 1 in Canada, Esty began receiving tons of e-mails from kids wanting to learn more about her character. Esty established her own recording studio, appropriately called Squeezetoy, and got a web designer to draw a cartoon character of herself. Hence the Squeezetoy Girl was born. Esty then got an idea for an Archie gang-style group, which she dubbed The Kartoon Kids. She provides the fun, goofy and bubblegumish voices for the characters. "These kids are about education, discovering heir individual talents, becoming who they want to be and knowing that can be achieved with hard work and perseverance," she explains. She also notes children don't have a whole lot of musical options. They tend to jump from Raffi to Britney Spears as well as from Sharon, Lois & Bram to N' Sync because there's very little in between. She now offers a most worthy alternative. Among the songs that will probably get the most attention are: Kartoon Kids, a very commercial, pop-dance song with a nice groove and a bit of a rap delivery; The Kitten Song, featuring a nice, slow light rock groove with extremely catchy meow, meow, meow chorus; Travel the World, a pretty decent pop-dance number with a bit of kick and, believe it or not, backed by accordion music; Silly Dance, a Wipe Out-inspired rock'n roll surf song that's tonnes of fun and quite danceable; My Dad's Friend Yodels, a slow pop-polka number featuring the character of Mr. Siggy, a Swedish-sounding man who yodels faster and faster as the song speeds up; Auntie Margie, a fun girl-pop ballad featuring a British character who works in a bakery; Poopey Zoo, a more typical children's song performed in girl pop-band style and featuring nice guitar work. Other cuts include Meet The Kartoon Kids, Piggy the Duck, U.F.O. (featuring Marty the Martian, who sounds a lot like The Chipmunks) and My Uncle Sells Beer Nuts. This whole album is actually quite good and would definitely get played a lot. The only warning I should give to parents is that they should program the CD player to skip over the song about the yodeling man since that could get a bit annoying after the 12th or 15th time. |