Latest news with #TheWiggles
7NEWS
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- 7NEWS
The Wiggles launch Backseat Brainiacs to combat children screen time on road trips
Road trips with children can be tough at the best of times, with parents usually resorting to screen time to occupy restless kids on the road. However, Australian parents have revealed their children now spend a staggering amount of their time on tablets and smartphones, prompting children's music group The Wiggles to push for change. 'We live in a digital world,' mum and red Wiggle, Caterina Mete, told 7NEWS. 'So children need to be familiar with that, but it shouldn't be everything.' Mete said she didn't know what to anticipate when it came to navigating screen time as a new mum after giving birth to her twin girls, Dolly and Gigi, in 2024. 'I didn't know what to expect,' she said. 'I know it can help a lot for parents to have a screen. 'Especially if they need to have a shower. I know that helps me. 'But I think also just making sure that you monitor it, and it's a healthy amount, and it is not overdone because children love to play.' Most Australian children spend more time on screens than is recommended, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Estimates from primary research suggest only 17–23 per cent of preschoolers and 15 per cent of five-to-12-year-olds meet screen-time guidelines. In an attempt to curb the screen time trend, The Wiggles has partnered with car rental company Thrifty to launch Backseat Brainiacs, a screen-free car game aimed at reducing the amount of screen time for kids on road trips. 'There's a staggering amount of screen time used in cars, and it's nice if we can just get away from that a little bit and just look at the beauty of nature,' Mete said. '(Backseat Brainiacs) makes car rides more engaging for the children in an interactive and fun family way. 'Children have got the best imaginations. They come up with such wonderful things, and being able to do that in a car ride is pretty special, I think.' The Wiggles activity pack includes memory card matching games, a road trip scavenger hunt, and the listen-along Backseat Brainiacs audio quiz read out by The Wiggles. 'There's a scavenger hunt where children can tick off things they've seen on the car ride,' Mete said. 'It might be, you know, a kangaroo, and they can tick that off, and it keeps them looking out the window and looking at the Australian landscape and beautiful of always relying on screens.' Mete said her favourite road trip game as a kid was 'I spy'. 'It's still a great game for children. You know, it's a game that will last forever.' Damien Shaw, Vice President at Thrifty Asia Pacific, said they wanted to create something that turns the car ride into a shared experience for the whole family. 'As a parent, I know how tough it can be to keep children engaged on long drives,' he said. 'With Backseat Brainiacs, we wanted to offer something that goes beyond the usual screens and snacks.' Backseat Brainiacs and the accompanying The Wiggles travel packs will be available from July 14 at participating Thrifty Car Rental locations across Australia and New Zealand Non-Thrifty customers can head to or to download and print off the road trip scavenger hunt or access a link to the Backseat Brainiacs audio quiz.
Daily Mirror
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Dark side of The Wiggles with group dogged by rows, walk-outs and divorce
Celebrities and the world's toddlers adore the long-running Aussie children's TV entertainers, but now in it's third reincarnation, the punishing schedule has taken its toll on the kiddie supergroup Robert De Niro, Dolly Parton and Jessie J are fans, they're worth millions and play sell-out concerts around the world. The Wiggles – aka The Beatles for toddlers – are a preschooler's entertainment juggernaut that has taken over the world. They've got a new country album out, Wiggle Up Giddy Up, featuring two songs with the rhinestone queen herself, Dolly Parton. And tickets to their current world tour are hotter than an Oasis reunion gig. They have previously sold out Madison Square Garden in New York for 12 days in a row and, ahead of this week's show in the US, Hollywood legend De Niro, 81, was granted a backstage pass with his two-year-old daughter, Gia, to meet her idol - founder member, Anthony Field (Blue Wiggle). Like most people over the age of five, De Niro didn't have a clue about this global phenomenon until he had Gia with professional martial artist girlfriend Tiffany Chen, 45. The Wiggles sang their classic banger Rock-A-Bye Your Bear for the veteran actor's family, which drew a rare smile. And De Niro admitted: 'I didn't know of them until I started seeing them and my daughter loves to watch them… but they're great!' With the advent of YouTube and the arrival of their shows on Netflix, a new British audience is embracing The Wiggles. When they came to the UK recently, Jessie J met them with her son Sky and was treated to some of the Tree of Wisdom's viral TikTok dance moves. They're also part of a wave of Australian children's TV, like Bluey, that is captivating British kids, giving them Aussie accents and pushing CBeebies off the map. Borkowski PR's Gregor Cubie expects his 19-month-old to join the fan club soon, and wonders if 'Aussie-ness' is the magic ingredient wooing international audiences. 'In the same way that Bluey is almost universally popular and accessible, The Wiggles' sheer Aussie-ness might work in their favour when it comes to their reputation,' he says. But, scratch the surface, according to Gregor, and you'll find a long-running supergroup, dogged by controversy, ill health and accusations of 'going woke'. One of Australia's most successful exports, The Wiggles take it in turns with pop sensation Kylie Minogue and Hollywood actor Russell Crowe to top the Aussie rich list. Majority owner Anthony is estimated to be worth £25m, on top of the £10 million a year the band rakes in from tours, TV shows, new releases, merchandise and sponsorships. They have their own TV series Ready, Steady, Wiggle, have produced 62 studio albums, sold 40 million books, CDs and DVDS, and attracted more than 5 billion views on YouTube and 3 billion streams across various music services. They've been making ear-worm sing-a-long pop since 1991, when kindergarten teaching students Anthony and Jeff Fatt, who were members of the R&B pop band the Cockroaches, and got together with two fellow students - Murray Cook and Greg Page - in Sydney, to make an album of simple, catchy songs for pre-schoolers After Anthony's infant niece tragically died from sudden infant death syndrome, the Cockroaches disbanded. One of the songs Anthony wrote, Get Ready to Wiggle, inspired the new band's name because they thought 'wiggling' describes how children dance. 'We met at university doing a course in early childhood – this connection with music and teaching is what became The Wiggles,' explains Anthony. While The Wiggles has evolved since those early days, the four original members hold a special place in people's hearts – Anthony and Jeff Fatt (Purple Wiggle), Murray Cook (Red Wiggle) and Greg Page (Yellow Wiggle). And their hits like Hot Potato and Fruit Salad, were toddler dance floor fillers for the next two decades. READ MORE: 'Gran's saucy paintings were slammed – but we're having last laugh' While members have changed, the primary colours of red, yellow, blue and purple that they wear is no doubt the secret of the Wiggles' success with the ankle biters. In Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles 2023 documentary, Anthony says: 'It doesn't matter who wears the skivvies, as long as we reflect our audience and communicate with children.' Like any band, they had to break America to go truly global – and when the Disney Channel played them four times a day to their 85 million subscribers, their success was meteoric. All of a sudden, they were playing 10,000 seater arenas. PR, Gregor puts their success down to a 'combination of their prolific output with its ceaseless ability to hypnotise toddlers'. He adds: 'Also, a less extreme version of the Royal Family 's 'never complain, never explain' approach. Instead of saying nothing, they say the bare minimum and carry on as if nothing happened. 'You rarely see naval-gazing and the consistency and popularity of their work keeps generations of kids coming back for more.' While there aren't many skeletons to rattle in The Wiggle cupboards, behind their happy faces and signature finger point, members have been dogged by setbacks. Controversies include the Hot Potato incident two years ago, when a council in Western Australia played their famous song on loop to deter anti-social behaviour at a homeless shelter. The Wiggles complained, saying their music should only be used to 'spread joy and happiness' but the damage was done. But the fact De Niro was happy to be pictured with The Wiggles is a massive endorsement. 'Robert De Niro seems increasingly like the kind of guy who considers how his every public appearance and utterance might affect his legacy, so it's a pretty major stamp of approval that he's happy to be publicly associated with the Wiggles. Fundamentally they are free of reputation risk,' says Gregor. 'The irony is that the Wiggles have had a few controversies which are fairly stereotypical of long-running bands – walkouts, inter-band marriages and divorces; allegations that a song is racially insensitive, accusations of going 'woke.' They've been ruthlessly parodied on 30 Rock and, of course, the Hot Potato incident was unpleasant.' For members of The Wiggles, the squeaky clean expectations can be tricky. 'During my time in The Wiggles, I was out at a gig one night and I was having a drink, and the next day a newspaper reported: 'The Wiggles member caught having a beer', and that was a shock. I am an adult!' says Murray. And doing 400 to 500 shows a year - cramming up to three gigs into a single day - took its toll on the original members, with Jeff, Murray and Greg retiring for health reasons in 2012. A mystery illness forced Greg to leave in 2006. He was replaced by Sam Morans, but came back in 2012. Then he suffered a heart attack on stage during a 2020 reunion show. That same year, Murray had open heart surgery. Revealing his own struggles, Anthony released a memoir Out Of The Blue last year, detailing the years of mental and physical health problems he's suffered, including depression, undiagnosed ADHD and chronic pain. Yet Field created a second generation of Wiggles with Simon Pryce (Red Wiggle), Lachlan Gillespie (Purple Wiggle) and the first female, Emma Watkins (Yellow Wiggle). 'We might be responsible for their first experience of music,' says Emma, speaking about their responsibility to their tiny fans Sadly, trouble soon upended their paradise, as shortly after Yellow Wiggle Emma married Purple Wiggle Lachie, they divorced and she left the group not long after. Another shake-up in 2021 saw 15-year-old Tsehay Hawkins becoming Yellow Wiggle. Now 62, Anthony is the only remaining original Wiggle, in a group of eight performers - Tsehay, Lachlan, and Simon, as well as Caterina Mete, Lucia Field, Simon Pryce, Evie Ferris, John Pearce - who are as gender-diverse and racially-diverse as their millions of fans. Costumed characters, played by the more junior Wiggles, include Dorothy the Dinosaur, Henry the Octopus, Wags the Dog, and Captain Feathersword. While some of the newer members say their estimated £72,000 earnings are a fraction of the big bucks of the original members, they have given the group a bigger presence on social media, where the Tree of Wisdom (played by Anthony's nephew, Dominic Field) regularly goes viral on TikTok, with his exuberant dance moves. And, in recent years, they've been noticing something new – a generational crossover, as kids grow up, but remain fans. Dorothy the Dinosaur is also now a DJ, who remixes the original Wiggles classics for the older audience. And they've been getting down with the cool kids - covering songs by Fatboy Slim, White Stripes and Tame Impala's Elephant. 'We're bringing back happy memories,' says Anthony. 'And it's a real privilege to do that.' Altogether now, kids, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle! Classic kids TV groups down the years: The Monkees, 1960s – Four cute surfer boys Davy Jones, Mickey Donlenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith running around in zany plots to brilliant pop tracks, in a sitcom that captured the spirit of the era. The Banana Splits, 1970s – Four costumed animal characters who'd perform songs and comedy skits in a psychedelic world, was just as weird and fun as it sounds. The makers had clearly been on the wacky baccy. Rainbow, 1980s – Presenter Geoffrey and his camp puppets Zippy, George and Bungle and hippy singers Rod, Jane and Freddy took us 'Up above the streets and houses, Rainbow climbing high' every week. I still miss them. Teletubbies, 1990s – Some called it the most disturbing children's show on TV – but even now millions of babies are glued to repeats of these four tubby aliens, Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-laa, and Po, with coat hangers on their heads living on a mini golf course. Zingzillas, 2000s – Puppet monkey band Zak, Tang, Panzee and Drum lived on a tropical island and made real music together and introduced tots to rock, soul, jazz and samba styles – along with some dodgy titles like Do You Didgeridoo?
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Robert De Niro Meeting The Wiggles Was Not on Our 2025 Bingo Card
As an actor, Robert De Niro often plays tough guys. But 2-year-old daughter Gia has been bringing out her dad's softer side. The pair went backstage prior to The Wiggles' concert in New York City on June 29. The 81-year-old De Niro shook hands, gave hugs and even enjoyed a serenade. Gia, who had a light-up bubble blower in hand, seemed to be taking in the entire experience very seriously. This isn't De Niro's first experience with the Australian children's supergroup. Just a few weeks ago he hopped on the TikTok "good night" trend to FaceTime his buddy, Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese. De Niro showed Scorsese what he was up to at the time: watching The Wiggles on his TV. TODAY anchor Carson Daly played both clips on air on June 30. "The Oscar winner just made some dreams come true for his little one," Carson said. "Check this out: De Niro using the best of his Hollywood connections getting his daughter to actually meet The Wiggles." The other anchors started laughing in the background. "In a sweet series of photos and videos, the big screen icon can be seen having an absolute blast with all the bubbles and fanfare from the colorful kids group," Carson said. "There's got to be some benefit to being Robert De Niro," joked Saturday TODAY host Laura Jarrett. "I love everything about that," said Craig Melvin. "Robert De Niro using his power for good." Gia is the youngest of De Niro's seven kids. The Hollywood legend, who first became a father in 1976, has been married twice. He shares daughter Drena and son Raphael with his first wife, Diahnne Abbott, to whom he was married from 1976 to 1988. De Niro shares his twins — Julian and Airyn — with Toukie Smith in 1995. In 1997, De Niro tied the knot with his second wife, Grace Hightower. They had two children, Elliot and Helen, before divorcing in 2018. Finally, he welcomed daughter Gia with girlfriend Tiffany Chen in April 2023. While visiting TODAY in 2024, De Niro graded himself as a dad. 'I'm OK,' he said bluntly, then broke out into laughter with the TODAY co-hosts. We're guessing a private visit with The Wiggles might have just upped that grade! This article was originally published on
The Mainichi
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Mainichi
Myaku-Myaku, other mascots show off moves at Osaka Expo dance event
6375151122112@brightcove OSAKA -- Visitors to Osaka Expo were treated to a dance recital by mascot characters from various countries in a recent event organized by the Australian pavilion to entertain guests. The June 30 dance event at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, was joined by 20 mascots including those from Australia, the United States and the European Union. On the Australian pavilion stage, they jumped up and down, showed off their moves to the song "Hot Potato" by The Wiggles, a children's music group from the country. Osaka Expo's official mascot Myaku-Myaku also made an appearance, exciting the audience as they called for an encore. (Japanese original by Takehiko Onishi, Osaka Photo and Video Department)
Daily Mirror
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Robert De Niro, 81, in wild crossover as he takes daughter to meet The Wiggles
Taxi Driver actor Robert De Niro, 81, enjoyed a wholesome trip to see The Wiggles in New York City with his two-year-old daughter, Gia Robert De Niro swapped Hollywood sets for something a little more wholesome as he took his two-year-old daughter Gia to meet The Wiggles. The 81-year-old A-lister, who shares the toddler with martial artist girlfriend Tiffany Chen, 45, took the little one to hang out with the Australian children's group before their show in New York over the weekend. The Wiggles shared a sweet clip of Robert shaking hands with all the cast members, who were dressed in their colourful costumes ready for the show. The Taxi Driver actor looked delighted to be there while adorable Gia played with bubbles and looked at her favourite characters in awe. "It was such a thrill to spend some time with the legendary Robert De Niro and his family before our concert here in New York City," they captioned the post. A few other children and their parents were seen backstage with the cast as they entertained the little ones. Earlier this year, Robert opened up about life as a new dad. While appearing on BBC Radio 2 's Breakfast Show in February, the actor spoke to radio host Scott Mills about his daughter Gia. Robert - known for films like The Godfather Part II (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976) - revealed in the interview that he doesn't watch as many films as he "should". He went on to tease that he watches children's shows with Gia though. Asked what he watches at home, the actor told host Scott: "I don't watch as many movies as I should. I try to watch films especially that I'm told ... I just wanna keep up, but I watch current events if you will, news, stuff like that. "Now I watch with my little girl ... the Wiggles and Ms Rachel." Scott then asked about his knowledge of other kids shows, saying: "Do you know about Bluey?" Robert replied: "No. I'll look up ... I'll look for them." The presenter said: "Please will someone write this down because this might change your life in terms of attention span. Do you know what I'm saying? Bluey and Hey Duggee." Robert responded: "Bluey and Hey Duggee, okay." While discussing the Wiggles and Ms Rachel, he added: "I didn't know of them until I started seeing them and my daughter loves to watch them." He later said about the Wiggles: "They're great. Got lots of energy, they're terrific." In January, Robert told The Times that he's an "early riser" and said about his youngest daughter: "I spend my mornings watching Ms Rachel with her, and I give her her bottle."
