Review: Dora & Friends Into The City – “Doggie Day!”

I have a 12-year old daughter. This means that I am very familiar with the Dora the Explorer franchise. I have stopped Swiper from swiping, helped Benny the bull, and shouted random Spanish words with the best of them. (My daughter was lucky. I speak a little bit of Spanish so I could translate when the show did not.) After 14 years on the air, the producers decided the show needed a little update. So now they are giving us Dora & Friends Into The City, which will air alongside the regular Dora The Explorer show. Even though the show will air in the morning preschool block on Nickelodeon, the premiere episode aired at 8PM on Monday. The people who do these schedules rarely make sensible decisions.

Anyway, let’s talk about the show itself. In order to get a fully rounded opinion on the new show, my daughter agreed to watch it with me. Going into the show, we knew that Dora would be older than she was in the original show. This time around, Dora is a 10-year old elementary student living in Playa Verde. She goes on adventures with her Explorer Girl friends: Kate, Naiya, Alana, and Emma plus new male friend, Pablo. (For the record, Pablo looks a lot like Dora’s cousin, Diego. Apparently, Diego was not cool enough to get older.) While Backpack is no longer around, Map has changed to a new virtual version called Map App.

However, we did not know the target age group. Despite Dora growing up, the target audience is still preschoolers. That’s right. Ten-year old Dora is still aimed at five-year old children. The goal is that the younger children will look up to Dora as a role model. I’m not sure I understand why the show-runners decided to make this particular decision. Young Dora already went on similar adventures, even though they weren’t in a city environment. This may be provoking five-year old children to try to run around town like a 10-year old. While I am not a “helicopter parent” by any means, small children shouldn’t be running through the city unsupervised. Ten-year olds should have a little more freedom than a five-year old.

In my opinion, the show was not awful. It should have been “aged up” and aimed at slightly older children. If the writers had eliminated the direct questions to the audience followed by empty air for the audience to answer the show (i.e. “Did the puppy find a box?” -10 second pause- “THAT’S RIGHT! The puppy found a box!”), they could have definitely targeted this show to actual elementary school kids. Since their plan is to keep regular Dora The Explorer on the air, there is no reason they couldn’t expand their audience into the late afternoon/early evening time slot and retain their audience well into their early elementary school years. I could easily see 8- or 9-year old children finding that type of show very interesting.

I would also like to note that my daughter hated the new Map App. She said she really missed Map and Backpack but when Map App showed up, she visibly cringed. Another thing she didn’t like was Dora’s new magical charm bracelet. The charm bracelet takes the place of Backpack giving her the missing puzzle pieces. Dora mutters a few magic Spanish words and one of the charms comes to life, helping her save the day. I understand the reason behind updating Dora’s accessories. Hopefully, they are used a little bit better in future episodes.