I have a confession: I don’t just watch Wonder Pets! because my three year old daughter likes it. I like it too. I like the teamwork, and the friendship, and all the different animals and locales. And I’ll let you in on a family secret- there’s a song, from “Three Wonder Pets and a Baby”, where the Wonder Pets help a baby piglet whose having trouble falling asleep, and they sing him a lullaby. I sing that lullaby to Kaitlyn only I changed the words. True story!

Thanks to Gloria at Sayles & Winnikoff Communications, I got the most amazing opportunity to send interview questions to Josh Selig, creator of The Wonder Pets!!  I came up with a few questions of my own plus I asked my Twitter followers what they would like to ask Mr. Selig, and not surprisingly, the number one question is the title of this post.   Here are the questions I sent him and the answers he provided!

Interview for table4five.net

By Josh Selig

T45: Is Linney (and is that the spelling?) a boy or a girl?

JS: Linny the Guinea Pig is most certainly a girl! She’s a very strong leader and she’s like a big sister to Tuck and Ming-Ming. And, as you may have noticed, she has a weakness for celery!

T45: Why does Ming-Ming have a lisp?

JS: Actually, Ming-Ming doesn’t have a lisp. She just has a very unique way of talking. Like many preschoolers, Ming-Ming sometimes has trouble pronouncing her “r”s so that “serious” becomes “sewrious!”

T45: How did you come up with the idea for the show, what was the inspiration?

JS: I wanted to make a show about superheroes who had no actual superpowers. The only power that Linny, Tuck and Ming-Ming have is teamwork, but when they use it they can do extraordinary things!

T45: Are the characters based on real pets you had?

JS: No, I never had a turtle, a duck or a guinea pig of my own. I did have a really great cat named Schmoozer for many years. I think pets are very important because they are great friends and they give you a lot of love. (And they need a lot of love!)

T45: Are you a parent? If so, do your kids watch the show? Have a favorite character?

JS: I don’t have children of my own yet but I hope to have kids one day. And I don’t have a favorite character. I love all the Wonder Pets equally! (Even Ollie.)

T45: How long does it take to create each episode?

JS: It takes about 9 months to make one episode of “The Wonder Pets!” We start out with writing and we finish with animation and there are lots of steps in between. Each step is very important and my team at Little Airplane Productions works very hard to make sure we get each part just right. By the time an episode is finished we have probably seen
it about 30 times in various stages of its development.

T45: Do you use images of real animals and landscapes to create the scenes?

JS: Yes! All the images you see on “The Wonder Pets!” start out as real photographs but then they go through a special process we call “cutification.” This makes all the images just a little cuter, sweeter and more colorful than they were in real life! Then we animate the show using “Photo-Puppetry Animation,” a style of animation that was created by our brilliant Creative Director, Jennifer Oxley.

T45: Question from a reader-how did you choose the voices for each character? Are they children or adult actors?

JS: We held auditions for all the characters. We listened to the voices of hundreds of children before we chose our stars, Sophie Zamchick (Linny), Teala Dunn (Tuck) and Danica Lee (Ming-Ming). They are all kids but they’re growing up fast!

Of course, when I got the interview questions back I immediately thought of a bunch more I wish I had asked   Thank you SO MUCH to Josh Selig for taking the time to answer these questions!!   The newest Wonder Pets! DVD is “The Wonder Pets! Save The Circus” and it’s available in stores and on Amazon.com.

Linny’s a GIRL! Ming Ming ISN’T lisping! Nine MONTHS to make an episode! Who knew!?!?

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