Kaboodle

Lore & Background

The original concept for Kaboodle was conceived by Jenny Hooks, with the series aiming to stimulate young children’s imagination and widen their range of experiences. Stories were based on distinguished Australian children’s books, fairy tales, myths, or wholly original works. The series was produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation with Patricia Edgar as Executive Producer and Jeff Peck as Series Producer, backed by Film Victoria, ABC-TV, the Australian Film Commission, and the ACTF—the first time these companies jointly funded a children’s television series.

Reader's Guide

Kaboodle is significant for catering to the long-neglected 6 to 9-year-old audience and for providing industry experience and international screen credit to numerous up-and-coming Australian filmmakers. More than one hundred crew members gained their first television credit or advanced their careers through the series. The series was distributed outside Australia and New Zealand by Richard Price Television Associates Limited, and video cassettes were marketed in Australia by CBS/FOX Video. Kaboodle 2 was promoted at MIPCOM in October 1989, leading to sales in the UK, Israel, Singapore, and several European countries.

Did You Know?

• Kaboodle was officially launched by Senator Graham Richardson at the Menzies at Rialto Hotel in Melbourne on 15 October 1987.
• In 1985, the Foundation offered a $1,000 prize to students at the Australian Film and Television School and Swinburne Institute of Technology for the best Kaboodle story idea.
• Kaboodle 2 contained four regular drama segments: 'Echidna Crossing', 'The Dream Machine', 'The Hedge and Mr Snip', and 'The Great Detective'.

Creative Vision & Target Audience

Kaboodle was born from a simple but urgent observation: Australian television had largely abandoned the six-to-nine-year-old demographic. Jennifer Hooks conceived the series as a way to deliver quality dramatic storytelling to children who had been overlooked by broadcasters. The format was deliberately eclectic—each half-hour episode wove together two or three distinct short stories, shifting between animation, puppetry, and live-action to keep young minds engaged. The narrative material drew from a wide well: distinguished Australian children's literature, classic fairy tales and myths, and entirely original scripts written specifically for the screen. The production team understood that the boundless logic of make-believe television was uniquely suited to nurturing emotional and intellectual development in young viewers. Rather than talking down to its audience, Kaboodle treated children as capable of experiencing fantasy and realism, laughter and tears, all within a single episode. The result was a kaleidoscopic viewing experience where pace, mood, and length varied from story to story, ensuring no two segments felt the same.

Production & Industry Incubator

What makes Kaboodle remarkable beyond its on-screen content is the role it played as a training ground for an entire generation of Australian screen professionals. The series was a first-of-its-kind collaboration, bringing together Film Victoria, ABC Television, the Australian Film Commission, and the Australian Children's Television Foundation to jointly fund a children's drama series—a financial arrangement that had never been attempted before. Production was spread across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth, involving a vast and diverse crew. More than one hundred individuals who worked on the show earned their first television credit or significantly advanced their careers through the experience. The production team blended seasoned filmmakers with promising newcomers, and even included children making their first on-camera appearances. In 1985, the Foundation ran a student contest at the Australian Film and Television School and Swinburne Institute of Technology, awarding $1,000 prizes for the best story concepts. Winners Alan Love and John Taylor saw their ideas—a puppetry-driven fantasy and a comic cat adventure—developed into finished segments, while four other students also had their concepts realized on screen.

Kaboodle 2 – A New Direction

When Kaboodle returned as Kaboodle 2 in April 1990, the creative team made a deliberate and significant pivot in format. Rather than continuing the anthology structure of the original thirteen episodes, the follow-on series adopted a fully animated approach and introduced four recurring drama segments that ran throughout all six half-hour episodes. This meant the young audience now had regular characters to follow and invest in, a structural choice that reflected a growing understanding of how children's television could build sustained engagement. The four segments—Echidna Crossing, The Dream Machine, The Hedge and Mr Snip, and The Great Detective—were each animated by different creative teams, preserving the collaborative spirit of the original while giving each story its own distinct visual identity. The series moved to the Seven Network for its Australian broadcast, expanding its reach beyond the ABC. Patricia Edgar remained as executive producer, while Susie Campbell took on a supervising producer role, and the core animation team included names like Michael Cusack, Maggie Geddes, and Peter Viska who had also contributed to the first series.

Distribution & Lasting Significance

Kaboodle's influence extended well beyond the Australian broadcast schedule in which it first appeared in 1987. The series was distributed internationally by Richard Price Television Associates Limited, a company with offices in both London and New York, bringing the show's inventive storytelling to audiences across the globe. Domestically, video cassettes of the series were marketed through CBS/FOX Video, making the episodes accessible to families who might not have caught the original ABC broadcast. This multi-channel distribution helped cement Kaboodle's place in Australian cultural memory. Yet perhaps its most enduring legacy is institutional: the series demonstrated that a children's program could simultaneously serve as a creative incubator for the broader film and television industry. The fact that over a hundred crew members gained their first screen credit or meaningful career advancement through Kaboodle speaks to the show's function as a proving ground. In an era when Australian children's television was often dismissed as low-budget filler, Kaboodle proved that ambitious, formally diverse drama for under-tens could attract serious creative talent and institutional investment, setting a precedent that influenced how the industry approached young audiences in the years that followed.