Kiddets

Lore & Background

The show follows five young alien friends called 'Kiddets', each with an area of interest and learning: Patches (health, wealth, and safety), Dapper (arts and culture), Bounce (mechanics), Stripes (leadership), and Luna (science). They are simply alien friends exploring their playroom, learning through play as they discover the world around them. They occasionally reach out for help from SpottyWot and DottyWot on planet Earth.

The co-production was announced in October 2015, when Pūkeko Pictures partnered with Chinese animation studio Guangdong Huawen Century Animation Company to produce Kiddets, marking the first children's television series co-production between New Zealand and China. On 2 October 2017, Pūkeko Pictures partnered with British distribution company Cake Entertainment to handle worldwide distribution except for Australia, New Zealand, and China.

Unlike its parent series The WotWots, which was animated at Wētā Workshop, Kiddets was made at Hengxin Shambala's animation subsidiary, Blossom Pictures, who handled animation services. The Kiddets characters and their space station are animated, with occasional clips from the original series of The WotWots used over live-action footage.

Reader's Guide

Kiddets represents a notable milestone in children's television as the first co-production between New Zealand and China in the genre. Its creation by Martin Baynton and Richard Taylor, founders of Pūkeko Pictures and creators of The WotWots, extends the franchise's reach into a new series aimed at preschool audiences. The show's blend of computer animation with live-action clips, and its use of footage from The WotWots, reflects a production model that leverages existing assets across series. The partnership with Chinese animation studio Blossom Pictures and British distributor Cake Entertainment illustrates the globalized nature of modern children's media production. The series' focus on five distinct characters each representing a field of learning—health, arts, mechanics, leadership, and science—offers educational content through play-based storytelling. Its single season of 52 episodes provides a substantial body of content for its target audience. The involvement of Weta Workshop, known for its work on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, adds a notable visual effects pedigree to the series' animation.

Did You Know?

• Kiddets is a sister series to The WotWots.
• Animation services were handled by Blossom Pictures, a subsidiary of Hengxin Shambala.

Concept & Premise

Kiddets is a New Zealand children's television programme that hit screens in 2018, running right alongside *The WotWots* for the littlest viewers. It's the younger sibling of that show, and it centres on five young alien characters, each with a distinct learning lane: Patches handles health, wealth, and safety; Dapper goes for arts and culture; Bounce gets into mechanics; Stripes works on leadership; and Luna chases science. They're space cadets, explorers-in-training at a space academy on the planet WotWot. Their main classroom is a playroom that looks out over a floating space port hovering above their home world. No stiff, sit-still lessons here — the Kiddets pick up the fundamentals of life through hands-on play and experimentation. When a problem's too big to crack on their own, they reach out across the cosmos for guidance from SpottyWot and DottyWot, two helpers based back on planet Earth. The series is structured as a single season of fifty-two episodes, each running approximately eleven minutes, built squarely for preschool audiences.

A Landmark New Zealand–China Partnership

The creation of Kiddets marked a significant milestone in international children's television. In November 2015, Pūkeko Pictures—the New Zealand studio behind The WotWots—formalised a partnership with Guangdong Huawen Century Animation Company, a Chinese animation production studio that has since rebranded as Hengxin Shambala Kids Cultural Industry Development Co., Ltd. This collaboration produced what is recognised as the first children's television series to be co-produced between New Zealand and China. Martin Baynton and Richard Taylor, the duo who originally conceived The WotWots and founded Pūkeko Pictures, stepped into the role of creators for the new spin-off. The animation work for Kiddets was handled not by Wētā Workshop, as was the case with the parent series, but by Blossom Pictures, the animation subsidiary of Hengxin Shambala. This division of labour underscored the genuinely cross-border nature of the project, blending New Zealand creative direction with Chinese animation craftsmanship to bring the five alien friends to life for a global preschool audience.

Visual Style & the Weta Workshop Connection

Kiddets distinguishes itself visually by blending computer-generated animation with live-action footage, creating a hybrid aesthetic uncommon in preschool programming. The five Kiddet characters and their space station environment are rendered in computer animation, while the production weaves in live-action clips to add a layer of physicality to the otherwise fantastical setting. This live-action component was crafted by Weta Workshop, the celebrated visual effects studio co-founded by Richard Taylor and Rodger, best known for its groundbreaking work on the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Additionally, the series incorporates footage from its parent show, The WotWots, which was originally produced at Wētā Workshop, layering familiar imagery from the broader franchise into the new narrative. The result is a visually rich world where polished digital characters interact within a playroom that feels simultaneously imaginative and grounded, giving young viewers a sense of wonder while keeping the tone approachable and playful.

Global Distribution & Broadcast

Kiddets was designed from the outset with international reach in mind. On 2 October 2017, Pūkeko Pictures entered into a distribution agreement with Cake Entertainment, a British company specialising in the global licensing of family entertainment. Under this deal, Cake Entertainment was tasked with handling worldwide distribution of the series across all territories except Australia, New Zealand, and China—presumably the home markets where Pūkeko Pictures and its Chinese partner Hengxin Shambala would manage local broadcast and release themselves. The series debuted in 2018 and has since been released as a single season of fifty-two episodes, each approximately eleven minutes in length, a format tailored to the attention spans and viewing habits of preschool children. An official website also exists for the show, serving as a dedicated digital hub for fans and families. The combination of a New Zealand creative team, Chinese animation production, and British-led global distribution made Kiddets a genuinely multinational production, reflecting the increasingly collaborative landscape of children's television in the twenty-first century.