Work It Out Wombats!

Work It Out Wombats! is an children's animated television series that premiered on February 6, 2023, on PBS Kids. The series is produced by GBH Kids and Pipeline Studios. The series is animated using Toon Boom Harmony. The series also has a podcast, which premiered on January 4, 2024. Reception to the series has been mostly positive.
In the land of the Treeborhood, the series follows marsupials Malik, Zadie and Zeke living with their grandmother (Super) in her apartment complex. Every episode features them encountering a problem of some kind and using computational thinking to solve it. In-between each of the episodes is a 90-second music video, similar to the next show, (except for steps to play or do something).
These games were released on the PBS Kids website, as well as the PBS Kids Games App.
The themes and ideas of the show were previously covered in Aha Island, a WGBH multimedia project about monkeys who use computational thinking.
Some elements from Aha Island were recycled for Work It Out Wombats!, such as the existence of the Everything Emporium.
The series was greenlit in October 2020, under the working title of Wombats! Wombats were chosen as the species of the main characters because they are underused in media.
Early-career writers were granted fellowships so they could bring diverse viewpoints and BIPOC representation to the series.
The production team worked to ensure authentic representations of names, language, and some of the cultural origins found with the animals themselves, while keeping in mind that animals are not a proxy for race and ethnicity.
For example, JunJun and his family are Philippine eagles, while Ellie is a moose; an animal not found in Jamaica.
The producers deliberately sought out voice actors that match the ethnicity of the characters to ensure authenticity. Rain Janjua, the voice of Zeke, originally auditioned for the role of Malik for being asked to try out for Zeke. To create the voice, Janjua tried to recall how his voice sounded at four years old.
The series is animated using Toon Boom Harmony. The characters are animated using complicated rigging systems that allow the animators to draw things by hand, thus giving each character their own nuances and walk cycles. The designs of the characters and settings are rounded in order to create a friendly, welcoming feel. Curvilinear perspective and hazing is used for the backgrounds to make the characters stand out.
Work It Out Wombats! achieved 23 million streams on PBS Kids video platforms within its first two weeks, as well as over 1.7 million views on YouTube.
The series was praised for its positive messages, educational value, and high-energy characters. Writing for Common Sense Media, Diondra Brown rated it a 5/5, saying "The show's quality matches -- actually, exceeds, the high expectations viewers have for PBS Kids programming."
The lesbian characters of Leiko and Duffy caused the series to be controversial among conservative crowds. In May 2023, the Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, vetoed a measure to provide state funding to Oklahoma Educational Television Authority for three years, due to their broadcasting of Work It Out Wombats! (and of Clifford the Big Red Dog (2019 TV series), which also features same-sex parents) and the claims that it "overly sexualizing" kids.
To promote the series, a walkaround mascot of Zeke traveled to different places in the Boston area from February 22 to February 24, under the title "Zeke's Big Boston Adventure." Zeke went to the Boston Children's Museum, the Franklin Park Zoo, and the Boston Public Library. The Mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, declared February 21 as "Work It Out Wombats! Day."