Blue's Clues

**Blue's Clues** is a children's animated television series created by **Angela Santomero** and producers **Todd Kessler** and **Traci Paige Johnson**. The series premiered on Nickelodeon's **Nick Jr**. block on September 8, 1996 and ended its run on August 6, 2006. The series combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped young viewers learn. The show was originally hosted by **Steve Burns**, who retired in 2002, and was replaced by **Donavan Patton** as **Joe** for the remainder of the series. Blue's Clues became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on American commercial television and was critical to Nickelodeon's growth. A spin-off series titled **Blue's Room** premiered in 2004. A revival of the series titled **Blue's Clues & You!** premiered in November 2019.

## Premise

The show follows a young blue-spotted dog named Blue, who leaves a trail of clues (paw prints) for the host, Steve, and the viewers to figure out her plans and activities for the day.

The show's producers and creators presented material in a narrative format instead of the more traditional magazine format, used repetition to reinforce its curriculum, and structured every episode the same way. They used research about child development and young children's viewing habits that had been conducted in the thirty years since the debut of Sesame Street in the U.S. and revolutionized the genre by inviting their viewers' involvement. Research was part of the creative and decision-making process in the production of the show and was integrated into all aspects and stages of the creative process. Blue's Clues was the first cutout animation series for preschoolers in the United States and resembles a storybook in its use of primary colors and its simple construction paper shapes of familiar objects with varied colors and textures. Its home-based setting is familiar to American children but has a look unlike other children's television shows. A live production of **Blue's Clues**, which used many of the production innovations developed by the show's creators, toured the U.S. starting in 1999. As of 2002, over 2 million people had attended over 1,000 performances.

By 2002, Blue's Clues had received several awards for excellence in children's programming, educational software, and licensing, and had been nominated for nine **Emmy Awards**. It has been syndicated in 120 countries and translated into 15 languages. Regional versions of the show featuring local hosts have been produced in other countries. It was one of the first preschool shows to incorporate **American Sign Language** into its content. The show's extensive use of research in its development and production process inspired several research studies that have provided evidence for its effectiveness as a learning tool.

The series is available on **Paramount+** and on the **Noggin** App.

## History

By 1990, parents, teachers, and media experts had been criticizing "the lack of quality fare for children on commercial television" for many years. Up to that point, PBS was the only source for quality children's television; other broadcasters voluntarily set educational standards for their programming and "were expected to regulate themselves", but it led to little change in the quality of children's programs. By the time Blue's Clues premiered in 1996, there was a large number of TV shows for children, but most of them were violent and designed to sell action toys and other products; as co-creator Angela Santomero put it, "a vehicle for toy-based 'commercials' ". According to author Diane Tracy in her 2002 book **Blue's Clues for Success**, "The state of children's television was pretty dismal".

There was little incentive for producing high-quality children's television until 1990, when Congress passed the **Children's Television Act (CTA)**, which "required that networks be held accountable for the quality of children's programming or risk losing their license". The CTA set no hourly quotas and left it to the **Federal Communications Commission (FCC)** to determine compliance to the law, so little positive improvements were made. In 1996, the FCC passed additional regulations, including requiring broadcasters to, in a provision called "the Three-Hour rule", air at least three hours of children's programming per week, between the hours of 07:00 to 22:00, and that they be tagged with an E/I (Educational and Informational) logo so that children and their families could easily find the programs. The cable network **Nickelodeon**, which was recognized, along with **PBS**, as a leader in the creation and production of high-quality children's programming, was not required to comply with federal regulations to provide informative or educational content, but did so anyway, before the CTA became law.

According to **Heather L. Kirkorian** and her fellow researchers **Ellen Wartella** and **Daniel Anderson** in 2008, since television appeared in homes beginning in the mid-20th century, critics have often expressed concern about its impact on viewers, especially children, who as Kirkorian argued, are "active media users" by the age of three. Researchers believed that there were links between television viewing and children's cognitive and learning skills and that what children watched may be more important than how much they watched it. She reported that up until the 1980s, researchers had only an implicit theory about how viewers watched television, and that young children were cognitively passive viewers and controlled by "salient attention-eliciting features" like sound effects and fast movement. As a result, most researchers believed that television interfered with cognition and reflection and as a result, children could not learn from and process television. In the early 1980s, however, new theories about how young children watch television suggested that attention in children as young as two-years old were largely guided by program content.

**Conception**

In the mid-1990s, **Nickelodeon**, looking to create programming for preschoolers, hired a team of three producers, Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson, to create a new television program for young children. According to **The New York Times**, Kessler was the first creator to be brought on board to the project. Kessler had worked on Sesame Street, but he disliked its format and thought that it was too static and not visual enough, and was a freelance producer at Nickelodeon at the time. Santomero, who named Fred Rogers as a major influence, worked at Nickelodeon as a researcher and Johnson was a freelance artist and animator. Santomero later said that they "were young, and Nickelodeon took a chance on us".

Daniel R. Anderson of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who author Malcolm Gladwell called one of the "pioneering television researchers", was an adviser for the new show. Nickelodeon had hired Anderson as an adviser for its Nick Jr. block of preschool programs starting in 1993, although Santomero had already been getting his input about research informally. When Nickelodeon enlisted her to co-create Blue's Clues, he came on in a more formal capacity. Anderson later said that he "jumped at the chance" to serve as an advisor for Blue's Clues because "Nickelodeon was interested in providing programs that would actually benefit preschoolers rather than merely entertain them". Anderson also stated that the choice to produce the show as overtly and clearly educational was a departure for Nickelodeon and for any commercial network. According to research conducted by Nickelodeon, parents of preschool aged children wanted the shows they watched to be educational.

Santomero, Kessler, and Johnson met in a conference room at **Viacom**, which owned **Nickelodeon**, in New York for a month to create Blue's Clues. According to Santomero, the creators of Blue's Clues wanted to create a children's television show that was "something very simple and graphic and slow", emphasized social and emotional skills, treated children like they were smart, and helped them feel empowered. The character Blue was originally conceived as a cat, and the name of the show was to be **Blue Prints**, but the show's name was changed and Blue became a dog because Nickelodeon was already producing a show about a cat and because, as Anderson reported, children who watched the pilot, which was used for testing, "almost universally called the show Blue's Clues". Even though most children's television shows at the time were built around male characters, Blue was female and as **The New York Times** put it, "**never wore a bow**".

Kessler handled the show's "computer-based production", Santomero for the research, and Johnson for the design. By 2001, the show's research team, which worked collaboratively with the show's producers and creators, consisted of director of research Alice Wilder, who joined the Blue's Clues team shortly after the show's debut, **Alison Sherman**, **Karen Leavitt**, and **Koshi Dhingra**. They were given $150,000 to produce a pilot, about a quarter of the budget for other Nickelodeon shows at the time, which was used in 1995 to test the show's interactive elements with its potential audience. The pilot was considered lost, but in 2021, **Santomero** announced that she owned a copy of it, and that the pilot was filmed in 1994, although it was unclear if it would ever be released due to legal issues.

**Premiere and later history**

Blue's Clues premiered in the U.S. on September 8, 1996. The premiere was the highest-rated premiere of any Nickelodeon program, and the show became crucial to the network's growth. Scholar Norma Pecora called Blue's Clues the "cornerstone" of Nickelodeon's educational programming. By the end of 1997, it was the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television, and was the third-highest rated show behind children's public television shows; *“***Barney**” and *”***Arthur***”*. Within 18 months of its premiere, Blue's Clues was as well-known among the parents of preschoolers as more established children's shows such as Sesame Street and Barney. In 2002, Tracy reported that it was one of the highest-rated shows for preschoolers, was preschool children and their parents' favorite cable preschool program, was viewed by approximately 13.7 million viewers each week, and aired in about 60 countries.

In 2000, after 75 episodes, with "no fanfare" and no announcement from Nickelodeon, co-creator and co-producer Todd Kessler left Blue's Clues and the network to pursue other projects. He told The New York Times that he had "no hard feelings" regarding his departure. Kessler continued to be listed as an executive producer for the run of the show and for any future spin-offs. Also in 2000, **CBS**, which was also owned by Viacom, began airing the show as part of the centerpiece of its Saturday and Sunday morning children's programming. In 2004, Blue's Clues stopped production, which Santomero called "devastating", although it continued to air on Nickelodeon, and a spin-off, **Blue's Room**, was launched in the same year. It featured puppets, as well as the original show's second host. Blue's Clues celebrated its **10-year anniversary** in 2006 with a prime time special and the release of a DVD entitled "Blues Biggest Stories", which consisted of eight half-hour episodes spanning the show's history.

In November 2019, a series reboot of Blue's Clues premiered. The show, called **Blue's Clues & You!**, is hosted by **Joshua Dela Cruz** and features many of the same characters in the original show. **Steve Burns**, the original show's first host, serves as a writer and director on the new show; he has also made guest appearances, along with the original show's second host **Donovan Patton**, and participated in the casting of Dela Cruz.

## Blue Prints

**Blue Prints** is an unaired test pilot episode of **Blue's Clues**. Although the pilot never aired, it was adapted into the series' first official episode, Snack Time. The pilot also was screened in front of an audience of children.

Angela Santomero confirmed that she had a copy of the pilot and that it was filmed in 1994 before the series' premiere.

## Cast

The most important casting decision was that of the host, the only human character in the show. The host's role was to empower and challenge the show's young viewers, to help increase their self-esteem, and to strongly connect with them through the television screen. The producers originally wanted a female host. After months of research and over 1,000 auditions, they hired actor/performer Steve Burns based on the strength of his audition. Burns received the strongest and most enthusiastic response in tests with the young audience. Johnson said what made Burns a great children's TV host was that "he didn't want to be a children's host **...** He loved kids, but he didn't want to make a career out of it". Burns was in over 100 episodes of Blue's Clues when his final episodes aired in April 2002. Burns himself stated, "**I knew I wasn't gonna be doing children's television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid's TV show, and it was happenin' – fast.**"

After the producers conducted 1,500 auditions, Burns was replaced by actor Donovan Patton, who played Steve's brother Joe, introduced to the audience in articles in Nickelodeon's magazine and on its webpage and an arc of three episodes. Burns' departure generated "outlandish rumors" and was featured in a **Time** magazine story. Patton had never seen Blue's Clues before he auditioned for the part, and like Burns, who worked with him to help him prepare for the role, was also popular with preschool test audiences. The producers later reported that finding someone who could match Burns' "deceptively simple performance" was difficult. Patton became a "household name", although as Johnson stated, his character was named Joe because "Donovan was a little too hard on a preschooler's tongue". According to **The New York Times**, Donovan played the role more relaxed and "taller" than Burns.

Even though research demonstrated that children tend to pay less attention to adult male voices, Burns and Patton were chosen as the program's hosts because they were popular with their audience. Daniel Anderson insisted that Burns and Patton were the best actors for their roles out of the hundreds who auditioned, calling them "actors who could mime as demanded by the mixed action and animation format", and reported that there was no evidence that children paid less attention to them than to other parts of the program. He also said that Burns and Patton overcame what he called "attentional bias against men" in three ways: by behaving energetically and childlike; by breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience, often by looking directly into the camera and asking their audience, "Will you help?", and like Fred Rogers, forming a direct relationship to the audience; and by "always doing something". Anderson insisted that by forming a relationship with the audience, the actors' male voice became cues to the audience to pay attention and stated that it was the hosts' style of presentation that determined child attention.

Johnson was cast as Blue's voice because, of the show's crew, she was able to sound the most like a dog. **Nick Balaban**, who wrote the music for the show along with **Michael Rubin**, was cast as the voice of Mr. Salt. Balaban initially used a Brooklyn accent for Mr. Salt before settling on a French accent. Rubin also provided the voice of Mailbox.

**Main Characters**

* **Blue -** A playful and energetic 5-year old female dog with light blue fur and dark blue sports. She doesn't speak, but communicates with her owners, Steve, Joe and Josh, through barks that they interpret based on her tone and expression. In each episode, she plays a game called Blue's Clues, in which she leaves three blue paw print clues for the host and viewers to find in order to answer a question. She has the ability to enter storybooks and picture frames by "**skidooing**" into them with a special dance routine. Her favorite toy is **Polka Dots**. In the sixth season, she is granted a magic playroom called Blue's Room in which she can interact with the viewer and a cast of live-action puppet characters. In most animated appearances, she is voiced by Traci Paige Johnson, one of the series' creators. Johnson was cast as the character's voice because out of the crew, she was able to sound the most like a dog. In **Blue's Room**, she was voiced by **Victoria Pontecorvo** and is puppeteered by **Leslie Carrara-Rudolph**.

* **Steve -** Played by **Steve Burns**. is the host for the show's first four seasons. He is Blue's owner and caregiver. He wears a distinctive green-striped long-sleeve polo shirt with khakis and brown shoes. He loves anything that has a similar pattern. He’s intelligent, energetic, friendly, clever, helpful and sympathetic but sometimes clumsy, wild, impulsive, and forgetful. Steve and Blue are best friends. He’s always excited and prepared to play Blue's Clues, but can almost never find clues himself and relies on the viewer to help locate them. Whenever he finds a clue, he draws it in a pocket-sized pad of paper called the **Handy Dandy Notebook**. When he finishes a game of Blue's Clues, he sits in a giant red armchair called the **Thinking Chair** and comes up with possible solutions to Blue's puzzles. Within the first two seasons (some in the second), he would give out wrong and silly answers which usually upsets Blue, even in "**Blue's Big Musical**", "**Blue's Big Costume Party**", and "**Blocks**". His favorite time of the day is **Mail Time** when he receives a letter from Mailbox. He owns a stuffed anteater named Horace, which indicates that anteaters are also his favorite animal. At the end of the fourth season, Steve leaves for college on a hopscotch scholarship and leaves his younger brother, Joe, to take care of his house and Blue. There, he becomes the varsity captain for the hopscotch team at his college as revealed in the 100th episode special. In the reboot series **Blue's Clues & You!**, Steve has since graduated and now runs the **Blueprints Detective Agency (BDA)** and appears as a recurring character. He is the host that most countries have dubbed or replaced for international versions (like in the UK).

* **Joe -** Played by **Donovan Patton.** The second host of the fifth and sixth seasons. He is Steve's younger, taller brother who stays at the Blue's Clues house after Steve leaves for college. He wears a variety of different colored shirts with a horizontal line of squares on the front. In each of Joe's episodes, he alternates between colors (red, yellow, green, orange, purple, and blue). His favorite toy is a stuffed duck named Boris. He owns a Handy Dandy Notebook similar to Steve's, but it is larger and is shaped exactly like the **Thinking Chair**. In later episodes of Season 5 and 6, Joe normally does not draw clues in his notebook and instead watches magically-animated versions of the clues appear. Although sometimes silly and younger than Steve, he seems to be more mature and straight-talking as he never gave out wrong answers during thinking time thanks to Steve's advice. In the reboot series **Blue's Clues & You!**, Joe now runs the **Present Store** and appears as a recurring character.

* **Mailbox -** A cheerful purple mailbox who lives at the foot of the pathway in front of the Blue's Clues house. In each episode, Mailbox delivers a letter or informing an incoming e-mail after the host sings a special song called "**Mailtime**" and sits on the **Thinking Chair**. His letters contain video messages from children around the world that relate to the episode's topic. Mailbox has a thick Brooklyn accent and likes to crack jokes. He wants to be a comedian when he grows up and has a collection of postage stamps. Although he is normally stationed on a stake in the ground, he can use an "extendo" arm to move anywhere around the house or the backyard. In the original series, he was voiced by **Michael Rubin**, who is normally credited under the stage name Seth O'Hickory. In the UK dub, he is named "**Postbox**" and was voiced by **Kiriki Johnson**, In the reboot, he is voiced by **Doug Murray**.

* **Sidetable Drawer -** The keeper of the **Handy Dandy Notebook**. She lives in the living room to the left of the Thinking Chair. Whenever Steve or Joe starts a game of Blue's Clues, they must go to Sidetable and ask her for their notebook. She usually has Steve's telephone on top of her and holds an assortment of useful items in her drawer, depending on the situation. She is a talented singer and enjoys performing on stage. However, she is shy and sometimes lets her lack of confidence prevent her from singing in front of others. She has been known to be sad whenever someone doesn't say "please", as proven in the episode "**Blue's Sad Day**". Sidetable likes all kinds of music. Unlike the other characters, Sidetable has an inanimate form without a face that is seen whenever she is not speaking. In the reboot series, her tabletop is square and gains a wooden texture. In the original series, she was voiced by **Aleisha LaNaé Allen**. In the reboot, she is voiced by **Liyou Abere** from 2019-2020 and by **Shazdeh Kapadia** since 2020.

* **The Spice Family** are a group of condiment dispensers who live in the kitchen, each named after the type of spice they contain.

* **Mr. Salt -** A salt shaker of French heritage who acts as the homemaker of the Blue's Clues house and is the husband of **Mrs. Pepper**. He takes care of the other residents and prepares food for them. He and his wife Mrs. Pepper come from Paris, where they worked as cooks. Despite his experience as a chef, Mr. Salt is prone to accidents in the kitchen and often needs the host's help when he is baking. In the original series, he was voiced by **Nick Balaban**, one of the show's music composers. In the reboot, he is voiced by **Brad Adams**.

* **Mrs. Pepper -** The mother figure of the Blue's Clues house and the wife of Mr. Salt. She spends much of her time caring for Paprika and Cinnamon. In her free time, she likes to sing with Mr. Salt and swim in the kitchen sink. She is commonly shown holding Cinnamon in her arms while Mr. Salt holds Paprika. She was voiced by **Penelope Jewkes** during the first season and by **Spencer Kayden** for the remainder of the original series. In the reboot, she is voiced by **Gisele Rousseau**.

* **Paprika -** Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper's daughter. She first appears in "**Blue's News**". In the first three seasons, she is a baby and only speaks in incomplete sentences. She has an orange gummy teddy bear and sleeps in a crib made from a peanut. In the fourth season, Paprika becomes a toddler and prepares to be a responsible sibling after the announcement of Mrs. Pepper's second child. In the original series, Paprika was voiced by **Jenna Marie Castle** as a baby and by Corrine Hoffman as a toddler. In the reboot, she was voiced by **Shechinah Mpumlwana** from 2019-2020 and is currently voiced by **Abigail Nicholson** since 2020.

* **Cinnamon -** Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper's son, who is introduced in a five-episode story arc during the fourth season. He has several hand-me-down playthings from Paprika and a purple rattle, which is his favorite toy. When Paprika helps teach him how to do things, she learns more about herself and her role as his older sister. In the original series, Cinnamon was voiced by **Nick Balaban's** daughter, **Annalivia Balaban**. In the reboot, was is voiced by **Jaiden Cannatelli** from 2019-2020 and currently by **Niko Ceci** since 2020.

* **Shovel & Pail -** 6-year-old siblings, brother and sister, respectively, who live in the garden of the Blue's Clues house. They first appear in "Blue's Story Time". They accompany Steve or Joe whenever a game of Blue's Clues leads them outside to the backyard. Their favorite activity is building sand castles together in the sand table. They love learning about the different types of animals that live outside. They both dream of becoming veterinarians when they grow up. Their color schemes parallel each other's; Shovel is yellow with a red mouth, while Pail is red with a yellow mouth. In the original series, Shovel was voiced by **Stephen Schmidt** from 1996-2001 and by **Jonathan Pres**s from 2001-2004. Pail was voiced by **Marshall Claffy** from 1996-2001, by **Julia Wetherell** from 2001-2003, and by **Nicole Gibson** in 2004. In the reboot series, they are voiced by **Leo Orgil** and **Jordana Blake** respectively.

* **Tickety Tock -** Also known as Tickety for short, she is a 5-year-old alarm clock who lives on a nightstand in the bedroom of the Blue's Clues house. The '12' mark on her face is usually replaced by a symbol that relates to the episode's topic. She loves counting different things and often invites the host and the viewers to help her with basic math. Tickety is very number-oriented and likes to keep schedules. She is responsible for waking the residents of the Blue's Clues house every morning by ringing her bells. She is best friends with Slippery. In the original series, Tickety was voiced by **Kathryn Avery** from 1996-2001 and by **Kelly Nigh** from 2001-2004. In the reboot, she is voiced by **Ava Augustin**.

* **Slippery Soap -** Also known as Slippery for short, he is a 5-year-old lavender-colored bar of soap who lives in the bathroom of the Blue's Clues house. He often has trouble standing upright and is known for shouting his catchphrase "Whoa!" whenever he slides around. He first appears in "**What Does Blue Need?**". He is always surrounded by a trail of bubbles. He dreams of becoming the captain of a boat when he grows up and likes to wear a blue sailor cap with an anchor emblem on it. He is best friends with Tickety. In the original series, he was voiced by **Cody Ross Pitts** from 1996-2001, **Patrick Van Wagnen** from 2001-2003, and **Sean Hanley** in 2004. In the reboot, he is voiced by **Jacob Soley**. Slippery is a mostly light lavender rectangular bar of soap that has rounded edges, a smaller-shaped dent in the front and back, and a pair of arms with three fingers on each hand. He has a pair of black eyes and a pink mouth. He is always surrounded at the bottom by a trail of translucent bubbles of various colors (usually purple). In the original series, Slippery, Shovel, and Pail were the only main characters with permanent eyebrows.

**Supporting Characters**

* **Magenta -** Blue's best friend, who is the same age as Blue, and identical to her with the exception of a magenta fur coat and glasses. She is first shown in the episode "Blue's Story Time" but is not properly introduced until "Magenta Comes Over". She is one of Blue's classmates at school and has visited the Blue's Clues house on special occasions. Magenta is shyer than Blue but shares the same playful and energetic attitude. In the original series, Magenta was voiced by **Koyalee Chanda**. In the reboot, she is voiced by **Diane Salema**.

* **Periwinkle -** A precocious 5-year old male kitten from the city. In "**Blue's Big Mystery**", he makes his debut. His hobbies include performing magic tricks, putting on shows, and building forts. He is very outgoing and can speak unlike most of the other animal characters. He is in a long-distance friendship with a purple bird from the city named Plum. He is a bilingual speaker. He was voiced by **Cameron Bowen** from 2000-2001, by **Kenny Kim** from 2001-2003, and by **Jansen Panettiere** in 2004. He is bound to make a return in the 3rd season of the reboot series, **Blue's Clues & You!**.

* **The Felt Friends -** A group of children made entirely of geometric felt shapes. They live in a world that Blue and the host can enter by "skidooing" into a picture frame in the Blue's Clues house. They often ask for the host's help when they need to count, build, or fix something constructed with felt shapes. Many of the Felt Friends' names start with the letter F.

* **Turquoise -** Blue's pet turtle, who has a light blue shell with dark blue pentagonal shapes on it. She debuts in the season two episode "**Blue's Birthday**" when Steve gives her to Blue as a special birthday present. Turquoise appears sporadically in episodes afterwards, normally in a small glass terrarium on the bedroom shelf.

* **The Snail -** A pink garden snail who appears hidden in three scenes of every episode. His appearances are intended as Easter eggs for viewers to look for. The snail is rarely addressed directly or acknowledged by the main characters. He makes a guest appearance during the final musical number in **Blue's Big Musical Movie**, in which he sings while riding a skateboard and reveals himself to have a loud, deep voice. In the spin-off series **Blue's Room**, the snail appears as a stuffed animal in the background.

**Minor Characters**

* **Baby Bear -** A young, female bear cub from the storybook "**Goldilocks and the Three Bears**". After Blue and Steve visit her story in "**Blue's Story Time**", she becomes a recurring friend of Blue and visits the main characters on special occasions. She lives with her parents Papa Bear and Mama Bear. Her catchphrase is "**I'm not tired!**".

* **Gingerbread Boy -** A talking gingerbread cookie who lives in a board game similar to Candy Land. Blue and Steve occasionally "skidoo" into his game to visit him. He first appeared in "**Blue Wants to Play a Game**". He has a sister, **Gingerbread Girl**, who appears in the episode "**Geography**"

* **Green Puppy -** A 5-year-old mint green bulldog who communicates through gruff barks and is one of Blue's classmates. Her first appearance was "**Blue's Sad Day**". Unlike the other dogs featured in the series, Green Puppy is depicted with visible teeth incisors and has short ears. Green Puppy is playful but she can be a bit rough. She was voiced by **Adam Peltzman**.

* **Miranda -** Magenta's owner and Steve's friend. She wears a red long-sleeved sweater with black pants and red shoes. She is the only person other than Steve, Joe, and Josh to use the **Thinking Chair**, which she shares with Steve in "Shy". She was played by **Shannon Walker Williams**.

* **Marlee Matlin** plays herself as a live-action librarian who only appears in the episodes "**Blue's Book Nook**" and "**Our Neighborhood Festival**," and the Steve and Marlee promos. She appears to be deaf and silent, but can read people's lips and communicates through sign language.

* **Miss Marigold** - The teacher of Blue's preschool class who appears in three episodes. Unlike most of the other humans on the show, she is not portrayed by a live-action actor but is animated. In the reboot, she is a pink, anthropomorphic hippo with a flower on top of her head.

* **Orange Kitten** - A 5 year-old kitten who attends Blue's preschool class. She made her first appearance in "**Blue's Sad Day**". She was voiced by **Caitlin Hale**.

* **Purple Kangaroo -** A 5 year-old purple lavender colored kangaroo, who also attends Blue's preschool class. He first appears in "**Blue's Sad Day**". He was voiced by **Alexander Claffy**.

* **Steve's Grandmother** is the grandmother of Steve and Joe, who wears a green striped dress similar to Steve's shirt. She lives next door to the Blue's Clues house and is occasionally mentioned by Steve. Her only physical appearance is in "**Blue's Big Treasure Hunt**", where she was played by **Rue McClanahan**.

* **Wynonna -** Green Puppy's owner and Steve's friend; she and Green Puppy celebrate Christmas. Like most of Steve's live-action friends, she is only shown in one of the Christmas specials, "**Blue's Big Holiday**".

* **Tyrese -** Purple Kangaroo's owner and Steve's friend; he and Purple Kangaroo celebrate Kwanzaa. Like most of Steve's live-action friends, he is only shown in one of the Christmas specials, "**Blue's Big Holiday**".

* **Sam -** Orange Kitten's owner and Steve's friend; he and Orange Kitten celebrate Hanukkah. Like most of Steve's live-action friends, she is only shown in one of the Christmas specials, "**Blue's Big Holiday**".

* **Sifter -** A close friend of Shovel and Pail. His favorite hobby is basketball.

* **Plum -** A small purple bird and an old friend of Periwinkle from the city. He's also fluent in speaking Spanish.

## Format

In **The Tipping Point**, author **Malcolm Gladwell**, who called Blue's Clues the " 'stickiest'—meaning the most irresistible and involving—television show ever", described its format:

Steve, the host, presents the audience with a puzzle involving Blue, the animated dog ... To help the audience unlock the puzzle, Blue leaves behind a series of clues, which are objects marked with one of her paw prints. In between the discovery of the clues, Steve plays a series of games—mini-puzzles—with the audience that are thematically related to the overall puzzle ... As the show unfolds, Steve and Blue move from one animated set to another, jumping through magical doorways, leading viewers on a journey of discovery, until, at the end of the story, Steve returns to the living room. There, at the climax of the show, he sits down in a comfortable chair to think—a chair known, of course, in the literal world of Blue's Clues, as the Thinking Chair. He puzzles over Blue's three clues and attempts to come up with the answer.

Nickelodeon researcher Daniel R. Anderson called the structure of Blue's Clues a game that presented its viewers with increasingly challenging and developmentally appropriate problems to solve. Early episodes focused on basic subjects such as colors and numbers, but later the programs focused on math, physics, anatomy, and astronomy. The show's producers believed that comprehension and attention were strongly connected, so they wrote the episodes to encourage and increase their viewers' attention. They used content and production characteristics such as pacing which gave children time to respond, as well as "camera techniques, children's voices, musical cues, sound effects, clear transitions, repeatable dialogue, and visuals". Participation, in the form of spoken or physical response from the audience, and the mastery of thinking skills were encouraged by the use of repetition, both within the structure of individual episodes and across multiple episodes. The producers used a variety of formal features, which were auditory, and content features, which consisted of invitations given to the audience. The features were also in the form of both recurrent and unique formats and content. The purpose of the recurrent formats and content, which were similar in every episode, was to increase viewers' attention, comprehension, and participation during key educational lessons.

Nickelodeon originally aired the same episode daily for five days before showing the next one. The producers believed this telecast strategy empowered young children by giving them many opportunities to master the content and problems presented to them. Scholar Norma Pecora considered the broadcast strategy of airing the same episode for five consecutive days in a week "sound educational thinking", because children tend to watch the same episodes multiple times and learn from repetition, and "economically clever" because the network could air 2.5 hours with one episode over five days.

## Educational Goals

The creators and producers' mission of Blue's Clues was to "**empower, challenge, and build the self-esteem of preschoolers ... while making them laugh**". According to Anderson and his colleagues, the show's curriculum was based on "inherent respect for preschoolers and their ability to think and learn while having fun". Anderson and his colleagues stated that Blue's Clues was created with the question: What does television teach young children? Kessler, Santomero, and Johnson were influenced by **Mister Rogers' Neighborhood** and by **Sesame Street**, the first children's television program to create a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum developed from research and use developmental theory, child development, learning theory, and research. According to Anderson, it was essential that the writers and creators of Blue's Clues have background and experience in early childhood development theory and research in order to ensure that the audience understood the dialogue, game, and recurrent program elements in each episode.

Like **Sesame Street**, formative research was an important part of the development of each episode of **Blue's Clues***,* which was included in the show's production budgets . "We wanted to learn from Sesame Street and take it one step further", Santomero said. The producers and creators used formative research, which the producers called their "secret sauce", during all aspects of the program's creative and decision-making process*,* and Nickelodeon provided the funding to support it. In addition to a curriculum that emphasized reasoning skills relevant to preschoolers' everyday lives, the producers wanted to include audience participation, called by Variety its "call and response style", that encouraged problem solving, mastery of the information presented, positive reinforcement, and prosocial messages. They believed that a strong sense of self-esteem, which they sought to develop in their viewers, was linked to independent thinking and thinking skills. Anderson stated, "Age-appropriate pacing and explicit directions give children an opportunity to have a voice". Anderson and his colleagues compared audience participation on the program with hands-on practice provided by a caregiver. The show's producers believed, despite the viewpoints of past researchers, that children were intellectually active while watching television.

Sesame Street tested a third of its episodes, but the Blue's Clues research team field tested every episode three times with children aged between two to six in a variety of preschool environments such as **Head Start** programs, public schools, and private day care centers, in order to ascertain their abilities, interests, and knowledge, to ensure the mission and philosophy of the program, and to ensure balanced demographic groups. There were three phases of testing: content evaluation, video evaluations, and content analysis. In their tests of the pilot, conducted throughout the **New York City** area with over 100 children aged from three to seven, they found that as the pilot progressed, children's attention was captured and sustained, and they became excited and actively participated, standing to get closer to the television and speaking to the host. The producers and researchers also consulted outside advisers, who were chosen based on their expertise and the needs of each script. As Anderson stated, the formative research team served "as a liaison between the feedback provided by the preschoolers and outside advisers and the production team, including writers, talent, producers, directors, element artists, and animators".

Blue's Clues was designed and produced on the assumption that since children are cognitively active when they watch television, a television program could be an effective method of scientific education for young children by telling stories through pictures and by modeling behavior and learning. These learning opportunities included the use of mnemonics in the form of mantras and songs, and what Tracy called "metacognitive wrap-up" at the end of each episode, in which the lessons were summarized and rehearsed. The producers wanted to foster their audience's sense of empowerment by eliciting their assistance for the show's host and by encouraging their identification with the character Blue, who served as a stand-in for the typical preschooler.

The thinking games presented in each episode used what Anderson called "a layered approach" that took the varying capabilities of the audience into account. Santomero said that they used scaffolding and that layering was inherent in the script and design of each game. They purposely presented the problem presented in increasing levels of difficulty, to prevent children from feeling frustrated and to master concepts, experience success, and feel empowered to attempt to solve more challenging concepts presented to them. The producers' goal was that all viewers understood the problem, even if they did not know how to solve it. As a result, the child was temporary frustrated by not knowing the answer because after giving them time to come up with it, child voice-overs provided the answers for them, so that they learned the correct answers, even if they were unable to come up with them. If the child was able to come up with the answers, however, they felt "part of a larger, knowing, child audience" when their answers were confirmed by the voice-overs. The child voice-overs also helped viewers maintain high levels of attention during critical educational portions of the episode and modelled the audience involvement encouraged by the program. The audience was told how they could help problem-solve by the host explaining how, by the child voice-overs modeling verbal participation, and by giving them enough time to respond. According to Johnson, the slow pace of the program was challenging for television directors used to the fast pace of television production and for parents, who praised the pace but expressed concerns that their children would find it boring.

Sesame Street reflected the prevailing view that preschoolers had short attention spans; it featured a magazine-like format consisting of varied segments. Based on research conducted over the 30 years since the launch of Sesame Street by theorists like Anderson, the producers of Blue's Clues wanted to develop a show that took advantage of children's intellectual and behavioral activity when watching television. Previous children's television programs presented their content with little input from their viewers, but Blue's Clues was one of the first children's shows to actively invite its viewers' involvement. Its creators believed that if children were more involved in what they were viewing, they would attend to its content longer than previously expected—for up to a half hour—and learn more. They also dropped the magazine format for a more traditional narrative format. As **Variety** magazine stated, "The choice for Blue's Clues became to tell one story, beginning to end, camera moving left-to-right like reading a storybook, transitions from scene to scene as obvious as the turning of a page". Every episode of Blue's Clues was structured in this way.

The pace of Blue's Clues was deliberate, and its material was presented clearly. Similar to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, this was done was in the use of pauses that were "long enough to give the youngest time to think, short enough for the oldest not to get bored". The length of the pauses, which was estimated from formative research, gave children enough time to process the information and solve the problem. After pausing, child voice-overs provided the answers so that they were given to children who had not come up with the solution and helped encourage viewer participation. Researcher Alisha M. Crawley and her colleagues stated that although earlier programs sometimes invited overt audience participation, Blue's Clues was "unique in making overt involvement a systematic research-based design element". Blue's Clues also differed from Sesame Street by not using cultural references or humor aimed at adults, as this could confuse preschoolers but, instead, made the show literal, which the producers felt would better hold the children's attention. The structure of each episode was repetitive, designed to provide preschoolers with comfort and predictability. Repetition of the same skills used in different contexts or games within and across episodes encouraged the mastery of thinking skills and the approach to content within an episode was consistent with learning theory that emphasized situated cognition and provided all viewers, no matter their age or abilities, with repeated opportunities to try to solve the problems presented.

Since preschoolers tend to have difficulty understanding transitions, especially when they involve active inferences about time, space, and characters' perspective, the program's producers minimized transitions that required inference so that their viewers' intellectual resources could be devoted to understanding the episode's content. They accomplished this goal by limiting the number of settings during an episode and with the transitions occurring only between them and signaled by dialogue and enough time and information necessary to process them. The primary settings in Blue's Clues were the host's house and backyard, and transitions between them were usually done continuously, without the use of cuts. If transitions were accompanied by cuts, it was done by the host moving to and through a door and continuing as he entered the front or backyard. The biggest transition in Blue's Clues occurred when the host "**skiddoed**" and jumped into a picture or book, done in a magical way with plenty of warning that it was coming, and began and ended in the new environment. Anderson reported that children clearly understood and enjoyed the skiddo transition. Santomero reported that the skidoo transition was inspired by the use of the trolley in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which also served as a transition device.

## Reception

The ratings for Blue's Clues were high during its first season, and it was Nickelodeon's most popular preschool program. It has been described as the first commercial television show for preschoolers that was both educational and profitable. Its creators met regularly with businesses that developed Blue's Clues merchandise and products to ensure toys that were educational and met "the same high standards as the show". Products, like the show, were heavily tested prior to marketing. Blue's Clues had sold almost 40 million units of its 45 VHS and DVD titles by 1998 and generated over $1 billion in product licensing in 2000. More than ten million Blue's Clues books were in print by 2001 and over three million copies of six CD-ROM titles based on the show had been sold. Seven Blue's Clues titles sold at least 1 million copies each. The show's first direct-to-video production was **Blue's Big Musical Movie (2000)**, featuring Ray Charles and The Persuasions; it received mostly positive reviews and has sold over 3 million copies since 2006. The launch of Blue's Clues products at FAO Schwarz's flagship store in New York City was the most successful product launch in the store's history and was attended by over 7,000 people. Steve Burns' final episode in 2002 was viewed by 1.9 million preschoolers and received a 47 percent share of the overall audience. By 2002, Blue's Clues had received several awards for children's programming, educational software, and licensing. It won eight consecutive Emmys between 1998 and 2005 and won a Peabody Award in 2001.
**Ray Charles**, shown here in 1990, appeared in the popular Blue's Clues VHS tape, **Blue's Big Musical Movie.** It was his final film role prior to his death four years later, in 2004.

Starting in 1999, a live production of Blue's Clues toured the U.S. to positive reviews. As of 2002, over 2 million people had attended over 1,000 performances. The creators of the television show were involved in all aspects of the live show, aiming to translate the bond between the TV show's audience and its cast to the stage. The creators chose **Jonathan Hochwald** as the live show's producer, **Gip Hoppe** as its director, and Dave Gallo as its set designer. Neither Hoppe nor Gallo had any previous experience in children's theater. **Nick Balaban** and **Michael Rubin**, who wrote the music for the TV show, composed the live show's soundtrack. The producers were concerned with children's response to the host, who was played by **Tom Mizer** (a different actor than the host of the TV show), but his young audience enthusiastically accepted and embraced him. Actors were encouraged to improvise and respond to the audience, which resulted in changes throughout the show's run. The show's script included humor that both children and their parents could enjoy.

Regional versions of the show, featuring native hosts, have been produced in other countries. Kevin Duala hosted the United Kingdom version and the show became part of pop culture in South Korea. In total, Blue's Clues was syndicated in 120 countries, and was translated into 15 languages. In 2000, it became one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content, with between five and ten signs used consistently in each episode. Blue's Clues won an award from the **Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD)** for promoting deaf awareness in the media.

## Cultural Influence And Impact

The extensive use of research in the development and production process of Blue's Clues inspired several studies that provided evidence for its effectiveness as a learning tool. As Anderson and his colleagues reported, Blue's Clues had "a beneficial cognitive and social impact" the longer younger children watched it, which increased steadily over time, and that its benefits to cognitive development are both durable and cumulative. They also believed that the research conducted on the program demonstrated that when children's television programs were based on information gained from child development concepts, had a systematic curriculum, and were designed with "a research-based understanding of how children use and understand television, it can be a powerful and positive influence". As they stated, "it appears that the program is not only doing well, but it is also doing good”. In 2004, Anderson said that **Blue's Clues** "raised the bar" for educational television; he and **Variety** reported that audience participation became an important part of other educational preschool television programs such as **Dora the Explorer** and **Sesame Street**. Anderson also reported that after Blue's Clues, all of Nickelodeon's educational programming included the use of formative research.

In 2019, shortly after the premiere of Blue's Clues & You, the New York Times called Blue's Clues "**something of a throwback: a leisurely paced, unflashy show with the educational bona fides of its public TV predecessors Mr. Rogers** **and Sesame Street***"*. It also stated that Blue's Clues paved the way for shows like Dora the Explorer. The program was the first children's cable show built entirely around direct address, the first to invite preschoolers to play along with the characters with games and "mini-mysteries", and the first to include built-in silences designed for child participation. As **The New York Times** stated, "The show was interactive before interactivity became mundane".

Based on anecdotal evidence that preschoolers enjoyed repeated viewings of the programs they watched on television, including Anderson's own experience with his four-year old daughter, who asked to watch a tape of the pilot of Blue's Clues 17 times, the producers decided to repeat each episode daily for a week. Despite no published evidence that repeated viewings resulted in increased comprehension, especially for younger viewers, and would reinforce the problem-solving skills taught in each episode, and because they did not have enough money to produce a full season of episodes, Nickelodeon agreed to their broadcast strategy, and they were the first network to experiment with the approach. In the summer of 1996, before the premiere of Blue's Clues, Santomero, Anderson, and Wilder conducted a study, funded by Nickelodeon, about the effect of repeated viewings of the pilot episode on its viewers and their ability to learn the curriculum content contained in the episode.

Anderson reported that the results of the study were "clear, striking, and to us, very interesting". They found that except for the five-year old boys they tested, audience participation greatly increased with repetition, especially for the problem-solving portions of an episode, as did their comprehension and problem solving. Anderson stated, "As children learned how to solve the problems they would shout out the answers, talk to Steve, point to the screen, jump up with excitement, and so on". After five viewings, children had also become skilled at solving similar problems that had not been presented in the episode. Anderson reported that the repetition broadcast strategy worked during the program's first year. Nickelodeon used the same strategy for its premiere of Dora the Explorer in 2000, and Nielson ratings for both programs indicated no change in audience size during the time the repetitions aired. The study also demonstrated that watching Blue's Clues changed how children watch television and that their problem-solving skills and interaction would transfer to other programs they watched.

In 1999, Anderson and a team of researchers, some of which were his colleagues at Nickelodeon, studied how episode repetition affected comprehension, audience participation, and visual attention. The researchers tested whether repeated viewings of the show resulted in mastery over the material presented, or whether viewers would habituate to what they watched or become bored. The study demonstrated that for the first few repetitions, children pay close attention to the educational content because it was more cognitively demanding. The researchers concluded that audience participation was lower because children were devoting more of their cognitive resources to understanding and solving the problem presented in the episode. When they mastered the problems, which the researchers suspected happened the third time the children viewed the episode, they paid the same amount of attention to the educational content as to the entertainment content, which was less demanding. Audience participation, however, increased because their cognitive resources were freed up and because they knew the answers to the questions asked by the host and other characters. Anderson and his colleagues believed that their study proved that episode repetition appeared to foster their viewers' empowerment, as demonstrated in the viewers' enthusiastic efforts to help solve problems the host and other characters posed.

The study also demonstrated that experienced viewers (those familiar with the program) looked less at the screen than inexperienced viewers. All children looked at educational content more than at entertainment content. Experienced viewers looked at content unique to the program, but inexperienced viewers did not distinguish between the two types of content, since for them, all content was new. Experienced viewers interacted with the program more and showed better comprehension of the content than inexperienced viewers, especially when they were exposed to content that was repeated across episodes. As Anderson and his colleagues put it, "These results further support the notion that when content is new and challenging, preschoolers pay greater attention, but when it is in a recurrent format and therefore readily mastered, they interact more". In other words, "Interaction in Blue’s Clues to some extent thus reflects mastery". Nielsen ratings of the show's first season, when the same episode was shown daily, were flat over the five-day period, which indicated to Anderson that young children did not tire of its repetition or of its complexity over time. According to Crawley and her colleagues, the producers' repeat broadcast strategy had no negative effectives of the program's ratings and appeared to be a success.

In 2000, another team of researchers, including Anderson, Crawley, and other Nickelodeon colleagues, studied if watching Blue's Clues changed the way children watch television and if they learned "an interactive style of television viewing”, meaning that they were more interactive with an episode from a different series than viewers who did not have experience watching Blue’s Clues. They compared experienced and unexperienced viewers as they watched an episode of **Big Bag**, a “curriculum-based magazine format” series that aired on Cartoon Network, directed towards approximately the same audience as Blue’s Clues. They found that although experienced Blue's Clues viewers paid less overall attention to Big Bag than inexperienced viewers, their patterns of attention across Big Bag were identical to their attention to an episode of Blue's Clues. They also demonstrated that viewers had the same amount of comprehension in both programs, but Blue's Clues viewers interacted more with Big Bag than inexperienced viewers. When the content of Big Bag was new and challenging, Blue's Clues viewers paid more attention, and when it was familiar, either from previous viewings or in a format they recognized, they interacted with it more. In short, Anderson and his colleagues found that "interaction in Blue's Clues to some extent reflects mastery" and felt that their study demonstrated that watching Blue's Clues changed how young children watch television. Researcher Shalom M. Fisch, however, stated that although the show attempted to be "participatory", it could not truly be so, because unlike interactive computer games, the viewers' responses could not change or influence what occurred on-screen.

In 2002, Crawley, Anderson, and their colleagues conducted another study on the effects of Blue's Clues, this time researching whether more experienced viewers mastered the content and cognitive challenges faster and easier than first-time viewers. They surmised that experienced viewers would comprehend and interact more with the recurring and familiar segments of the show designed to aid comprehension, but they found that familiarity with the structure of an individual episode did not provide experienced viewers with an advantage over the inexperienced viewers. Crawley and Anderson also studied whether experienced viewers of Blue's Clues interacted more with other children's TV shows and whether the viewing behaviors they learned from Blue's Clues could be transferred to other shows. They found that although experienced viewers of Blue's Clue*s* interacted with an episode of another series, they did not spend more time watching it than viewers unfamiliar with the show. The researchers stated, "It is apparent that, although preschoolers learn to enthusiastically engage in overt audience participation, they do not, by and large, have a metacognitive understanding of why they do so."

The 2002 studies demonstrated that experience with watching one TV series affects how children watch other programs, especially in the way they interact with them. They also showed that since children are selective in the material they attend to and that their interaction increases with comprehension and mastery, children tend to pay more attention to novel information and interact more with material they have seen before and mastered. According to Crawley and her colleagues, Blue's Clues demonstrated that television could empower and influence children's long-term motivation for and a love of learning. As they stated, "One need only to watch children watch Blue’s Clues to realize that they respond to it with enormous enthusiasm".

Erin Ryan and her colleagues performed a 2009 study on the effect of the use of **American Sign Language (ASL)** in **Blue's Clues** episodes. They analyzed 16 episodes over two weeks for the content and frequency of the signs used and found a high incidence of ASL use by various characters, but that it was inconsistent, especially in the connection between English words and their corresponding signs. The purpose of signed communication and its connection with ASL and the Deaf community was also not clearly explained. The researchers speculated that hearing children with no previous ASL exposure would become familiar with ASL and with deaf people by these episodes, thus reducing the stigma attached to deafness and hard of hearing individuals. Based on other research about the positive effects of teaching ASL to hearing children, the researchers also speculated that it could lead to an increase of vocabulary skills and IQ, as well as improve interpersonal communication. They surmised that deaf children would feel more included and less isolated and have more opportunities to view positive models of ASL and deaf people.

**Georgene L. Troseth** and her colleagues at Vanderbilt University studied how toddlers used information gained from prerecorded video and from interactions with a person through closed-circuit video, and found that two-year-old children did not learn as much from prerecorded videos because the videos lacked social cues and personal references. Two-year-olds who viewed a video with instructions about how to find a toy in an adjoining room from a non-interactive researcher did not use the information, even though they smiled and responded to questions. Troseth speculated that their research had implications for interactive educational shows like Blue's Clues, which although was "on the right track" because the host invited interaction with the show's viewers, did not provide children with the social cues to solve real-world problems. Troseth stated that repetition, repeated exposure, and familiarity with the show's host may increase children's ability to learn facts and to use strategies they learn from Blue's Clues to solve new problems. Her research suggested that Blue's Clues engaged young children and elicited their active participation because they mimicked social interaction.

## Home Media

VHS and DVD releases of **Blue's Clues**...

* **Story Time - VHS**
* **Arts And Crafts - VHS**
* **Blue's Birthday - VHS**
* **ABC's And 123's - VHS**
* **Rhythm And Blue - VHS**
* **Back To Basics - VHS**
* **Blue's Big Treasure Hunt - VHS**
* **Blue's Discoveries - VHS**
* **Blue's Big Pajama Party - VHS**
* **Blue's Safari - VHS**
* **Magenta Comes Over - VHS**
* **Stop, Look And Listen! VHS**
* **Blue's Big Musical Movie - VHS & DVD**
* **All Kinds Of Signs - VHS**
* **Playtime With Periwinkle - VHS**
* **Cafe Blue - VHS**
* **Blue's Pool Party - VHS (Australia)**
* **Blue's Big Holiday - VHS**
* **Blue's Big News Vol. 1: Read All About It! VHS**
* **Blue's Big News Vol. 2: The Baby Is Here! VHS**
* **Telling Time With Blue - VHS**
* **Reading With Blue - VHS**
* **Meet Joe! VHS**
* **It's Joe Time! VHS**
* **Blue's Big Band - VHS & DVD**
* **Shapes And Colors - VHS & DVD**
* **Blue Takes You To School - VHS & DVD**
* **Blue's First Holiday - VHS & DVD**
* **100th Episode Celebration - VHS**
* **Blue Talks - VHS & DVD**
* **Big, Blue And Just For You! Vol. 1-7 - VHS**

**DVD**

* **Get To Know Joe! DVD**
* **Classic Clues - DVD**
* **Blue's Jobs - DVD**
* **Blue's Biggest Stories - DVD**

**Australia**

* **Blue's Clues: Season 1 - DVD**
* **Blue Discovers Arts & Crafts - DVD**
* **What's So Funny, Blue? DVD**

**Asia (Singapore)**

* **All About Blue - DVD (Blue's Safari, Magenta Comes Over & Blue's Big News: The Baby Is Here)**
* **Play And Learn Time With Blue - DVD (Telling Time With Blue, Story Time & Blue's Birthday)**
* **Blue's Big Play Time - DVD (Blue's Big Treasure Hunt & Blue's Big Pajama Party)**
* **Blue Learns Sign And Sound - DVD (All Kinds Of Signs & Stop, Look And Listen!)**

**Other**

* **Blue Clues: ABC's, 123's And More - DVD Collection**
* **Blue's Clues: Get Clued Into School - DVD**

Blue's Clues: Story Time - VHS (June 1998)Blue's Clues: Arts And Crafts - VHS (June 1998)Blue's Clues: Blue's Birthday - VHS (September 1998)Blue's Clues: ABC's And 123's - VHS (January 1999)Blue's Clues: Rhythm And Blue - VHS (January 1999)Blue's Clues - Back To Basics - VHS (January 1999; Kidmongus)Blue's Clues: Big, Blue And Just For You: Vol. 1 - VHS (1998)Blue's Clues: Big, Blue And Just For You: Vol. 2 - VHS (1999)Blue's Clues: Big, Blue And Just For You: Vol. 3 - VHS (1999)Blue's Clues: Big, Blue And Just For You: Vol. 4 - VHS (2000)Blue's Clues: Big, Blue And Just For You: Vol. 5 - VHS (2001)Blue's Clues: Big, Blue And Just For You: Vol. 6 - VHS (2002)Blue's Clues: Big, Blue And Just For You: Vol. 7 - VHS (2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Treasure Hunt - VHS (June 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Discoveries - VHS (September 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Pajama Party - VHS (October 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Safari - VHS (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Magenta Comes Over - VHS (March 2000)Blue's Clues: Stop, Look And Listen! VHS (June 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Musical Movie - VHS (October 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Musical Movie - DVD (October 2000)Blue's Clues: All Kinds Of Signs - VHS (February 2001)Blue's Clues: Playtime With Periwinkle - VHS (May 2001)Blue's Clues: Cafe Blue - VHS (September 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Pool Party - VHS (August 2001; Australia)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Holiday - VHS (September 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big News: Vol. 1: Read All About It! VHS (November 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big News: Vol. 2: The Baby's Here! VHS (November 2001)Blue's Clues: Telling Time With Blue - VHS (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Reading With Blue - VHS (May 2002)Blue's Clues: Meet Joe! VHS (August 2002)Blue's Clues: It's Joe Time! VHS (November 2002)Blue's Clues: Get To Know Joe! DVD (November 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Band - VHS (February 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Band - DVD (February 2003)Blue's Clues: 100th Episode Celebration - VHS (March 2003)Blue's Clues: Shapes And Colors - VHS (June 2003)Blue's Clues: Shapes And Colors - DVD (June 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue Takes You To School - VHS (August 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue Takes You To School - DVD (August 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's First Holiday - VHS (September 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's First Holiday - DVD (September 2003)Blue's Clues: Classic Clues - DVD (January 2004)Blue's Clues: Blue Talks - VHS (May 2004)Blue's Clues: Blue Talks - DVD (May 2004)Blue's Clues: Bluestock - VHS (September 2004)Blue's Clues: Bluestock - DVD (September 2004)Blue's Clues: Blue's Jobs - DVD (May 2006)Blue's Clues: Blue's Biggest Stories - DVD (August 2006)Blue's Clues: Blue Discovers Arts And Crafts - DVD (April 2006; Australia)Blue's Clues: Season One - DVD (April 2014; Australia)Blue's Clues: What's So Funny? DVD (2006)Blue's Clues: All About Blue - DVD (Singapore)Blue's Clues: Learn And Play With Blue - DVD (Singapore)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Play Time! DVD (Singapore)Blue's Clues: Blue Learns Sign And Sound - DVD (Singapore)Blue's Clues: ABC's, 123's And More - 3-Disc DVD (October 2004)Blue's Clues: Get Clued Into School Pack - DVD (March 2015)

## Books

Blue's Clues book releases...

* **Blue's Felt Friends**
* **Good Night, Blue**
* **Weather Games With Blue**
* **Welcome To Blue's Clues!**
* **It's Present Day!**
* **Blue's Snack Party**
* **Blue's Thanksgiving Feast**
* **Blue's Travel Game**
* **Blue And The Color Detectives**
* **Blue's ABC Detective Game**
* **Blue's Snowy Day**
* **Blue's Buttons**
* **What's Next?**
* **Blue's Big Book Of Stories**
* **Healthy Snacks With Blue!**
* **Blue's Bad Dream**
* **Blue's Best Rainy Day**
* **Blue's Big Birthday**
* **Blue's Big Pajama Party**
* **Blue's Big Parade**
* **Blue's Big Treasure Hunt**
* **A Visit From The Tooth Fairy**
* **Magenta's Visit**
* **Magenta Gets Glasses**
* **Magenta's Super Sleepover**
* **Blue Goes To School**
* **What To Do, Blue?**
* **Figure Out Blue's Clues!**
* **Blue's Checkup**
* **Blue's Sniffly Day**
* **Blue's Egg Hunt**
* **A Blue's Clues Holiday**
* **I'm Sorry!**
* **Blue's Lost Backpack**
* **Blue's Guess Who**
* **The Shape Detectives**
* **Off To School With Periwinkle And Blue**
* **Spring Is Here!**
* **I Want To Be In The Show!**
* **Green Puppy Goes To The Dentist**
* **Celebrate With Blue!**
* **Blue's First Holiday**
* **Meet Joe!**
* **Blue's World Of Words**
* **Blue's Valentine's Day**
* **Joe Moves In: A First Week Scrapbook**
* **Blue's Riddle Game**
* **Blue's Pop-Up Surprise!**
* **Growing Up With Blue**
* **Blue's Lunchbox**
* **It's Spring, Blue!**
* **Blue's Treasury Of Stories**
* **Blue's Halloween Hide And Seek / Blue's Spooky Hide-And-Seek**
* **Blue's Treasure Hunt Notebook**
* **Blue's Fall Day**
* **Hide And Seek With Blue**
* **Blue's Costume Party**
* **Lights On! Lights Off!**
* **One For Me, One For You: A Book About Sharing**
* **A Blue's Clues Chanukah**
* **Who Am I?**
* **Blue's First 100 Days Of School**
* **It's Friendship Day!**
* **What Is Blue Feeling?**
* **Blue Skidoos To The Farm**
* **Crayon World**
* **We're Thankful!**
* **Ready, Set...Grow!**
* **The "You Can Be Anything That You Want To Be" Show!**
* **Blue's #1 Picnic**
* **Blue's Amazing Body Book**
* **Periwinkle Moves In**
* **Seasons In Blue's Backyard**

**Discovery Books**

* **Blue's Art Day**
* **Blue's Bedtime**
* **Blue's Rainy Day Music**
* **A Picnic With Blue**
* **Blue Looks For Books**
* **Blue's Cool Idea**
* **Blue Skidoos To The Beach**
* **Blue's Frustrating Day**
* **Blue Makes Breakfast**
* **Blue Puts On A Play**
* **Home Sweet Home**
* **Blue's Big Week**
* **Something To Say**
* **Blue's Garden**
* **Things That Fly**
* **Count And Save With Blue**
* **Blue's Windy Day**

**Nick Jr. Book Club**

* **Blue's Clues ABC's**
* **Where Is Polka Dots?**
* **Blue's Backyard Mystery**
* **The Sharing Surprise**
* **The Color Finders**
* **Blue's Safari Skidoo**
* **Blue's Dinosaur Week Countdown**
* **Blue's Perfect Present**

**Blue's Clues Baby**

* **Blue's Friends**
* **Blue's Baby Animals**
* **Get Dressed!**
* **Faces**
* **Feelings**
* **Counting With Blue**
* **Guess Who Loves Blue**
* **Peekaboo, Blue!**
* **Bedtime**
* **One Little Duck**
* **Blue's Colors**
* **What's That Sound, Blue?**
* **Blue's Bedtime**
* **Blue's Starry Night**

**Golden Books**

* **Snacktime With Blue**
* **Blue's Big Backyard**
* **Blue's Big Day**
* **A Memory Book For Blue And You**
* **Blue's Adventures**
* **Winter With Blue**
* **Super Blue To The Rescue!**
* **Welcome, Joe!**
* **Blue's Musical Day**
* **Blue's Book Of Clues**
* **Blue's Nature Game**
* **Spending Time With Blue**
* **Outside With Blue**
* **The Baby Book**
* **Adventures In Art With Blue**

**Ready-To-Read**

* **My Favorite Letters**
* **My Pet Turtle**
* **My Visit With Periwinkle**
* **Magenta And Me**
* **Blue's Ready-To-Read Treasury**
* **Hooray For Polka Dots!**
* **My Dress-Up Party**
* **Read Along With Blue**
* **Blue's Beach Day**
* **Meet My Family**
* **Blue's Read Together Storybook**
* **Hello, Spring!**
* **My Name Is Blue**

**Other**

* **The Blue's Clues Nursery Rhyme Treasury**
* **Blue's Bedtime Nursery Rhymes**
* **Blue's 12 Days Of Christmas**
* **Be Safe, Blue!**
* **Blue's School Pictures**
* **Blue Sends A Message**
* **Party Time With Blue**
* **Blue's Music Maker**
* **Fun In The Sun!**
* **I Spot!**
* **It's Showtime!**
* **Which Way Do I Go?**
* **Blue's Friendship Day (What Is Blue Building?)**
* **Blue's Fruit Field Trip**
* **Blue's Big Car Trip**
* **Animal House**
* **Blue's Quilt**
* **School Day With Blue**
* **Snowy Holidays**
* **A Scavenger Hunt With Blue**
* **Blue's Song Game**
* **Blue's Songtime**
* **Friendship Songs**
* **Blue's Friends: Play-A-Sound**
* **Blue's Big Surprise**
* **Blue's Sleepover Party**
* **Blue Skidoos To The Planets!**

Blue's Clues: Blue's Felt Friends (July 1998)Blue's Clues: Good Night, Blue (September 1999)Blue's Clues: Weather Games With Blue! (October 1999)Blue's Clues: Welcome To Blue's Clues! (November 1999)Blue's Clues: It's Present Day! (October 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Snack Party (November 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Travel Game (March 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue And The Color Detectives (July 1998)Blue's Clues: Blue's ABC Detective Game (February 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Snowy Day (November 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Buttons (November 2000)Blue's Clues: What's Next? (August 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Book Of Stories (October 2000)Blue's Clues: Healthy Snacks With Blue! (June 2007)Blue's Clues: Blue's Bad Dream (October 2006)Blue's Clues: Blue's Best Rainy Day (July 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Birthday (July 1998)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Birthday (June 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Pajama Party (September 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Parade (May 2005)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Treasure Hunt (February 1999)Blue's Clues: A Visit From The Tooth Fairy (December 2003)Blue's Clues: Magenta's Visit (June 1999)Blue's Clues: Magenta Gets Glasses (May 2002)Blue's Clues: Magenta's Super Sleepover (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue Goes To School (July 2000)Blue's Clues: What To Do, Blue? (June 1999)Blue's Clues: Figure Out Blue's Clues! (December 1998)Blue's Clues: Blue's Checkup (June 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's Sniffly Day (February 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Egg Hunt (February 2001)Blue's Clues: A Blue's Clue's Holiday (October 1999)Blue's Clues: A Blue's Clue's Holiday (October 2004)Blue's Clues: I'm Sorry! (September 2007)Blue's Clues: Blue's Lost Backpack (March 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Guess Who! (October 1999)Blue's Clues: The Shape Detectives (July 1998)Blue's Clues: Off To School With Periwinkle And Blue (January 2003)Blue's Clues: Spring Is Here! (January 2006)Blue's Clues: I Want To Be In The Show! (October 2000)Blue's Clues: Green Puppy Goes To The Dentist (February 2008)Blue's Clues: Celebrate With Blue! A Book Of Winter Holidays (October 2004)Blue's Clues: Blue's First Holiday (October 2003)Blue's Clues: Meet Joe! (July 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's World Of Words (June 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Valentine's Day (February 2000)Blue's Clues: Joe Moves In: A First-Week Scrapbook (July 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Riddle Game (April 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Pop-Up Surprise! (August 2005)Blue's Clues: Growing Up With Blue: A 10th Anniversary Collection (April 2006)Blue's Clues: It's Spring, Blue! (February 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Treasury Of Stories (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Halloween Hide-and-Seek (September 2000)Blue's Clues: Joe Moves In: A First-Week Scrapbook (July 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Treasure Hunt Notebook (February 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Fall Day (July 2007)Blue's Clues: Hide-And-Seek With Blue (April 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Costume Party (October 1999)Blue's Clues: Lights On! Lights Off! (July 1998)Blue's Clues: One For Me, One For You: A Book About Sharing (2006)Blue's Clues: A Blue's Clues Chanukah (October 2003)Blue's Clues: Who Am I? (October 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's First 100 Days Of School (July 2003)Blue's Clues: It's Friendship Day! (January 2006)Blue's Clues: What Is Blue Feeling? (November 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue Skidoos To The Farm (July 1998)Blue's Clues: Crayon World (August 2002)Blue's Clues: We're Thankful! (September 1999)Blue's Clues: Ready, Set...Grow! (May 2000)Blue's Clues: The "You Can Be Anything That You Want To Be" Show! (September 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's #1 Picnic (July 1998)Blue's Clues: Blue's Amazing Body Book (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Periwinkle Moves In (October 2000)Blue's Clues: Seasons In Blue's Backyard (June 1999)**Discovery Series**

Blue's Clues: Blue's Art Day (2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Bedtime (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Rainy Day Music (January 2000)Blue's Clues: A Picnic With Blue (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue Looks For Books (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Cool Idea (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue Skidoos To The Beach (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Frustrating Day (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue Makes Breakfast (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue Puts On A Play (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Home Sweet Home (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Week (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Something To Say (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Garden (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Things That Fly (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Count And Save With Blue (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Windy Day (January 2000)**Nick Jr. Book Club/Nick Jr. Play To Learn**

Blue's Clues: Blue's Clues ABC's (November 2002)Blue's Clues: Where Is Polka Dots? (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Backyard Mystery (April 2003)Blue's Clues: The Sharing Surprise (January 2003)Blue's Clues: The Color Finders (January 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's Safari Skidoo (January 2008)Blue's Clues: Blue's Dinosaur Week Countdown (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Perfect Present (September 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Dinosaur Week Countdown (January 2003; Nick Jr. Play To Learn)Blue's Clues: Blue's Backyard Mystery (Nick Jr. Play To Learn)Blue's Clues: The Color Finders (Nick Jr. Play To Learn)
**Baby Blue's Clues**

Baby Blue's Clues: Blue's Friends (October 2001)Baby Blue's Clues: Blue's Baby Animals (February 2003)Baby Blue's Clues: Get Dressed! (March 2003)Baby Blue's Clues: Faces (May 2002)Baby Blue's Clues: Feelings (May 2002)Baby Blue's Clues: Counting With Blue (October 2001)Baby Blue's Clues: Guess Who Loves Blue! (January 2002)Baby Blue's Clues: Peekaboo, Blue! (February 2002)Baby Blue's Clues: BedtimeBaby Blue's Clues: One Little Duck (January 2004)Baby Blue's Clues: Blue's ColorsBaby Blue's Clues: What's That Sound, Blue? (2002)Baby Blue's Clues: Blue's Bedtime (July 2001)Baby Blue's Clues: Blue's Starry Night (October 2002)**Golden Books**

Blue's Clues: Snacktime With Blue: Super Coloring And Activity Book (1998)Blue's Clues: Blue's Backyard: Coloring And Activity Book (2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Day: Super Coloring And Activity Book (October 2000)Blue's Clues: A Memory Book For Blue And You: Coloring Book (September 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Adventures: Ultimate Coloring And Activity BookBlue's Clues: Winter With Blue: Super Coloring Book (September 1999)Blue's Clues: Super Blue To The Rescue! Water Color Book (2001)Blue's Clues: Welcome, Joe! Coloring And Magnet Book (August 2002)Blue's Clues: Blue's Musical Day (April 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Book Of Clues (March 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Nature Game (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Spending Time With Blue: Super Coloring And Activity Book (October 2000)Blue's Clues: Outside With Blue (2001)Blue's Clues: The Baby BookBlue's Clues: Adventures In Art With Blue: Coloring Book (2002)**Ready-To-Read**

Blue's Clues: My Favorite Letters (February 2001)Blue's Clues: My Pet Turtle (October 2001)Blue's Clues: My Visit With Periwinkle (March 2003)Blue's Clues: Magenta And Me (July 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Ready-To-Read Treasury (2000)Blue's Clues: Hooray For Polka Dots! (January 2007)Blue's Clues: My Dress-Up Party (April 2013)Blue's Clues: Read Along With Blue (September 2005)Blue's Clues: Blue's Beach Day (May 2004)Blue's Clues: Meet My Family (June 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Read-Together Storybook (November 2002)Blue's Clues: Hello, Spring! (January 2004)Blue's Clues: My Name Is Blue (July 2000)**Other**

Blue's Clues: The Blue's Clues Nursery Rhyme Treasury (January 2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Bedtime Nursery Rhymes (July 2004)Blue's Clues: Blue's 12 Days Of Christmas (October 2002)Blue's Clues: Be Safe, Blue! (June 2004)Blue's Clues: Blue's School Pictures: Play-a-Sound Book (2005)Blue's Clues: Blue Sends A Message: Play-a-Sound (March 2003)Blue's Clues: Party Time With Blue: Play-a-Sound (July 2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's Music Maker: Play-a-Song (January 2002)Blue's Clues: Fun In The Sun! NickelodeonBlue's Clues: I Spot! Mini Look-And-Find (2007)Blue's Clues: It's Showtime! Sound Book (November 2000)Blue's Clues: Which Way Do I Go? Coloring And Activity Book (2004)Blue's Clues: Blue's Friendship Day (What Is Blue Building?) (2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's Fruit Field Trip! (2003)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Car Trip (2004)Blue's Clues: Animal House: Coloring Book (2004)Blue's Clues: Blue's Quilt (2003)Blue's Clues: School Day With Blue (2003)Blue's Clues: Snowy Holidays (2003)Blue's Clues: A Scavenger Hunt With Blue (2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Song Game: Play-A-Song (2001)Blue's Clues: Blue's Songtime: Play-a-Song (January 2000)Blue's Clues: Friendship Songs: Play-a-Song (January 2004)Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Surprise: Play-a-Sound (January 1999)Blue's Clues: Blue's Friends: Play-a-Sound (January 2003)Blue's Clues: Where Are You, Blue? Sound Book (July 2000)Blue's Clues: Blue's Sleepover Party (September 2005)Blue's Clues: Blue Skidoos To The Planets! (June 1999)

## Games

PC & Console Games/Flash Game releases for **Blue's Clues**...

**Blue's Birthday Adventure**

An educational video game released for **Mac OS** and **Windows** on September 8, 1998. **Blue's Birthday Adventure** is packaged on two CD-ROMs, and each CD-ROM contains two scenarios in the form of questions. These are all themed around Steve, Blue's owner, preparing for Blue the dog's birthday party. Before play commences the player must first enter their name, their date of birth and their favorite color. Players control Steve during play, who breaks the fourth wall by directly speaking to players. The game shares many similarities with the television series. These include Steve being a live-action character appearing in a two-dimensional house designed to look like a paper cut out and Blue communicating by leaving blue paw prints in pertinent locations.

Once the scenario is selected the player must help Steve complete it by solving three problems, guiding him through the house in order to locate clues. Each problem is solved by finding clues which are marked by blue paw prints within the game. In order to locate clues players must interact with characters in the game and provide them with the items they require. Each clue found results in a task for the player. Once all the clues have been located and the tasks presented have been completed, the player helps Steve perform a song, such as the **Blue's Clues** theme tune.

The game is split into three difficulty levels; these affect the task which the player must complete when they discover a clue. For instance, at the lowest difficulty level a clue may be solved by picking the correct drawing shown on the screen, on the higher difficulty level the same task may require player to piece segments of the picture together in order to produce a complete picture.

**Blue's Treasure Hunt**

An educational PC video game released on September 10, 1999. The game is developed and published **Humongous Entertainment**. The game is based off the Blue's Clues episode "**Blue's Big Treasure Hunt**".

The premise of the game revolves around a treasure hunt, where the player helps Blue and her friend Steve find hidden objects. The gameplay involves a **point-and-click adventure game interface**.

According to **PC Data**, the game was the **9th Top Selling Home Education software** for the week of May 28, 2000 to June 3, 2000. The game's interface and other attributes generally received praise.

**Blue's 123 Time Activities**

An educational game developed and published by **Humongous Entertainment** and released on the PC and Mac OS in 1999. It was the first game in the **Blue's Clues** video game series, in turn based on the television series of the same name.

This educational **point-and-click game** teaches young players math through fun activities, as they help Steve Burns and Blue and their friends accomplish goals and tasks. Kids learn skills such as measurement, estimation, weight, pattern, and counting.

**SuperKids** said the game taught math in a "pleasant, non-threatening way". ***Review Corner*** said the game had "excellent activities" and " good replay value". **Allgame** said the game captured the "flavor, feel, and tone" of the TV series. **KidSource** said the game was a "high-performance multimedia program". **Discovery Education** said the game was both educational and entertaining. **Sonic** described the game as "wonderful" and ***Parent's Choice*** deemed it "charming". A review by education professors at the **University of Texas** highly recommended the title. **Games First** liked the difficulty system as "children can play at their own developmental level and progress as their skills improve"  **Playtesters** thought the game was a "great learning experience". **Kids Domain** praised the graphics and audio for emulating the television series.

**Blue's ABC Time Activities**

An educational game developed and published by **Humongous Entertainment** in 1999.

The game teaches players fun activities through alphabet, words and phonics.

Explore the world of letters, sounds, and words with Blue and her friends in this activity pack filled with multilevel learning games. Identify letters, build vocabulary, practice phonics, and create rhymes as you collect words to help Blue build silly stories in her Word Book. The more words you collect, the more stories you can create and print out.

Blue and her friends help strengthen early learning skills, including initial letter recognition, upper and lowercase letter discrimination, alphabet recognition and sequencing, phonics, visual and auditory discrimination, consonant blends, word formation, early vocabulary, and rhyming.

**Blue's Reading Time Activities**

An educational PC game developed and published by **Humongous Entertainment** in 2000.

Steve wants to create **The Big News Gazette** with Blue and and the player. The player can interview Blue's friends, make stories, play the Word Match game, and more, as Purple Kangaroo, Mailbox, Baby Bear, Fan, and Periwinkle are wait for the player at the library.

The game encourages players to read words and create their own stories.

**Blue's Art Time Activities**
An educational PC game developed and published by **Humongous Entertainment** in 2000.

Steve and Blue need help creating art for the **Really Big Art Show**. Will you help them? Chalk Girl, Marky Marker, Al Luminum, and Blue's brand new friend, Periwinkle, need help with their art too. There's so much to do and learn with Blue. Blue and her friends help you strengthen early art skills, including: Color Mixing, Texture and composition, Recognition of shapes, Fine motor skills.
The game teaches players colors, shapes and art skills.

**Blue's Alphabet Book**

An educational video game developed by **Vicarious Visions,** published by **Mattel Interactive** and distributed by **Nick Jr.** for the **Game Boy Color**. The game was released on January 30, 2001. The game teaches players the alphabet.
At the main menu of the game, people can choose to play one of the six mini-games or look in Blue's alphabet book. Upon choosing Blue, a player can select one of the eight pages of the book or look at the collected pages and credits.

When he/she selects a page, the game will start by showing the same cut scene of Blue showing Steve that all of the pages of her book are missing, and that they have to play Blue's Clues to find them. The person will proceed to play three of the six mini-games.

After the player play a mini-game, a clue will show up and Steve will proceed to draw it in the Handy Dandy Notebook. After all three clues are found, the player will then go to the Thinking Chair where all three clues will be shown, the game will then proceed to show where the page is at.

After the player finds a page, the mini-games he or she has played will become harder.

**Blue's Big Musical (PlayStation)**

An educational video game based off the direct-to-video film, **Blue's Big Musical Movie,** produced for the **PlayStation**. This made the game to make its appearance on a home console for the first time rather other than the **V.Smile**. The game was developed by **Terraglyph Studios,** published by **THQ/Mattel Interactive,** and released on March 1, 2001.

* 1000 2nd prize winners of the **Blue's Big Musical Movie Sweepstakes** received a copy of the game along with the **Blue's Big Musical Movie Soundtrack**.

**Blue's Clues: Preschool**

An educational PC game developed by **InfoGames**/**Atari, Nick Jr. Interactive** and released on August 20, 2002. The game introduces players to the experience of preschool with many levels teaching the basic concepts of preschool.

Blue is going to school! Get through the few levels of the game while you learn the concepts of preschool, like math and the alphabet.

**Blue's Clues: Kindergarten**

An educational PC game developed by **InfoGames**, **Nick Jr. Interactive** and released on October 17, 2002. The game introduces players to the experience of kindergarten.

Blue and Periwinkle are playing school! Play all three levels of the game while you learn the concepts of kindergarten, like rhyming, telling time, creating, math and science.

**Blue Takes You To School**

An educational PC game developed by **Atari**, **Nick Jr. Interactive** and released on August 11, 2003. The game is based off the episode of the same name.

Blue takes you to school! Play all three levels of the game while you learn the concepts of school, like music, painting, taking care of Giggles, playing outside, nature photo taking and exploring your school cubby.

* When this game was released, it along with the VHS and DVD release of the same name came with details for a chance to win the "**Blue Takes You to School Sweepstakes**", where Blue would make a visit to the winner's school.

**Flash Game/Other PC releases...**

* **Blue's Clues: Do You See My Friend?**
* **Blue's Clues: Sorting Pictures With Blue And Steve**
* **Blue's Clues: Sorting Clothes**
* **Blue's Clues: Instrument Sound Matching**
* **Blue's Clues: Matching Snowflakes**
* **Blue's Clues: Jigsaw Puzzles**
* **Blue's Clues: Picture Frame Patterns**
* **Blue's Clues: Fairy Tale Matching**
* **Blue's Clues: Letter "P" Word Play**
* **Blue's Clues: Shadow Matching**
* **Blue's Clues: Felt Friends Dress-Up**
* **Blue's Clues: Picture Riddles**
* **Blue's Clues: The Popsicle Stick Project**
* **Blue's Clues: Lights On, Lights Off**
* **Blue's Clues: Sink And Float**
* **Blue's Clues: Recycle!**
* **Blue's Clues: Let's Dream**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue's ABC's**
* **Blue's Clues: Counting With Cash Register**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue's Birthday!**
* **Blue's Clues: Water Xylophone**
* **Blue's Clues: Race Against Time**
* **Blue's Clues: Lost And Found**
* **Blue's Clues: Feelings**
* **Blue's Clues: Felt Friend Tic-Tac-Toe**
* **Blue's Clues: Kaleidoscope Pictures!**
* **Blue's Clues: What Does Paprika Need?**
* **Blue's Clues: Teeter-Totter**
* **Blue's Clues: Blowing Matching Bubbles!**
* **Blue's Clues: Racing Cars!**
* **Blue's Clues: Art Appreciation**
* **Blue's Clues: Weight And Balance**
* **Blue's Clues: What's That Sound?**
* **Blue's Clues: Hide-And-Seek!**
* **Blue's Clues: Treasure Hunt!**
* **Blue's Clues: Concentration**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue's Pajama Party**
* **Blue's Clues: Holiday Quilt**
* **Blue's Clues: Healthy Snacks**
* **Blue's Clues: Paint Blue's Wagon**
* **Blue's Clues: Put Tickety Back Together**
* **Blue's Clues: Thankful**
* **Blue's Clues: Joe's Scrapbook Journey**
* **Blue's Clues: Art Project**
* **Blue's Clues: Music Maker**
* **Blue's Clues: Mix 'N Match Dress-Up**
* **Blue's Clues: Let's Draw**
* **Blue's Clues: Signs**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue's Checkup**
* **Blue's Clues: What's In The Box?**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue Is My Name**
* **Blue's Clues: The Shadow Game**
* **Blue's Clues: Ghost Hunt**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue's Gold Clues Challenge**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue's Matching Game**
* **Blue's Clues: Periwinkle's Disappearo**
* **Blue's Clues: Joe's 3D Scavenger Hunt**
* **Blue's Clues: Blue's Collection (V.Smile)**

## CD's, Albums & VCD's

Discography releases for **Blue's Clues**/VCD releases (**DigiLearn**)...

**Blue's Clues Boogie** is the first song compilation album released by **Nick Records & Jive** on November 19, 2002. The album features songs from the previously released Blue's Clues albums (albeit edited), alongside a new song recorded for the album.

* **Hi, There/I'm So Happy You're Here**
* **Can You Help Me Today?**
* **Something To Do Stew**
* **The Buddy Boogie**
* **Say What I Say**
* **I Can Be Anything That I Wanna Be**
* **So Long Song**

**Blue's Biggest Hits** is a Blue's Clues CD album released in 2006 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of **Blue's Clues**.

1. **Hi There/I'm So Happy You're Here**
2. **Blue's Clues Theme Song**
3. **Planets**
4. **Alphabet Song**
5. **Buddy Boogie**
6. **Mailtime**
7. **Play Blue's Clues**
8. **Colors**
9. **Rain Song**
10. **Blue's Big Treasure**
11. **Why Are We Such Good Friends?**
12. **Silly Hat**
13. **Glasses**
14. **Opposite Song**
15. **So Long Song**
16. **The Magic Of Blue's Room**

**A Playdate With Blue** is a CD album released in 2000. The album contains 13 tracks from the series.

1. **Hi There/I'm So Happy You're Here**
2. **Truly A Friend**
3. **Blue's Clues Theme**
4. **We Are Listening For Blue's Clues**
5. **Say What I Say**
6. **Truly A Friend (Reprise 1)**
7. **Mailtime**
8. **Why Are We Such Good Friends?**
9. **Truly A Friend (Reprise 2)**
10. **We Just Figured Out Blue's Clues**
11. **The Buddy Boogie**
12. **Truly A Friend (Reprise 3)**
13. **So Long Song**

**Blue's Big Treasure Hunt** is a CD album released on February 16, 1999. This is an album which includes 12 songs from the episode of the same name.

1. **Hi, Out There!**
2. **Can You Help Me Out Today?**
3. **Blue's Big Treasure**
4. **We Are Going To Play Blue's Clues**
5. **Listen For A Pawprint**
6. **Time To Play Blue's Clues**
7. **We Just Figured Out Blue's Clues**
8. **Mailtime**
9. **Whose Treasure Is This?**
10. **Things I Love To Do**
11. **Blue's Big Treasure (Extended Version)**
12. **You Sure Are Smart**

**Goodnight Blue** is a CD album released in 1999. It includes 10 tracks from the series.

1. **You're Here At Night (Intro)**
2. **Bedtime Business**
3. **We Are Gonna Play Blue's Clues**
4. **Day Turns Into Night**
5. **Paprika's Lullaby**
6. **The Yawn Song**
7. **We Just Figured Out Blue's Clues**
8. **Goodnight Bird (Story)**
9. **So Long Song**
10. **My Bed**

VCD's by **DigiLearn**

* **Cafe Blue - VCD**
* **Blue's Safari - VCD**
* **Shapes And Colors - VCD**
* **Blue's Big Holiday - VCD**
* **Blue's Big Treasure Hunt - VCD**
* **All Kinds Of Signs - VCD**
* **Playtime With Periwinkle - VCD**
* **Stop, Look And Listen - VCD**
* **Blue's Discoveries - VCD**
* **ABC's, 123's And More - VCD**
* **Blue Takes You To School - VCD**
* **Mr. Salt And Mrs. Pepper Day - VCD**
* **Reading With Blue - VCD**

Blue's Clues: Cafe Blue - VCDBlue's Clues: Blue's Safari - VCDBlue's Clues: Shapes And Colors - VCDBlue's Clues: Blue's Big Holiday - VCDBlue's Clues: Blue's Big Treasure Hunt - VCDBlue's Clues: All Kinds Of Signs - VCDBlue's Clues: Playtime With Periwinkle - VCDBlue's Clues: Stop, Look And Listen! VCDBlue's Clues: Blue's Discoveries - VCDBlue's Clues: ABC's, 123's And More - VCDBlue's Clues: Blue Takes You To School - VCDBlue's Clues: Mr. Salt And Mrs. Pepper Day - VCDBlue's Clues: Reading With Blue - VCD

## See Also

* Blue's Room
* Blue's Clues & You!
* Blue's Big Musical Movie
* Blue's Big City Adventure

## Gallery

Blue's Clues - 2nd TV PosterBlue's Clues - 3rd TV PosterBlue's Clues - 4th TV PosterBlue's Clues - 5th TV PosterBlue's Clues - Opening TitleBlue's Clues - LogoBlue's Clues - 2nd LogoBlue Prints - Pilot Logo