Mindy Melendez

> Hey, I'm only four. Live and learn.
>
> — Mindy Melendez, Backyard Moon Base

**Mindy Melendez** is a main character and one of Jet's best friends in *Ready Jet Go!*.
In *The Neptunians*, Mindy is the Major of the team and is the Fire Element.

## Appearance

Mindy is a 4 (later 5) year old girl with light tan skin and brown eyes. She has dark brown hair always in pigtails held by two blue hair ties. She always wears a brown crocheted bear hat with two blue buttons. She wears a crocheted orange sweater, folded denim shorts over dark grey leggings, and black flats.

## Personality

### *Ready Jet Go!*

Mindy lives across the street and is always coming over to see what the bigger kids are doing. Mindy is 4, so she asks the real questions that 4-year- olds ask about space. The answers to the these questions are often what the episodes are about. She's not always in possession of the facts and is still a magical thinker. To her, the phases of the Moon mean that there are “a lot of moons, like the round fat one, and the one shaped like a taco, and the skinny, pointy one."

There is one more neighbor who is in on the secret of the Propulsion family: Mindy Melendez. Mindy is a little girl who is the youngest member of Jet's group. Mindy, being 4, is very curious about the world around her and loves to ask questions. Due to her curiosity, Mindy is the reason for the episode events. She often asks questions that prompts the older children to go into space to find an answer. She also points things out, such as noticing that Jet's house was not on the map in *Satellite Selfie*.

Mindy is a little girl, so she tends to enjoy things that little girls enjoy such as dolls, teddy bears, and tea parties. She also likes to be sarcastic, self-centered, and sassy at times to the older children. In *Backyard Moon Base*, she buried the remote control to the Propulsion house on purpose, but she openly says that she can get away with it. "I'm only 4, live and learn." In *Sounds Abound*, she is practicing her flugelhorn outside, which disrupts Sean's experiment. Sean tells her that she is being too loud on her flugelhorn. Then Mindy gets upset because if Sean doesn't complete his experiment, he won't get to go to Astronaut School, and he won't become an astronaut and name a planet after Mindy. In *Satellite Selfie*, Mindy tells one of the kids that they can't come up with good idea like her because "you're just not [Mindy]".

Due to being the youngest, she couldn't do as much stuff as Jet, Sean, and Sydney got to do. Her mom did not allow her to go anywhere past Jet's yard, so she had to stay on Earth while Celery took the older kids into space.  However, she does get to go trick-or-treating with everyone else in *Jet's First Halloween*, and she finally turns five in *Mindy Turns Five*, and gets to go to outer space. Mindy may not know as much as the older kids, but she’s welcomed into the group, treated as an equal, and never talked down to. Mindy also has a *very* close relationship with Jet’s alien pet, Sunspot, as shown in episodes like *Mindy Pet-Sits*.

Mindy is rather plain and average compared to the other characters on the show, with Mindy not having a consistent, developed personality or purpose throughout the episodes.

### *The Neptunians*

Mindy has a completely different personality here than what is depicted in RJG. Mindy is portrayed as fiery, competitive, ambitious, and a bit of an overachiever. She sometimes hurts people's feelings, but never on purpose, and can be quite blunt even for a kid. Because of this, her best friends in the team are Supergirl and Yadina.

## Powers

Mindy gains the abilities of the fire element, which includes the following powers:

* **Pyrokinesis:** Mindy can create, shape and manipulate fire, the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products, flame being the visible portion of the fire.
* **Enhanced Sports Abilities**: In this series, Mindy is portrayed as a tough sporty girl, so she has enhanced sports abilities even for a 5 year old.

## Trivia

* Mindy was featured in newspapers in *Mindy's Meteorite Stand*.
* Mindy won the Boxwood Terrace Kids' Baking Contest in *Solar System Bake-Off!*.
* Mindy becomes Mitchell's detective partner in *Detective Mindy*, and they became friends
* Mindy has a grandmother, as revealed in *Scientific Sean*.
* She also said that she has a grandfather in *Earthday Birthday*, who is 63 years old.
* The "Mindy Lisa" was featured in the episode *The Mindysphere*, drawn by Sunspot on his digital pad.
* Mindy wears a different bear hat when she goes to sleep in *More Than One Moon*.
* In The Mindysphere, she was given permission to travel farther into the neighborhood.
* Mindy speaks Spanish, as shown in *Scientific Sean* and *Earthday Birthday*.
* Mindy likes *chiles rellenos*, a platter that's part of Mexican and Guatamalan cuisine, as mentioned in *Jet Cooks Dinner*.
* In some episodes like *Mindy's Mystery* and *Kid-Kart Derby*, Mitchell is annoyed by Mindy, but in some episodes he is nice to her like in *Solar System Bake-Off!* and *Detective Mindy*, making them frenemies, or having an on-off relationship.
* Mindy was originally not going to be in the show, but the creators developed her in order to appeal to the younger demographic, after testing the inital pilot with children.
* In official descriptions of the show, Mindy is often left out, with focus on Jet, Sean, and Sydney. This is an example:
	+ *Earth science and astronomy take center stage in this animated series from PBS Kids. Two neighborhood kids -- Sean and Sydney -- befriend the new kid on the block, Jet Propulsion, who just happens to be an alien from planet Bortron 7. Together they explore the solar system and how it affects the planet, while also learning about friendship and teamwork. The series features live-action interstitials with astronomer Dr. Amy Mainzer.*
* Mindy's mother does not allow her to have candy, as mentioned in *Mindy's Mystery*.
* The episodes *Sounds Abound* and *Jet Shrinks the Kids* reveal that Mindy takes flugelhorn lessons
* In some of her appearances, such as *Treehouse Observatory*, a variation of My Name is Mindy will play in the background.
* Mindy's use of the flugelhorn is referenced again in *Mindy's Mystery*, *Potatoes on Mars*, and in *Astronaut Ellen Ochoa!*
	+ Amy Mainzer, whose favorite character is Mindy, plays a flugelhorn in the interstitial after *Potatoes on Mars* preceding *Bortron Leprechaun*.

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