The New York Times had this question in mind: What do kids around the world eat for breakfast? But the studio known as Cut brilliantly twisted the same question: What happens when American kids try different breakfasts around the world… on video?
And from then on we saw the adorable munchkins take on whatever was served in front of them. Most of the kids were skeptic eaters who had weird table manners, sometimes messing up the table or even ending up playing with the food. Some of the more picky eaters knew which food they disliked the minute they get their noses in it, and these delicacies don’t even last more than a second in their mouths.
But 22 episodes (and a couple of unboxing and mailbag videos) in, and we know it’s not just about the food anymore.
What was produced as “a reminder that all of our tastes are culturally conditioned” had inevitably upscaled into a well-loved internet phenomenon—all because the kids have brought in so much personality and spunk to it.
By now we know the names of the kids from “Kids Try” by heart. We see Ernie, Desmond, Maddox, Crystal, Austin, GG, Justin, Carolina, Steven and JayQue in the recent “Kids Try” videos produced by YouTube channel and creative studio Cut.
“It’s really the delight that comes with watching children as they attempt to interpret things,” Mike Gaston, Cut’s CEO and more popularly known as Ernie’s dad, says.
While they may be the lone studio in Seattle, with kids coming in every weekend to play in front and behind their cameras, Cut knows how to enjoy its company.
It takes a week to get the international menus in order, and if you’re wondering who prepares the meals for the kids, Cut works with a chef who puts together seven of every dish or drink that gets served on every filming day.
There’s no particular criteria for the international dishes to make the cut. According to Mike, the team really turns to their fans and their food suggestions, even welcoming the viewers’ recipes. So if you want the “Kids Try” kids to try your favorite local food, be sure to air your ideas out on the comments section.
When “Kids Try” found a new home on HiHo, Cut’s YouTube channel for kids, we knew there’s more in store for its fans. The best part obviously is getting more doses of cuteness from our favorite rascals.
“We wanted to create a space for kids where it won’t suddenly autoplay into the ‘Grandma Smoking Weed’ videos,” Mike shares. “We wanted to make a kids channel where there was only kids content and a space for the old school kids that we don’t get to see that often—like Steve, Vanessa and Talbot, and Chase—and give them a place where they could play.”
“It’s really fun for the kids, so whenever we do it once, they wanna come back and do it again and again. We’re gonna find other videos for HiHo besides the food that will allow the YouTube audience to meet more of the kids,” main producer Marina Taylor tells Super.
HiHo is meant to be a playground, and the content it houses can go as far as the kids’ (and its producers’) imagination will take it. For now, we’re excited to see the kids try their hands at Yoga, play with different toys, eat cereal from around the world, and even get transported to fan-favorite Ernie’s crazy adventures when the Super Ernie series finally kicks off.
“Ernie has a crazy imagination,” Mike shares. “So everyday, when I come home, he runs up to me and says, ‘Daddy, do you wanna play… and then he comes up with some crazy title.’”
“What he does is, he forces me to follow him. He gets his weapons or telescope and stuff and we go on this crazy adventure in the house. What I was planning on doing was taking a camera around and illustrating some of the things he’s describing and animating them into the video,” he says.
Christopher Chan, Mike’s cousin, also plans to show the Filipino tradition of beauty pageants. We don’t know how they’ll pull it off, but we heard Crystal’s gonna be the main star.
“We (Mike and Chan) are Filipino, and we have so many Filipino viewers and fans, it’s nice to have those all in our videos,” Chan says.
And the fun doesn’t even end there. Some of the Cut content tailored for adults will finally have a “Kids Try” treatment. The kids will have their own “One Word” and “100 Years” series, too.
Every kid in the show has a different personality that’s easy to fall in love with. Its producers have purposely cast a diverse, multiracial bunch labeled as “American kids”—and that’s when we know that the channel isn’t all fluff either.
Imagine the kids having their say on “One Word” topics like “Feminism,” “Diversity” or “Peace,” each spawning their different ideas and ideals. The producers, after all, want to show that there’s more behind “Kids Try” than audiences realize.