Blippi Irks Parents After Teaching Kids Wrong Shapes in Massively Popular Video

Blippi might be an unfamiliar name to many, but toddlers and their parents know him quite well. The YouTuber, whose real name is Stevin John, has amassed more than 8 million subscribers and more than 8 billion views on YouTube through his educational content for kids. Blippi is a colorful character in blue and orange clothes who teaches kids about well, pretty much all kinds of things that kids might want to learn about. He’s infamously a bit grating to many adults who have them on for their kids, due to his style of entertaining. However, there’s one video that’s irking parents for a whole different reason.

Some parents who’ve paid close attention to one of the videos on the “Blippi Toys” YouTube channel are upset that the children’s media personality incorrectly educates kids about a shape. The video is entitled “Learn Colors and Learn Shapes with Blippi | Educational Indoor Play Place” and was uploaded on April 21, 2018. In the clip, which has been viewed 423 million times, Blippi crawls around a children’s activity area while narrating and describing the different areas. In one section, he lists off a series of shapes built into a tunnel. When he comes across a hexagon, he incorrectly calls it a pentagon.

This mix-up could potentially cause kids to incorrectly learn two different shapes. And while it was obviously just an off-the-cuff mistake by Blippi, it could have easily been fixed in post-production. There was a solid bit of editing done on the clip, being as graphics of each shape are added in to go along with the character’s demonstration. The audio could have easily been dubbed over to correct the error and most kids and parents wouldn’t have even noticed.

Over the past few years, parents online have vented about the flub on social media, given that comments aren’t allowed on kid-friendly YouTube videos like Blippi’s works. “It bothers me that Blippi called a hexagon a pentagon and didn’t even bother fixing it in whatever production process they have.He’s so disturbing but I’m forced to watch,” one person tweeted. Another person wrote, “Love when shows for children are wrong. Blippi; learn the difference between a hexagon and a pentagon.”

While it’s a glaring error, it’s obviously not going to set Blippi back. The video in question constantly adds views, and his empire is continuously growing. In fact, he just premiered a new show, Blippi’s Treehouse, on Amazon Kids+, a new add-on service for Prime Video. He’s even expanding the character’s world with the animated series Blippi Wonders, the introduction of a new character Meekah (Kaitlyn Becker) and a live tour component. He’s even gotten so busy that he shares the Blippi acting duties with Clayton Grimm.