Bluey creator Joe Brumm revealed a few interesting things as he spoke to teachers and parents in Canberra.
Firstly, there could - could - be a new series coming, with an announcement soon.
"I've always said I won't be making a new season if I don't think it's going to be better than the one before," Brumm said, to his audience in the hall of Merici College on Wednesday night.
The local branch of the Council of Catholic School Parents, headed up by Selina Walker, scored a coup in getting Brumm to speak at its event, which attracted parents and teachers, including some hard-core fans who had even had tattoos of the show's characters.
Since it debuted in 2018, Bluey has become a global phenomenon, winning an Emmy here, appearing in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade there.
Bluey may be an energetic, six-year-old Blue Heeler dog from Queensland, but the whole world loves her. And her parents, Bandit and Chilli, little sister Bingo and all the other characters who inhabit their beautiful, playful world.
Brumm says the show was so spot-on about everyday family life that parents often said to him "how did you get video cameras in our living room?".
"I take it as an enormous compliment and a relief, because all the things that are going on in my life, are clearly going on in your life as well," he said.
Brumm suggested Bluey wasn't meant to be an instruction manual for parents.
"It wasn't about passing on parental advice, even though that happens from time to time. It wasn't about trying to make anyone a better parent," Brumm said.
Bluey was shaped by experiences with his own daughters. His younger daughter had a medical condition that often saw her in hospital, even in ICU. Those brutal times taught him parenting often involves suffering that can't be controlled. Sometimes parents just needed an acknowledgement of the big job they were doing.
"I guess the message in Bluey to parents is, 'You're doing great', not 'You should be doing this' or 'Maybe you should do that'. It's just 'You're doing great'."
Brumm said Bluey also emphasised the importance of play. His younger daughter had attended a preschool that prioritised academic work. When they switched to one that make play more important, she thrived.
That prompted him to research the topic and found that kids do best when they're playing with other kids, role-playing, using their imagination, stepping inside "the magic circle" and learning about themselves and others along the way. And all that coincided with him writing the first season of Bluey.
"So episodes of Bluey like Helicopter and Shops and Bus or Taxi are me trying to explain to the adults watching it what play can do for a kid today. That was the only agenda that I snuck into Bluey," he said.
But parents often told him they felt guilty because they didn't have the time or ability to play with their kids as much as Chilli and, especially, Bandit, did.
"Bandit does come under fire for being way too involved in his kids' games and I do tend to agree," he said.
Brumm even raised that with his bosses at the BBC (who co-commissioned it with the ABC) but they reckoned it was funnier when Bandit got involved.
Brumm said the important thing about Bandit was that he did respect "the magic circle" created by the children and joined in on the game at their level. And that helped to create children who understood their input to the world was welcomed.
Brumm said Bluey's appeal, over time, had stretched across the age groups - sometimes in a heart-breaking way.
"The show is aimed at four to six-year-olds and their parents and then we started to get grandparents and I was like, 'Great, grandparents. I didn't think about them'," he said.
"And then we started getting seven, eight, nine-year-olds. I was like, 'Alright, we'll take them'. And then 10 and 11-year-olds and I was going 'Alright'.
"Then, BBC put Bluey on TikTok and we got all these 20-year-olds watching - and proper fans. 'Alright, I'll take it'.
"And the comments started going from, 'How could you possibly know what was going on in my house?' and 'Gee, Bandit's a great dad', 'Gee, Bandit puts us to shame' to these 20-year-olds saying, something along the lines of, 'This show is re-parenting me from my traumatic childhood'.
"This is what I suddenly kept hearing - 'This show is healing my trauma'."
Brumm said a child psychologist told him some people had never experienced a positive parenting interaction in their life - it was all shouting and abuse and neglect.
"He said, 'It shouldn't be this way, but sometimes a cartoon family dog is the first time they've seen those granular everyday interactions and how they could have gone.
"That's the kind of comments we get from 20-year-olds all the time - 'Oh right, when I did this thing that Bluey did, I would have got shouted at or I would have got this', 'Isn't it amazing to see this different way?'.
"And sometimes it's not even anything elaborate. It's just the absence of shouting and abuse. So, I don't know what to make of that. That was definitely not my intention."
Ultimately, Brumm said, "it is a pretty tough world and people grow up in tough circumstances" and, for some people, "Bluey has shown a different way of parenting".
