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Boohbahs
Boohbahs
Information
Colour
Eyes Brown
Played by


The Boohbahs are furry "atoms" of energy, power, and light.

Bio[]

Upon waking up in their pods in the magical, luminous Boohball, the colourful creatures known as the Boohbahs come to life, dancing and flying away in the Boohzone. They enjoy engaging in physical activity like dancing and exercising, and are powered into action by the laughter of the children playing with their Boohball.

Appearance[]

The most prominent part of a Boohbah's body is a large, round belly; a Boohbah is so fat that its flab oftentimes jiggles as it exercises or dances. Its body is very soft and fuzzy from neck to feet, giving it a "poofy" and cosy look, and sparkles with light. It has thick guts around its stomach area, cone-shaped arms and legs, feet which are similar in appearance to pointe shoes, three-fingered hands at the tips of its arms, and a neck similar in appearance to the collar of a roll-neck jumper (or turtleneck sweater).

The Boohbah also has an arch-shaped head with two big brown eyes, two arches of lights for eyebrows (which it lights up to communicate), and tiny bumps all over the back of its head (the bump on top is a "power hummer", which sends out a beam of light whenever the Boohbah does the power hum [as mentioned below], and the bumps on the sides of its head resemble its ears). In-between its eyes is a tiny nose and below them are two arches of freckles (arranged in a shape similar to a smile).

List of Boohbahs[]

Each Boohbah is a different colour and has their own unique name, which are the only ways to tell each one apart; their front side is a bright shade of its base colour, while their back is a darker shade of the same colour. There are five Boohbahs:

Characteristics[]

The Boohbahs are full of energy, both physically and mentally. They are always on the move - jumping, bumping, bouncing, spinning, shaking, falling (both down and up), etc. Like small children, they are also very hyperactive, often dissolving into a fast, free-moving frenzy in the middle of a dance or when exercising at full speed.

One of the Boohbahs' most notable (and peculiar) traits is their ability to fly. Three times per episode, they soar up to the centre of the Boohzone and float either downward or upward, holding hands together in a circle like skydivers. While in this position, the Boohbahs do their power hum: each one "sings" a musical note and sends a beam of light toward a central point (usually the Boohball). Depending on when they do the hum, they can either end up flying all over the place, disappearing into the Boohball before briefly reappearing to run around the Storypeople's present, or going back into the ball to nestle into their pods.

To express themselves, the Boohbahs move their eyes to their left or right and hide their heads by retracting them into their hollow necks. They are mouthless and cannot speak (the only other onscreen characters, the Storypeople, don't speak either, even though they do have mouths), but often while moving, they emit noises like squeals, flatulent air-bellowing poofs, and squeaks (their eyebrows make a whirring noise when they light up and their eyes click when they move).

Sound effects[]

File:Boohbah squeals.mp3

File:Boohbah poofs.mp3

File:Boohbah squeaks.mp3

File:Power hum.mp3

File:Boohbah eyes.mp3

File:Boohbah footsteps.mp3

Trivia[]

  • The Boohbahs' heads look very similar to Kewpie dolls, which too have an arch-shaped head and large eyes; however, their eyes are much bigger than that of a Kewpie, they have no hair and mouths, and they have arches of lights for eyebrows.
    • One could also say that, because of their round, sparkly bodies, they look like gumdrops.
  • Despite sounding very much like and often being perceived as them farting, the Boohbahs' air bellows are never explicitly addressed as flatulence[1], and on the now-defunct "expert questions-and-answers" section of the PBS Parents website, Anne Wood likens them to air blasting out of a balloon.
  • The Boohbahs aren't the only Ragdoll characters to make noise whenever they move; the Teletubbies honk when they sit or fall down, while Igglepiggle from In the Night Garden... squeaks when he throws himself to the ground.
  • The Boohbahs are the only characters to consistently appear in every episode of the show, and are always the first and last recurring characters to appear onscreen. They also always appear together, while all of the Storypeople have appeared together just once.
  • Although Boohbah is meant to get viewers at home to exercise, the Boohbahs are overweight. It is unknown exactly why this is, but as they don't resemble a known creature and are described as atoms, it is possible that their roundness may not be intended to represent fat.
  • The colours of the light beams the Boohbahs emit while doing their power hum are different; when performing the hum upon entering the Boohzone, each beam is a variation of the Boohbah's base colour (except Humbah's, which is cyan, and Zing Zing Zingbah's, which is yellow). When the Boohbahs do the hum again after doing their warm-up (and when they go back to the Boohball), Humbah and Zing Zing Zingbah's beams are cyan, Jingbah and Zumbah's beams are green, and Jumbah's beam is orange.
  • In a Sprout Diner short based on Boohbah, it is implied that the Boohbahs' favourite food[s] are "ShiskaBoohbahs", but it is unknown if (and how) a Boohbah can consume food without a visible mouth on its face.
  • The Boohbahs are not represented in Storyworld; because the Storypeople and the Boohbahs are two entirely different species and live in different universes (the Boohzone and Storyworld), they have never met or interacted with each other. The narrator who tells us what is going on in Storyworld is also absent from the Boohbah sequences.
  • The Boohbahs are always spinning a lot (they whirl around frequently whenever they run amok, one of their warm-ups involves twirling to either direction, they often go into a spinning and/or bumping frenzy at certain points during their dances (and one dance has them doing nothing but), and even their pods are spun around), but they don't seem to get highly dizzy from all the spinning they do.
  • Although the Boohbahs are officially referred to as atoms, it is unknown how many protons, electrons, and neutrons they would have.
  • Even though they were played by actors in full-bodied costumes akin to those in live shows, at theme parks, and other events, the Boohbahs never made appearances in or at such - the few Boohbah live events that were held emphasised and focused on the show's intent on getting children to get up and move and didn't have appearances by any of its characters. This was because Wood was concerned about breaking the image that children would have in their mind about the characters they saw onscreen being real[2].

Gallery[]

Screenshots[]

Promotional images and renders[]

Further reading[]

References[]

  1. PBS's closed-captioning for Boohbah calls this noise a "poof", while the instruction booklet for the Magic Chant Memory Game calls it an "air bellow"
  2. Susan Dominus, "She Speaks 3-Year-Old", The New York Times, 4 January, 2004
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