Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fat Albert: Bill Cosby’s Junk-yard Paradise

The children’s television programme Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids was, along with Sesame Street, a pioneer project blending entertainment with edifying educational content. Launched in the early 1970s, this animated show, mixed with live scenes involving Bill Cosby’s commentary, opened up a whole new world to child viewers. Set in inner city Philadelphia, with many of the scenes in a junk yard, the programme not only acquainted the child viewers with African-American culture, music and language, but also provided useful lessons on a range of still very much relevant topics: racism, sexism, bullying, teasing, etc. This paper will primarily focus on the first set of series which ran in the first half of the 1970s, which corresponds to the author’s own exposure to the show.

Keywords:

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Children’s Television, Bill Cosby African-American Representation,

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