So.
Ben Ten.
You know the one. A show about a kid who receives a little trinket that gives him super powers, aliens, and wizards, secret government organizations and epic battles for the fate of everything against all kinds of strange villains.
After you got done watching "Teen Titans", you'd probably watch an episode of Ben Ten.
Or, you know, if you knew kids of a certain age, they probably were watching it. Or had trading cards for it. Or something.
The point is, in my humble observations, Ben Ten was pretty big.
I caught episodes here and there on television, but at some point years later I said to myself "Hey, I got internet. If I'm really curious how things turned out, I could probably find the episodes online!"
And you know what, maybe I just wasn't that nostalgic for it, but watching it as an adult I got real bored real fast.
But doesn't that say something, that my mind wasn't sparked by it? That I wasn't thinking to myself "Yeah, gonna draw my OWN OC in the Ben Ten universe, wooh!" It just wasn't quite enough to GRAB me.
But, you know, I guess it kept kids rooted to the tv for a while.

SO.
"Tales of Arcadia".
...Repsectively, "Troll Hunters" "3Below" and "Wizards".
DO you know the one? It's a series of netflix shows about kids who receive little trinkets that give them super powers, aliens and wizards, secret government organizations and epic battles for the fate of everything against all kinds of strange villains.
It's made by Guillermo Del Toro?

Now, I'm an adult watching what is very much a kid's show. I mean, I was (mostly) an adult when I was watching things like "The Last Airbender" or "Gravity Falls", and I feel no shame in touting THOSE banners. Avatar and Gravity Falls are just so good I think I'll be watching 'em all the way until the day I die.
"Tales of Arcadia", whichever of the three shows you pick off of Netflix, are not "Avatar" levels of good. They're not the kind of thing I can really say "You need to sit down, Netflix and Chill and watch these right now!"

...But I WOULD, with every ounce of enthusiasm I can muster, recommend that you go show them to your KIDS, because if I was a kid when I first watched 'em, my mind would be BUZZING with all kind of cool stuff. I'd have drawn my own Troll OC, be writing fanfiction about Akiridion culture, or be bugging my parents to let me glue christmas lights to a bracelet so I could be a cool wizard too.

Normally when you recommend something with the caveat of "Only for kids" I think it's being done with the concession of "Well, Angry Birds the Movie might be an offensively mind-melting piece of hot garbage, but... hey, your kids won't know any better." But in this case, I think these "Tales of Arcadia" shows have a PERFECT audience in adolescents. Adults will have seen all these plot beats and emotions hundreds of times before, but to a kid I think these shows would feel epic. They'll have a plethora of neat characters to pick from as their favorite, a world with all kinds of cool systems of magic and technology to fan out over, and lots of neat monsters that would surely inspire one to design their own critters.
It's just really NEAT.

To me, something like Ben Ten feels like a product that was made for children to BE a product that was elevated enough to become a bit of a thing. On the other hand, I think "Tales of Arcadia" is a whole lot of cool ideas that found a place where it could be made, being produced as a 'kid friendly' show on Netflix. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's what all the parents are showing their kids during quarantine, but gosh darn do I just never hear anyone mention it, and that's a damn shame, because I think kids would fuckin' love it.