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

Abstract

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.