Zee on top of Moose.
Moose and Zee are a pair of animated mascots who hosted program breaks on the Noggin channel. They made their first appearance in 2003, shortly after the channel relaunched its preschool block. Moose and Zee ushered in an age of much younger-skewing content on Noggin, as opposed to the weirder, more experimental content from its first few years.Moose A. Moose is a talkative yellow moose while Zee D. Bird is a mute blue bird. The two are close friends and are always seen together. Together, Moose and Zee teach young children various things, tell stories, and sing songs.
The characters were seen on TV from 2003 to 2012 (2013 in the UK). In 2015, the Noggin brand was revived as a mobile app, and Moose and Zee were temporarily brought back as the hosts. Some of their older shorts were also included in the app, edited to remove the wraparound segments that announced which shows came up next. Since 2019, Moose and Zee are no longer the hosts, but some of the shorts still remain. Occasionally, app users unfamiliar with the characters mistake them for a TV show of their own; it's important to note that Moose and Zee were just channel mascots and (unfortunately) never had their own show.
The main segments are:
- Mighty Fine Art: Moose and Zee discuss a painting or artist at the art museum.
- Puzzle Time: Moose asks the viewer to solve a puzzle.
- Music Video: Moose sings a song.
- In Other Words: A specific word is introduced and explained to the viewer.
- Class Pet Time: The life of a pet named "Chip-Chip".
- Story Time: A fairy-tale is narrated by Moose.
- Little Green Fingers ("Zee's Garden" internationally): A live-action segment featuring a type of plant.
- Zee's Bookshelf: Zee introduces an upcoming show.
Moose and Zee also appear as hosts on the Wii game Nickelodeon Fit.
Moose and Zee's shorts contain examples of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The dancing candy cane in "Candy Cane" is animated in CGI.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Moose is a light yellow moose.
- Are We There Yet?: This is the refrain for Moose's aptly titled music video "Are We There Yet?
", which is about being impatient on an exciting journey. - Audience Surrogate: Zee is supposed to be a stand-in for the preschool audience watching Noggin's and Nick Jr's shows.
- Beach Episode: "Beside the Seaside" features Moose and Zee enjoying a day at the beach.
- Christmas Episode: "Candy Cane", where Moose wants a candy cane for Christmas. Zee gives him one in the end.
- Cute Mute: Zee is pretty much adorable despite being The Speechless.
- Does Not Like Spam: Moose despises candy corn. He has a whole song about how much he hates it.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Moose A. Moose is, well, a moose.
- Expressive Ears: Moose doesn't actually have visible ears, but has antlers sticking out of where the ears would be that function in the exact same way.
- Genki Girl: Male example — Moose is usually this since he's the talkative and wordy one.
- Halloween Episode: The music video "I Don't Like Candy Corn" takes place on Halloween, where Moose is a mummy and Zee is a vampire. Moose performs a song about how he doesn't like candy corn.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: The "Story Time" segments present the original fairy tales as they initially were intended, but add a spin at the very end to elaborate on the endings of the stories.
- Interspecies Friendship:
- Moose and Zee are a moose and bird who are best friends.
- The Fractured Fairy Tale take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears ends with Goldilocks taking the bear family out for breakfast. She ends up befriending Baby Bear.
- Marshmallow Dream: In "Candy Cane," Moose dreams about eating a candy cane, only to wake up to find that he's eaten his umbrella.
- Mysterious Middle Initial: Zee D. Bird and Moose A. Moose both have them. Both of these, however, can technically be read as being punny names, i.e. "Zee, the bird" and "Moose, a moose."
- Not His Sled: Goldilocks and the Three Bears ends with Goldilocks befriending the bears.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Moose and Zee are best buddies who apparently live together.
- Reactive Continuous Scream: Goldilocks screams at the sight of the bear family finding her in Baby Bear's bed, to which the bear family screams along with her, before she scrambles her way out of the house.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Moose and Zee are a very downplayed example. Moose is the more extroverted and talkative one of the duo, while Zee is more introverted and explicitly stated to be shy in her debut appearance on Noggin.
- Repetitive Name: Moose A. Moose and Zee D. Bird, with only a consistently used Mysterious Middle Initial keeping them from being even more repetitive.
- Same Language Dub: A British dub was produced and aired on TMF/VIVA and Nick Jr. UK, however, it is very hard to come by.
- The Singing Mute: The only time Zee has ever said anything was in this alphabet song.
- Species Surname:
- Moose's surname is "Moose".
- Zee's surname is "Bird".
- Thanksgiving Episode: "We Are Thankful" is a song that would air every year during November, about family, food, and thankfulness.
- True Blue Femininity: Since Zee couldn't speak and has blue feathers, she gave a lot of viewers a
Viewer Gender Confusion. Nevertheless, a lot of fans knew that Zee is indeed a girl. - Vocal Evolution: While Paul Christie's performance as Moose is known for being lively and enthusiastic, his tone was a lot more relaxed in earlier shorts.
