Four years ago, Mike de Seve, president of New York’s Baboon Animation, first saw drawings of the bunnies known as “Cuties” when his daughter brought them home from school.
The distinctive-looking bunnies, created by two seven-year-old girls in her class (pictured, Vega Kostova, left and Rowen Chandler) had taken the students by storm. All of the students were drawing them and some even formed a Cuties Club for all things…cute.
Such was the bunnies’ popularity that de Seve soon heard from his niece that the Cuties Club had spread to a different elementary school in New Jersey. “We came to understand that these were toys they wished they had,” he says, noting the bunnies were not only adorable but also simple enough for anyone to draw.
The drawings would go on to serve as the foundation for character designs in Bek and the Bunnies, the new animated comedy series from Baboon and Germany-based Toon2Tango. “All we did was clean up the bunny drawing and build it as a 3D model,” says de Seve.
Bek and the Bunnies (78 x seven minutes) was presented at Annecy earlier this year and now has a bible, a pilot script and 3D modeling prepared. In an example of art imitating life, the protagonist, Bek, is a young girl who creates a trio of bunnies named Bini, Bam and Bort to be her ideal playmates. “It’s the same spirit of creation,” says de Seve. “[Bek] is lonely because she grew up out in the middle of the woods and her parents are ignoring her. So she invents these squishy, bouncy robot bunnies to be her friends and play with her.”

Baboon and Toon2Tango took an original “Cuties” drawing and turned it into a 3D image as the starting point for Bek and the Bunnies.
Though the bunnies have super-powered abilities, they were designed by a kid so their programming is slightly flawed—albeit hilariously so. For instance, Bini is loving to a fault, unable to play hide and seek because all she wants is a hug. Meanwhile, Bort is the ultimate prankster, ready to slam pie into someone’s face rather than follow the rules. The series follows Bek as she tries to get her adorable but wonky new playmates to behave. While there are many facets to making a successful kids TV show, one aspect stands out to de Seve. “For me, the secret ingredient is: are you making a show that makes kids feel like there’s a group of friends there that they can play with?”
With Bek and the Bunnies, Toon2Tango and Baboon have landed on a winning equation for developing IPs—one that includes kids from the outset. Through their new development program called Monkey Bars, they are taking more kids’ ideas into “a brainstorm room with top writers and showrunners in the industry to develop them into working shows.”
Bek and the Bunnies will also break into CP with plans for a “mix and match” plush range, which de Seve says ties back into the kid-created angle of the Cuties. “We’re developing toy concepts that are about encouraging kids to make and do,” he says, adding the toys will come with swappable eyes, tails and other parts, similar to Mr. Potato Head.
Baboon has at least five other projects based on kid creations in its pipeline, including MerMonsters, a series de Seve co-creat- ed with six-year-old Hazel Murphy featuring fluffy monsters in an underwater setting.
Another series called Cup Cats was born from a concept created by a six-year-old girl and her grandmother, he adds. “The grandmother was babysitting the little girl and they just started fantasizing about a tea party world where cats live in cups,” he says. “Picture this world where life is a tea party!” In the series, the Cup Cats’ home is a multicultural neighborhood made of tea sets. “There are whole cultures around Japanese tea, African tea, Indian tea, English tea,” says de Seve.
With projects like these, the Monkey Bars program gives the production and development teams an avenue to listen to kids and find out what they love about their own idea—which in turn gives the adults in the room more clarity around how a concept could appeal to young audiences. “You have to know who your protagonist is and why kids would like them and care about what they want,” he says, drawing on the classic example of SpongeBob SquarePants. “SpongeBob sees fun as so important, and that, to me, is why that show is so appealing.” That same appeal is also the spirit of Bek and the Bunnies. “Nothing gets these bunnies down,” he says. “Fun prevails.”
This story originally appeared in Kidscreen’s August/September 2022 issue.