He makes kids, and moms, flip
Years from now, we’ll know that the hottest song to come out of Iceland wasn’t by the super-hip Sigur Ros, or Quarashi, Gus Gus, or even from the red-carpet queen Bjork. With fond nostalgia, today’s preteen rockers will someday sing the “Bing Bang” song.
To a disco beat: “Bing, bang digger rigger dun! First thing I say after I wake up. Bing, bang digger rigger dun!”
If you have children, cable TV and an appreciation for a fine physique, you already know that the song is from “Lazy Town,” an absurdly pleasurable series that debuted in August on Nick Jr. You may also have visited the Nickelodeon website and made the videos to “Bing Bang” and “Get It Together” your secret satisfaction.
“Lazy Town” is a slightly surreal comic/action series about the battles between the lazy Robbie Rotten (a Jim Carrey-esque bad guy) and the townsfolk, played by a real pink-wigged girl and six rubbery puppets. Saving the day is a back-flipping, handstanding, leaping superhero named Sportacus.
Sportacus and “Lazy Town” are the creation of Magnus Scheving, a 40-year-old aerobics champion who can also call himself a writer, producer, chief executive, father of three, Icelandic superstar and, incidentally, quite competent handyman. He also has assumed the title of serious sex symbol.
On the phone from Iceland, his first words are, “I’m half-naked.” Taking a few moments to savor the image, my startled synapses managed to type that he also said he had just finished the day’s shoot, which typically requires 600 to 1,600 jumps, that he does most of his stunt work, and as a result, that he is in better shape now than at 30. Yet, in a very superhero way, he’s humble.
“It’s very hard to think of yourself as a sex symbol, even though I get a lot of those e-mails,” he says. “I never really thought about it. I don’t know why.”
Let me tell you why. The guy with the muscles, funny accent, tight blue suit and pointy mustache is a turbo-powered Super Fantasy Dad. The guy can waltz into a frenetic food fight and stop the action with the utterance: “Food is for growing, not for throwing!”
Yet, Scheving-as-Sportacus has made a career, and a boatload of cash, from promoting health. Though “Lazy Town” was never a TV show until it came to Nick Jr., it’s been an Icelandic phenomenon since 1991 when Scheving wrote the book “Go, Go Lazy Town.” Now he’s blanketed the tundra with Lazy Town events, a radio station, musicals, board games, books, CDs, footwear, piggy banks, bottled water and, unfrozen soil being a rarity, packaged fresh produce.
Whatever the medium, the Sportacus message gently steers impressionable youth toward wise choices -- eating right, exercising, sharing and being helpful. What’s not to love?
Scheving says he created the Lazy Town characters during his former career as an international health and fitness lecturer. No matter the country, parents cited the same challenges with motivating kids to be active and eat right. Now 5-year-olds are attempting one-armed push-ups in front of the tube.
“There was no role model for health for kids,” he says. Scheving set out to make one. He’s a can-do Viking. Years earlier, on a bet, he entered his first aerobics competition and won the Nordic championship.
Those aerobics moves come in handy during battles with Robbie Rotten, and they thrill children, moms and Nickelodeon execs.
“He’s this sort of funny combination of Robert Redford and Jack La Lanne,” says Brown Johnson, executive creative director of Nickelodeon preschool television. In 2003, Scheving arrived in her office in a dark blue velvet suit, explained that he had a concept he created in Iceland, stood up and sprang into midair splits.
She was sold. Now there’s a high-tech studio in Iceland, 35 complete episodes, great ratings and a fan base that leaps Sportacus-like beyond kids and their moms. Flush with success, Stefan Karl, the guy who plays Robbie Rotten, moved to L.A. last month to test the crossover appeal of comedic bad guys with Icelandic accents. The show and its star have hijacked the blog at www.davidnunez.com. The site creator complained that his “Lazy Town” post inspired 6,000 hits, more in a few weeks than every other topic had in months.
A typical posting: “I’m not a kid but I think that blue guy is hot and it’s the only reason I watched it,” says one writer. Another writes, “My kids love this show ... and it does encourage movement, so even when they are watching, they aren’t potatoes.... All the talk about healthy food giving superhero powers makes my kids actually want to eat veggies.... Plus, as a mom, I have to watch it for Spartacus [sic] ... how hot is he???”
In the seven months since Sportacus has beamed into American households, he’s redefined not just the superhero but also the concept of the reassuring children’s authority figure. Mister Rogers, bless his soul, guided them gently into his neighborhood. Captain Kangaroo’s grandfatherly ways made them feel secure. But Sportacus, in a very ‘90s self-help kind of way, empowers them to take charge.
He’s so genuine in his sporty blue suit, he’s hard to resist. “I don’t play Sportacus anymore,” Scheving says. “I have lived with him for 11 years. It is me now.”
Tomorrow morning at 7:30, when it’s time to assess the damage of my life and laziness, I’ll tune into Nick Jr. and do the Lazy Town dance.
All together now, “Bing, bang, digger rigger dun. Having fun is what it’s all about!”