Can Netflix own childhoods? And do they want to?

A line about Disney that has really stuck with me over they years is “Disney owns your childhood”.

Across the “original” Disney characters and stories, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars (and now even more with Fox acquisitions) — a single company owns a lot (not all, but probably close to a majority) of the IP that I really care about — that I associate with happiness as a child and as adult.

I assumed the same would be true of my son (6) and daughter (3), and to some extent it is. It’s not just what they watch and read. They absolutely loved going to Disneyland and love a lot of the characters — my daughter goes to be with a Minnie doll. So I assumed when I got Disney+, they’d be watching a lot of it — surprisingly that isn’t case!

We watch “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” occasionally and the Cars shorts, but probably because my son doesn’t like the idea of sitting down for a whole movie that much, we just don’t spend that much time on the service with the kids. Oh Disney still has him — he loves building legos of the Millennium Falcon and the Guardian of the Galaxy ship and loves those characters and pretend playing with the Avengers in particular. Buzz Lightyear is one of his favorite characters — though he literally begs us not to try to show him Toy Story (some parts are too scary apparently)! And he absolutely cannot be convinced to watch Frozen (huge bone of contention with his sister who is known to sing “Let it go” spontaneously :-)).

So while the Disney characters have him, their shows clearly don’t. So what is he watching instead?

He (and his sister) are watching a lot of Netflix.

I remember being so impressed by the ambition of Rovio (the makers of Angry Birds) many years ago where they simply came out and said “We want to be the next Disney” — and even though the Angry Birds games are still around and the movies and shows are pretty funny (currently heavy in our kids rotation), it’s unlikely they will ever meet that goal.

On the other hand, a combination of smart licensing of kids content and some originals has meant we mostly turn to Netflix to entertain (and kinda, sorta educate?) our kids.

The percentage of kids content we watch that are Netflix originals is much lower than for adult content, but they are definitely adding more and more — which leads me to wonder if they focus on it, could they create the best kids characters and content?

And if they succeeded, just how much more successful could they be with greater lifetime stickiness and increased revenue opportunities through merchandise, partnerships (and maybe even parks and cruises?)

What’s impressed me most about Netflix over the years is their ability to continually add to their “core competencies”.

They went from the best DVD delivery service to the best online streaming provider to the best recommendations/UI to the amongst the best content producers.

It’s not that much of a stretch for them to go for owning childhoods. It’ll be interesting to watch. Me (and my kids) will be interested bystanders. :-)

What do you think?