Hey kids, Harry here. I had heard that the SPY KIDS website was going live tonight, so I went and checked out SpyKids.Com. First surprise is that it is only accessible via FLASH.. this automatically limits your audience a bit... specially since friggin FLASH never seems to install correctly with my Internet Explorer.

Now SPY KIDS doesn't open till March of 2001, but they already have their website started... and right now... it doesn't do too much. Hopefully though, they can have some fun with this.

Right now, the site has a total of about 2 minutes of material to go through. Sure... round the end of the month, there'll be the first trailer... the one that'll be attached to 102 DALMATIONS or whatever... but really... if I were trying to sell the whole SPY KIDS concept... I'd be issuing missions... really simple ones to begin with... a series of questions... short answer... What is the capital of Russia? Who is President of the United States? How many moons does Earth have? Simple ones... but with each series of questions and answers... the kid would advance from basic wimp spy to super cool spy. But literally... it'd take weeks to acheive uber status... and those questions would be... How many moons around Jupiter? Who invented the theory of relativity? How fast is the speed of light? That sort of thing... and then when you got to the hardest questions... this would be 100s suddenly you would gain access to an area with behind the scenes footage... how to plant bugs in your sister's or brother's rooms... simple lessons on being a spy... what materials you need... how to use them...

Each time the kid signed on the site, it would remember where the kid was... how many questions answered... and his/her ranking in the world's league of Spy Kids.

You see... I'm tired of lazy website mastering for kids films where it's just a bunch of razzle dazzle marketing... and doesn't help a kid... or inspire him/her to learn.... to strive to be better.... to teach him/her to use the computer for good research... perhaps do the game in conjunction with Britanica Online or something.... This would open a child's eyes... as well as serve as a useful marketing effort for what I hope turns out as a good wholesome adventurous and fanciful kids film.

Why do I care? Because... Shouldn't we all? Locally I host a Children's Film Series called THE SATURDAY MORNING FILM CLUB... and with Big Brothers Big Sisters, The Alamo Drafthouse, The Chronicle and The Austin Film Soceity... I get to see a bunch of kids get access to materials and films like they've never seen... I tend to try to introduce the films in such a way that the kids might decide they want to make movies, do make up, write, special effects... etc etc etc...

SPY KIDS could be another one of those types of things... where DIMENSION could say... Yeah, we put out SCREAM and FROM DUSK TIL DAWN... but look what we did here.... and actually have a quality and good experience for kids from marketing, website and the film's release. Instead of making it just about marketing and toys... give something back upfront... Something that parents can see as a positive.... Well, that's my brain fart for the day!