The PAW Patrol Question

With a new PAW Patrol movie hitting theaters this weekend alongside a new game, it felt appropriate to ask: "Hey, so, what's up with all these dog cops?"

There are rights of passage for a parent these days. What was your child’s first word? When did they take their first step? And finally, but perhaps most importantly, when did their PAW Patrol obsession start? Because dread it, run from it, PAW Patrol arrives all the same. If you’re spared the weeks, months, or potentially even years of Chase, Skye, and Rider, consider yourself lucky. The rest of us, we’re just trying to survive.

On its face, PAW Patrol is an innocuous animated show about talking dogs in a place called Adventure Bay. Each dog—Chase, Marshall, Skye, Rocky, Rubble, Zuma—has a specialization and look. Chase looks like a blue police officer, Marshall is a red firefighter, Rubble is a yellow builder, etc. They’re all led by this 10-year-old gadget kid Ryder. It’s a show of empty calories, a collection of lights and sounds meant to distract. Oh, and the world makes zero sense, even by kid entertainment standards.

With a new PAW Patrol movie hitting theaters this weekend alongside a new game, PAW Patrol World, it felt appropriate to ask: “Hey, is PAW Patrol okay for my kid?”

This could just as well be called The Harry Potter Question. Take your pick, pick your poison. Your child is going to encounter media that grants you pause. It’s inevitable.

“I don't allow police play or toys in my house at all, same with military,” said Crossplay reader Amelia, who has a three-year-old son in Seattle. “My son, however, loves to play-fight stormtroopers, which, at least he's against the fascists there, but I still don't love him ‘fighting.’” 

I interviewed a producer on PAW Patrol World this week about making games for children and offered Outright Games a chance to weigh in, but they declined.

My seven year-old did not have a PAW Patrol phase. We had other phases, mind you, but PAW Patrol wasn’t one of them. My three-year-old, however, was smitten from day one. I can’t even tell you how it started. There was a solid year where all she wanted to talk about, all she wanted to watch, and all she wanted to play with involved PAW Patrol. We event went to a live PAW Patrol theater thing earlier this year with a friend. She screamed. Her three-year-old birthday party was going to be PAW Patrol-themed until, at the last second, she pivoted to being a Spider-Man kid. (A character who, at least in video game form, has come under similar criticisms!) It was a true relief.

The relief, however, was less about PAW Patrol, and more about exhaustion over having to pretend I’m Chase for the millionth time while playing. I was tired, man.

For many, PAW Patrol can feel more complicated, because of how it fits into a larger ecosystem. In 2020, during the height of the protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, PAW Patrol came under scrutiny for its universally positive portrayal of police in a TV show that’s directed squarely at kids.

“The Protests Come for ‘Paw Patrol,’” read a headline in the New York Times from June 2020, summarizing the ironic and serious responses to PAW Patrol saying it would try to stand in solidarity with protests, a move a lot brands were doing at the time: 

During the protests, shows like COPS were being pulled off the air, while the comedic Brooklyn Nine-Nine was retooled. (COPS has since been rebooted and, naturally, it’s on Fox.) During a period where, as a culture, we were having conversations about the nature of policing, it made sense to question the messaging children were receiving.

“How much will Paw Patrol be donating to bail funds?,” said one person in response.

“Ah yes, the fascist surveillance state indoctrination cartoon is coming out against police brutality,” said another, “surely this is authentic and genuine.”

It’s hard to tell the difference between angst and shit posting, and while in this instance it’s mostly the latter, what criticism of PAW Patrol is actually getting at is how, from extremely early ages, children have the concept that police are universally helpful, good, and worth trusting drilled into their brains. You cannot avoid it.

It’s where the term “copaganda” comes from—a more specific form of propaganda.  

As if to drive this point home, this week my oldest came home with a packet she worked on at school called “Heroes.” Can you guess who’s featured on the front page? Police. Can you guess who’s jobs are celebrated on the next page? Police. An excerpt:

“Police men and women were heroes during the September 11th attacks. They helped workers out of the Twin Tower buildings, helped injured people, and worked hard to keep order that day. The police are heroes in our everyday lives too! They can help you if you are lost or scared. They help keep our neighborhoods and schools safe. Can you think of other ways police are heroes?” 

(Side note: Last year, when my kid was asked to choose what they wanted to be when they grew up, most said something like the police. Or astronaut. My kid said gamer.) 

It’s a packet trying to explain September 11th to a seven-year-old. Of course it’s basic, and of course the most rah rah moment of the last few decades champions the police. But it also scratches at the same point that bothers people at PAW Patrol on a macro scale. It’s easy to brush away what seem like isolated incidents, but it starts adding up.

“Many of our baseline ideas and assumptions about the police come from a very early age and largely go unchallenged unless you're actively seeking out the kind of media,” said Jackson Maher, host of the media criticism channel Skip Intro, which published a examination of PAW Patrol and copaganda in “PAW Patrol’s Dark Secret, Explained.”

On its own, PAW Patrol is probably benign. It’s why Maher got some pushback for choosing to spend am hour on PAW Patrol as part of a series looking critically at representation of police in media. But he still found the show worth unpacking.

“I didn't want to talk much about specifics,” said Maher, “since most children won't extrapolate those things, but instead focus on the larger structural elements of the show and the phenomenon that surrounds it. For me, that was the idea that police will go to great lengths to protect you, that they are no different from other first responders like fire departments or emergency medical services, and to look into the consumerist nature of the franchise in relation to policing.”

Two things are true: I’ve let my kids watch PAW Patrol and have problems with the way PAW Patrol contributes to an environment present in media and schooling that makes police seem infallible. Children should question authority, whether it’s the police or wanting more candy. And yet, stamping out PAW Patrol does not remove the copaganda my children are fed in school. My control over that is pretty limited. But when the news is on in the background and there’s a story about a bodycam and police abuse and my kid is asking what’s going on—which also happened this week—it’s an opportunity to discuss the presence of good people and bad people, good cops and bad cops. (I am not yet ready to try and explain ACAB to my seven-year-old just yet.)

Broadly, my approach with media has been to let my children guide themselves, and speak to them on their level, as comprehension grows. If, god forbid, for some reason PAW Patrol is still an influence in my youngest’s life in a few years, we’ll have a talk.

But that’s me, not you!

Parenting is drawing lines based on values. It’s also informed by your experiences.

Maybe the real problem with PAW Patrol, though, is a new one: it’s too damn woke.

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• I have successfully acquired a review copy of PAW Patrol World, and intend to surprise my youngest daughter tonight. I’m really excited to see her response.

• Fortunately, I bet I get to dodge the Harry Potter stuff. As a property, Harry Potter seems mean a lot more to older people than it does to younger people these days.

• What lines have you drawn as a parent? What lines have you tried to draw…but found yourself moving the goalposts? I suspect we’re all guilty of the latter.