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Face: A Friend In Simplicity

 
 
When I was a little girl, before my mother remarried, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house while my mother was at work. During this time, when I wasn't helping my grandmother deshell walnuts or gardening with my grandfather in the backyard, they plopped me in front of the television and turned on Nickelodeon. This was the early/mid nineties, to give you a vague context of time. Anyway, sitting there watching, quite frankly, a few things that will show up on this blog later on, myself and any other viewers were constantly bombarded with interstitial shorts between shows featuring FACE. And, yeah, he's pretty much what you'd come to expect. He's a colored face taking up the entire screen, whose color changes constantly, who laughs with you and talks to you and tells you what's coming up next.

These days, there's entire collections of Face videos on Youtube, and people have made their own even. Face is by no means completely forgotten, but I do think he exists as a fuzzy memory, because he was only around so very briefly. He was the original host of the Nick Jr block, first appearing in between airings of shows on September 5th, 1994. He has a very positive attitude, likes to ask viewers simple questions and overall exudes happiness. He appeared in over 400 commercials on Nick Jr between 1994 to 2004, so that's a solid decade with Face. Actually lasted much longer than I had expected. He was voiced by Chris Phillips who also narrated several other Nick Jr and Nickelodeon promos, and animated by Nick Digital from 94 to 96 before moving over to DMA Animation from 96 to 99. However, on August 29th, 2003, the original promos ended their 8 year run, and Face was essentially phased out, aside from showing up in some nostalgia spots here and there on things like The Splat.

My grandparents were very loving people who really enjoyed their time with me, but even they couldn't be with me all the time, and I was a very strange, sickly little girl so I didn't have a whole lot of friends as it was, but thankfully I felt like Face was my friend, which I'm sure was part of the intention behind him. Well, it worked. I loved Face to death, often drawing him on multicolored pieces of construction paper so I could always be with Face. To someone like me, with no friends and my mother working all the time, Face was an invaluable companion. It felt like not only was he coming on just to see me, but he was also personally giving me all these cartoons and shows so I would be happy. I was very young, okay? I was not a smart child. Hell, I'm not even a smart adult.

To this day, Face remains a really happy memory from a rather fractured and frustrating childhood soaked in pain. Face even possibly is responsible for my implausible optimism, and why I keep, no matter how cynical or depressed I may come off as, trying to be alright and keep going, even when things are seemingly at their worst and getting worse every minute. In my opinion, I think it's fairly obvious to anyone that Face is named Face and changes color so often because, in theory, Face can be anyone. Face can be any of us. Face had to be relatable to all watching, hence why their voice is fairly gender neutral. It's not super masculine, despite Face being labeled "male", and so he comes off very non threatening and approachable for girls too. I'm a girl and I saw myself in Face, because we all have faces, we're all different colors, and that's a beautiful thing.

So here's to you, Face, for your optimism, your naivety and your inclusiveness. Here's to teaching us that it's perfectly fine being just another Face in a sea of faces, because really, it means none of us are truly alone.

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