Developed by an Australian family as they drove across the United States on a two-year trip, Snapatoonies as an idea came in between bear sightings on a river where they came to fish for salmon (the bears, not the family). Snapatoonies can be seen as a series of DVDs that is a little bit late onto the scene, but is also fantastic and engaging digital content for young children, that would be just as much at home on a tablet in the back of the car as it might be on your television.

Snapatoonies does not try to hide the fact that it is educational: It respects the fact that young children want to learn, that their brains are primed for it and just like the folks over at Sesame Street, they put the learning up front and don't try to hide it behind baby talk or odd colorful characters. The mash up style merges animation types and real life images, but the quality of the content from the images chosen to the relevance to children's lives is high.

The quality of the production for a small team with a background in web design is really high. The strength of the production is in the detail put into the learning: Small aspects like the repetition of words, and words being seen and spoken as an image that depicts that word demonstrate how digital content can appeal to a broad spectrum of learning styles.

The offering can be seen on the Snapatoonies preview site. I recommend you check it out and consider the value of such viewing for geeklets aged 18 month to four years. That said, I could really see an app development company coming along and engaging with Snapatoonies to turn this content into something that takes children's digital content to the next level - with interactive video and quality learning content that isn't all bells and whistles and touch points, but sound and purposeful interactivity through quality educational content.

So, app developers: Take a look and maybe get in touch.