JumpStart Fact Of The Day

Daily trivia about the JumpStart educational brand, from 1994 to today. Anything interesting, odd, or noteworthy about the series, and just general nuggets of information. / main blog is @bluecakejs

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JumpStart character designs tend to be symmetrical, particularly when it comes to the main/mascot characters, as this is generally the case in most media. However, a few notable exceptions to this are pictured here, clockwise from top left: Casey Cat's original design from JumpStart Preschool (1995), which features different colored eyes, a design for Kisha from the late 90s, which features mismatched patterns on her shirt sleeves and irregular paint splatters, Pierre's design from the Advanced series, which features overalls that are only buckled on one side, and various designs for Botley, all of which feature a purple spring-like attachment on one arm but not the other.

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Around 2008-2010, JumpStart made various parodies of famous movies with JumpStart characters. This particular example is a parody of The Wizard of Oz, with Kisha as Dorothy, CJ as the Scarecrow, Botley as the Tin Man, Stanley (from Quest for the Color Meister) as the Cowardly Lion, and Roughhouse (a Pet from the JumpStart MMO) as Dorothy's dog Toto.

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In JumpStart Reading for Second Graders, the final cutscene shows CJ jumping out of a plane with a parachute to confront his nemesis Dr. Listick. In the shot where he jumps out of the plane, there appears to be a small yellow star beside him. This is presumably meant to be his trusty sidekick Edison, a firefly, who can be seen in the next shot where CJ and Edison land. For this one scene, Edison was simplified into just a star, presumably due to the small sprite size (originally 12x13 pixels) and the shortness of the scene making it hard to notice. The .gif here shows these scenes slowed down and enlarged for clarity.

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There exists what appears to be a beta version of Ghost Town Grab, which uses the alternative title "Frontier Frenzy". It features CJ on the title screen, Pierre as the playable character, and Blaster Prime on the character icon in the top right corner. Additionally, this version of the minigame has no timer, so it never ends. The files were hosted on the JumpStart website for a time, though presumably their location wasn't public knowledge. The files were discovered and archived by a fan called BrokenTV before the website's closure.

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The JumpStart series features many anthropomorphic animal characters, but occasionally "normal" animals that don't speak, wear clothes, or stand upright have appeared as well. This has resulted in multiple instances of JumpStart's anthropomporphic characters appearing alongside "regular" potrayals of their own species at various points.

Pictured here from top left going clockwise: Frankie next to a normal pet dog (from the 3D Virtual World series), Hopsalot with various normal animals, including a rabbit (from JumpStart Kindergarten 1997), Eleanor with a normal elephant and CJ with normal frogs (from JumpStart Around the World).

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According to promotional material for the JumpStart 3D Virtual World series, Eleanor’s birthday is on July 20.

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Over the years, JumpStart's main cast of animal characters have mostly had last names that are simply their species name, in the case that a last name is even specified. Such examples include "Eleanor Elephant", "Hops Hare", and "Casey Cat". Among these characters, only Frankie and CJ have ever been given distinct last names at some point. Frankie's full name was specified as "Frankie von Weinerhund" in a late 90s online bio, and CJ was given the full name of "CJ Pond" in JumpStart Advanced 2nd Grade.

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According to a bio for Botley that was featured on the JumpStart website in the late 90s, he loves scary books, his favorite of which is the classic novel "Frankenstein".

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Occasionally when completing a minigame in JumpStart 3D Virtual World: My First Adventure, the player will hear "great job" no less than three times in quick succession.

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One feature of the JumpStart MMO was a newspaper called the JumpStart Times. The JumpStart Blog once made a post attributing the creation of the newspaper to five JumpStart characters, Frankie, Pierre, Kisha, Hops, and Botley, who were each assigned a specific role.

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JumpStart Kindergarten (1997) features three mice: Roquefort (left), Jack (middle), and Brie (right). All three of their names are based on types of cheese.

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In media where Kisha is depicted as a tiger, she wears purple glasses that are wide and pointed at the edges, the shape of which most closely resembles what are known in real life as "cat eye glasses" (pictured right), which may possibly be a nod to her species.

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In 1999, a series of activity books based on the JumpStart first grade through sixth grade games were released. The book for third grade includes a short story called Mystery Mountain Munchies, which is inspired by the game JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade. Despite many aspects of the story lining up with the game, it contains a rather odd divergence right in the first paragraph. Mystery Mountain is described as being practically right in Polly's backyard, and Botley is stated to have never even been on Mystery Mountain due to being afraid of it. In the game, Mystery Mountain is the home of Polly and Botley. The author of this story didn't work on the game, hence why there may have been a degree of unfamiliarity with the game's setting. It's even possible that Polly's school (pictured in the screenshot) was mistaken for the home of Polly and Botley, given that it would explain the description of Mystery Mountain being practically in Polly's backyard.

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During the JumpStart Academy series run, images for the Academy games were hosted on the media.jumpstart.com domain, specifically under /cudos/images, which can still be accessed through the Internet Archive. While most images that were stored here were indeed Academy game assets, there are some odd exceptions to that, such as an image of a panda with a human-like face leaping with a garden hoe (top). This is actually derived from a genre of Chinese memes/reaction images, called Biaoqing (熊猫人), which feature a cartoon panda with real-life human faces edited onto them (bottom). There's absolutely no explanation for why this image was on the media.jumpstart.com site, though it's likely that staff involved with the Academy series simply uploaded a few images intended for personal use there at some point.

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On July 11, 2020, TikTok user airaperegrino uploaded an out of context clip of JumpStart 1st Grade that shows a student requesting a whole tray of peas, which she proceeds to devour eagerly. The video ended up going viral, garnering millions of views and spawning various parodies and remakes.

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In the JumpStart MMO, the player's Jumpee getting momentarily wedged into small spaces could potentially result in them getting flung over a significant distance at high speeds. An example is shown here, where a Jumpee goes to the ScienceLand entrance found in Adventure Canyon. By attempting to fit between a green pipe and yellow gear on top of the entrance, the Jumpee is launched straight upwards into the sky.

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In JumpStart 3rd Grade, two areas where minigames are located (the kitchen and the music hall) each have doors which require the player to solve a puzzle to unlock them. This means that normally, each visit to the kitchen or the music hall requires completing two minigames, first the door puzzle, and then the main minigame located inside.

There is a way to bypass the door puzzles, however. By opening the progress report from the inventory, the player can go directly to various minigames by selecting the corresponding subject. "Numbers & Values" sends the player to the kitchen, and "Music" sends the player to the music hall, without needing to unlock the doors first. The kitchen shortcut is demonstrated in the video here. (Note: The inventory can't be accessed during the door puzzle segments, hence why it was necessary to leave before opening the progress report.)