Talk:BrainPop

COI Request

Hi, I am acting on behalf of BrainPOP, so I have a conflict of interest. I would like to request some updates to the "Company history" section which more accurately relay the early years of the organisation. Ssilvers, it seems that you have engaged previously with another editor who attempted to implement some of these changes, so your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Why it should be changed: BrainPOP was initially filed as BrainPop.com LLC in 1998, but this was cancelled and refiled separately as BrainPOP LLC in 2008. Most of this article will refer to the latter company, including the Kirkbi acquisition.

The archived Delaware.gov Department of State entity search (source 1 already in the article when searching Brainpop.com, LLC) supports the dates of creation of the two different entities.

Ssilvers, you mentioned the lack of an explanation of "a significant change in the way the material was made available to schools or users".

What the company provided changed to include products as well as content. BrainPOP now also works directly with educational institutions and launched multiple new products including BrainPop Educators, ELL and GameUp which have their own sections within the article, so I've suggested some text to explain this (one of the articles in source 2 already in the article supports this current direction).

Finally, Chanan Kadmon served as the previous .com filing company's co-founder and executive producer, rather than CEO or president prior to his departure in 2003, so this should be updated.

How it would look:

BrainPop BrainPop.com LLC was founded in 1999 by Avraham Kadar, M.D., an immunologist and pediatrician, to explain medical concepts to his young patients using animation, and co-founded by Chanan Kadmon, who also served as the company's president, acting CEO and an executive producer, leaving BrainPop BrainPop.com in 2003. BrainPop.com’s website, which operated until 2008, provided free content, including animation and quizzes. In 2008, Avraham Kadar established BrainPOP LLC which provides educational products to institutions such as U.S school districts. The BrainPop websites display animated, curriculum-based content that supports educators and are intended to be fun and motivational for students to watch.

Thank you for reviewing and let me know if there are any questions! Antonia Lark (talk) 14:37, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this proposal. You should look back in the history of the article to see the previous discussions about mentioning Kadmon, which happened a few years ago.

Here are my thoughts about the suggested changes above:

• In the article, I changed the company's original name, as you suggested in the first line of the proposal above.
• I did not remove Kadmon as founding president and acting CEO. The source, published by the company, clearly states that he did serve in those roles, and we would certainly not permit the company to suppress that information.
• We do not need to repeat the company's original name, so I did not make that change.
• Neither source no. 4, which you cite, nor any other source cited indicates that there was any major change in the company's operations in connection with the 2009 Delaware filing. Obviously, the company's assets and operations were not abandoned in 2009 when it filed the new name. I did add a short sentence about the new name filing in 2009.

Unless you can cite more published sources that discuss the 2009 reorganization, I do not think it is of encyclopedic importance to mention further, and the additional content you suggest would be partly redundant and partly misleading and not helpful to readers today. See also WP:BALASP and WP:NOTEVERYTHING for more information. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:41, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you @Ssilvers for taking the time to consider my request. I agree with the points you have raised on what should not be implemented and may return to address them in the future if I come across any reliable sources.

Would it, however, be possible to add some clarity that Avraham Kadar led the 2009 reorganization?

If the sentence you added could read as:

"In 2009, the company was reorganized, by Kadar, as BrainPOP LLC."

Thanks again for all your help! Antonia Lark (talk) 11:41, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

OK, done. I note that even mentioning it as we do is beyond what we have verified, as the only reference we cite does NOT, in fact, even say there was a re-org -- it just indicates that BrainPop filed an *additional* name in Delaware. We really need a WP:RS that specifically discusses the 2009 legal (and/or other) change(s). -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:48, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you once again Ssilvers at implementing the request. I am going to try and find a reliable source to better support Kadar reorganising and get back to you. Have a very pleasant weekend! Antonia Lark (talk) 11:47, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Good, thanks. Readers will also wonder what has happened at BrainPop since 2022. Did Kirkbi make significant changes to the company? Is Kadar still actively involved, other than attending board meetings? The company seems to have hired a new CEO, Cathleen Danaher (and to have gone through a string of CFOs since then), but I don't see any actual news articles to cite regarding when Danaher was promoted to CEO or what, if anything, is new at the company. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:59, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

What About Nat And Mateo?

Hi everyone, it seems like two characters are not included in the character list! Nat is a black teen around Cassie, Rita and Tim's age that occasionally narrates the videos, and Mateo is a teen boy that narrates a few such as the Lin-Manuel Miranda video. It seems that they are missing from the character list, but I tried editing it and my edit was removed. I'm not sure why.

Thanks! 2601:280:4680:6DC0:B5E8:D3E3:DF15:1E4A (talk) 02:36, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

It is not necessary to mention the minor characters, only the major ones. Unless you can find WP:Reliable sources that state that these characters are of substantial importance to the website, we should consider them trivial. See WP:NOTEVERYTHING and WP:BALASP. -- Ssilvers (talk) 03:35, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Character bios

The subject isn't a work of fiction, and character bios (especially poorly supported ones) are in no way due. The situation is not, as has been suggested, in any way akin to a plot section for a book, etc., where primary source leeway is sometimes granted: but which even then does not entail detailed character bio descriptions. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:10, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I disagree. The description of the main characters who are used on the site as narrators of the videos is essential for readers to understand . If you disagree, then we disagree, and we will need other editors to weigh in. This article has contained the character descriptions for many years, so I am happy to stick with the status quo. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:34, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Even if you disagree, there are some parts of the material that are still wholly unsourced, and you have restored those portions as well. I'm sure the problems with that need no explanation (wp:v). There is also a broader issue of extraordinary primary source usage on this page. A lot of this page reads far more advertorially than it does editorially, and a lot of that poorer content broadly aligns, unsurprisingly, with the material that is primary sourced. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:01, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Again, the character descriptions, because the recurring BrainPop characters in the videos are fictional characters, should be described analogously to characters in fictional works per MOS:PLOT. Nevertheless, here is a 2021 article that describes some of the characters. -- Ssilvers (talk) 07:36, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Great. Well I look forward to you citing the currently unreferenced or purely primary referenced parts to the Kenyan website, if you think that makes the material due. I am not willing to cross-reference the source over material I see as trivial, so I'm not going to add it, and I will still move to remove the unsourced and purely primary paragraphs again if no references are added, but I'll have nothing to say against secondary sourcing, if added – no matter how obscure it may be. However, any single sourced sections would still be onerous (thinking here of the currently unsourced Jr characters section). I really am bringing this up solely because I see this material as extraordinarily undue given the current state of the sourcing. I'm sure you can imagine how this material looks from a page outsider's perspective both given your long-tenured career and given past statements here, including this. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:01, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I'd say that we should keep the character info wherever possible. Not only do many book articles contain character details, so do other forms of media, including computer games etc, so it's something that's valid and acceptable. The sourcing could be strengthened though, but if it's valid information, it will be sourceable. - SchroCat (talk) 08:25, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Did BrainPop actually exist in 1997?

On IMDB, it says BrainPOP started in 1997, and this lists the old logo "The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby" apparently from 1997. Is this true, or false? I'm a bit skeptical about that. AUTTPEditor (talk) 13:07, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

No, not as an entity. But Dr. Kadar was apparently beginning to commercialize (or at least consider commercializing) his Tim and Moby videos in 1997, which he had been using for some time in his medical practice to "explain medical concepts to his young patients using animation", as the article notes. These tentative early efforts do not need further explanation per WP:DUE and WP:BALASP. -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:18, 27 January 2026 (UTC)