Project Rube (11 x 26 mins), ordered by TVOkids commissioning editor Kirsten Hurd, is presented by designer, maker, fixer, inventor and content creator Morley Kert, who has built up a strong online following for his YouTube videos about “making stuff” using limited tools, space and resources. In the new unscripted series, Kert and a team of tweens will embark on a series of ingenious, engineering-based experiments inspired by eccentric US cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg. Goldberg was the best known for his chain reaction-type machines and contraptions, which were intentionally designed to make simple tasks as outlandishly complicated as possible.

Project Rube will be executive produced by Marlo Miazga, President of Sphere Media Kids and Family, which was created in April to bring Sphere Media’s English-language children’s factual, scripted and animation units under one banner. Also serving as Executive Producers for Sphere Media Kids and Family will be Andrea Griffith, Vice-President of Content and Development, Kim Bondi, Senior Vice-President of Development, Corinna Lehr, Vice-President of Production and Bruno Dubé, Sphere’s CEO.

Meanwhile, another TVOkids Original show, Riley Rocket (30 x 11 mins), has been sold to ITVX in the UK and to ABC Kids in Australia. The music-based animated series, which premieres on TVOkids on October 21, is an original creation from award-winning composers and producers Matthew Gerrard and Mladen Alexander of Mojumbi Entertainment. The action centres on Riley and her friends Alex and Theo who, in between performing in their band, morph into superheroes to save their hometown from disaster.
Abacus Media Rights manages the international sales for the series.