My kids love the TV show Hi-5, and I have a totally unhealthy obsession with the show. I love to watch it as much as they do, and I know all kinds of facts about the five performers — what their names are, what their backgrounds are, other credits, likes and dislikes…I’m practically a Teen Beat Hi-5 Special Edition. Lately I find myself thinking that their album just may be the greatest album of all time, as I have listened to it about 5000 times and yet I can still listen to it one more time without my head exploding. Beat that, U2.

The original series, from about three years ago, featured 45 episodes based around 9 different themes. One of my favourite parts of these episodes was the costumes. The three girls in particular had the greatest clothes — cute, colourful outfits paired with adorable shoes and intricate hairstyles. They were hardly the kind of thing that you’d wear to the mall but the perfect blend of fabulous colours with splashes of unique patterns made the costumes totally drool-worthy. I even considered writing to the show’s costume designer to complement her, and ask her to take on the role of my personal shopper, if she could be convinced to move to Canada.

A few months ago the show made a new set of 25 episodes based around 5 new themes. Clearly, they have a new costume designer, one who has taken the “fun and funky” theme and put it in a blender with everything that was crappy about the 80s and thrown up the most horrifying clothes that I’ve ever seen on TV.

Here are some samples from the original series and the second season. Forgive the horrible quality of these photos, I took them of my TV — I just had to share the disaster with the world.

First, from the first season, here’s Karla wearing one of my favourite outfits — a pink t-shirt under a patchy-blue tank top, with cool jeans and sneakers. You can’t tell from the photo, but she also has pink and blue ribbons woven into the front of her hair:

First season Karla again (centre), in a white T, blue tank, blue check pants, and a little red apron (these aprons were a costuming theme in the first season); Jen (to the left) wears a red and white check shirt with denim apron and cut-off jeans:

First season Kimmee in what I previously would have considered a not-so-great outfit — a slightly busy pink-blue-white blouse with a blue skirt and sandals:

And here’s a great first season shot of the whole group — I especially like Karla’s yellow and magenta colour combination, and Jen’s top of pinks and whites:

Now for the new season outfits. Warning, some may be offended by the fashion crimes within.
We’ll start with Jen in a pretty typical outfit from this season — polka-dot head scarf, pink shirt (with glitter decorations on the front you can’t see), yellow mega-belt (the mega-belt is this season’s little apron), too-short plaid skirt, knee socks, and the ubiquitous shiny ballet slippers:

Kimmee has really taken the brunt of it this season. Here’s one that I really hate — white sundress with blue shrug, over rolled-up too-tight jeans (again, ubiquitous this season), white hair flowers, and glaring white sneakers:

Karla is not a fat girl but you wouldn’t know it from this outfit, which pairs a purple tank top with a yellow too-long shirt, polka-dot skirt with — yes — leg warmers:

And Karla again — sorry for the extreme crappiness of this shot — in a pink-blue-white striped t-shirt under a pink tank with flamingoes on it, giant belt, flowing hot-pink skirt over pale pink pants, and ballet slippers:

And lastly, Kimmee in a most unfortunate colour combination of orange, blue, and red, with white sneakers and silver mega-belt:

Unfortunately the new season’s shows are really bad, and we only had a couple of them on our PVR, so I couldn’t really show you the truly awful ones (and here, knows I’m talking about that one where they made Kimmee wear that striped hat with matching leg warmers). But I think you get the idea.

Join with me as I recoil in horror!