Collection The Fixies

The Fixies is built on a lovely premise: small creatures live inside every machine and keep it working, and they hide when humans are looking. It's an explanation a child can accept immediately and a very efficient excuse to teach how things function.

The educational structure is genuinely good. Each episode has a device - a lightbulb, a vacuum cleaner, a microwave - and a segment where the Fixies explain, accurately, how it works. It's based on a Soviet children's book by Eduard Uspensky, which explains the pedagogical instinct.

The characters are colour-coded and shaped like small screws with helmets, which is both practical for animation and thematically appropriate. Nolik, the youngest, exists so somebody has to have things explained to them.

The transformation into a screw shape when hiding is the best running gag and also solves a plotting problem in one motion.

This collection covers the Fixies team.