Puss in Boots: Trapped in an Epic Tale on Netflix breaks a wall

We’re part of the StreamTeam for Netflix and were compensated or received product for this post. All thoughts are our own. Back in 1988’s Big starring Tom Hanks they had a prescient scene where his character, Josh, a 12 year old boy in a 30 year old man’s body had an idea. What if a comic book allowed you to select different directions within the story? Choose Your Adventure is the literary equivalent of that and now technology has caught up with the idea. Netflix has debuted an online streaming version of that with Puss In Boots: Trapped in an Epic Tale. This is a standalone episode, not included in one of the streaming seasons that are available on Netflix.

I’m not a big fan of characters talking directly to the audience. This is a hard and fast rule when it comes to shows or movies that are geared towards adults. When it comes to children’s entertainment I’m flexible on it. Our kids don’t mind at all and that’s convenient because Trapped in an Epic Tale starts out with a quick introduction telling viewers that they’ll have to use their remote to choose the direction of the story.

Maneuvering your way through the episode is simple and kids as young as 5 will immediately figure it out. In our case the 5 and 7 years olds took turns (albeit unwillingly) as the other one determined the fate of Puss. The only common denominator was they both avoided the kissing scene, except for the younger one once-and that was just to make his brother scream.

The varied storyline works and kids will really enjoy it. There were a couple times when our signal wasn’t that strong, which delayed the download and that did frustrate the kids. However, when it was timely it was a negligible delay and the kids loved the fact that they could control the story.

After the second or third time the older one did point out ‘hey, the story always ends up the same’. Kids. Even with cutting edge technology they see faults. Netflix spent two years of research into this technology and Puss in Boots is the first show it’s being done on. The next show is Buddy Thunderstruck and that episode airs in mid-July. Side note: Buddy Thunderstruck is from the creators of Care Bears and the same animation studio as Robot Chicken. It’s a kid friendly throat punch of adrenaline that will immediately draw in boys aged 6-11, plus their parents.

If you have streaming capabilities with Netflix and have children check out Puss in Boots: Trapped in an Epic Tale. Children will love the novel idea that they can tweak the story and allow Puss to directly interact with them. This is cool technology that has some fun potential when it comes to children’s programming.