So them there Interweb denizens have gotten atwitter about the existence of Dev2.0 (which is a kid band covering Devo) I popped over and watched a couple of videos - and my final take is just pure perplexity. Who is this for? I mean, the videos manage to convey "Disney manufactured kiddie stuff" perfectly - there's some sort of interesting discussion there about what elements make it so obviously aimed at pre-teens. But then they are just basically doing bad Devo covers. Do pre-teens give a crap about Devo? Did I miss a memo? The next theory is that it's supposed to appeal to me somehow - that it is either ironic and/or retro. I don't buy that for a second. In the first place I have the original Devo songs on my iPod already, and in the second place, there's not an original bone in this melange.
We're left with the weak third case - the "multiple levels" approach. In this mode it's supposed to appeal to the kiddies while have richer levels for parents. See Pixar or Shrek for examples of this. But I'm not buying it there either. See, for that to work it has to first appeal to the kiddies, and I'm not convinced Devo songs do that. After you have that then you can layer on additional content that amuses parents. And I'm not convinced it does that either - the covers sound strictly inferior to me.
So I'm not outraged but I am perplexed. I'd love to see a coherent explanation of what the marketing plan actually is here.