Romper Room: Miss Helena

This clip is an excerpt from the gentle world of Romper Room, which mesmerised pre-schoolers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Miss Helena was one of a series of female hosts who took their tiny charges through a series of kindy-style activities, learning good behaviour from Mr Doo Bee, drinking their milk and, of course, singing the hits: ‘Oh Come With Us and Gallop’, ‘Punch a Ball’ and ‘Bend and Stretch’.  

One segment that hasn’t aged so well is ‘The Posture Basket Song’. In this rendition of it, we see Miss Helena training an all-girl group of pre-schoolers in correct posture by making them balance baskets on their head. Not amazingly, they are all terrible at it, and there’s lots of confused little faces as they struggle with the task. This Victorian-coded exercise was part of a general trend in Romper Room towards nice, compliant children who played quietly, sat up straight and tall and were ‘mother’s little helpers’.  

Contemporary views of child-rearing lean towards giving kids more freedom, but many of today’s parents cherish fond memories of Miss Helena and Romper Room.