Dora the Explorer

Dora the Explorer is an American animated television series for preschool-age children that is broadcast on Nickelodeon in the United States. A pilot episode for this series aired in 1999. Dora the Explorer became a regular series in 2000. more...

The show was created by Chris Gifford, Valerie Walsh, and Eric Weiner. The series airs not only on Nick, but also on CBS on Saturday mornings and on Noggin, the Nickelodeon-owned channel for preschoolers.

Dora the Explorer has been extremely successful commercially, generating over $3 billion in retail sales of associated products since 2000, including $1 billion in 2004 alone.

Characters

Dora

Dora the Explorer tells the story of Dora Marquez, a seven-year old Latina who ventures forth on various simple but obstacle-filled quests. Dora involves the other protagonists and the viewer of the show in the quest. At the end of each episode, Dora celebrates the completion of the quest with a song ("We Did It") and asks what the viewer's favorite part of the adventure was. In the original episodes, Dora the Explorer was shown to live in a computer (similar to Aelita from Code Lyoko), but now she resides in a jungle with her family.

Dora's exact national origin remains vague because no specific Latin American country is ever mentioned. In any case, Dora speaks both Spanish and English (or another language and English in the various dubs). Dora's country of residence (the setting of most episodes) is also vague, though the palm trees and other flora suggest a tropical or semi-tropical area of the Americas. (The name of a recurring Spanish-speaking squirrel character, Tico, hints that the setting may be Costa Rica, whose residents are called ticos.) A good guess is that Dora lives in one of the tropical parts of Mexico which is most commonly associated interaction with both Latin American and U.S. culture.

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