Wiggles songs are often about simple topics familiar to very young children: sleeping ("Rock A Bye Bear", "Wake Up Jeff"), eating ("Fruit Salad"), animals ("The Monkey Dance", "Rock-A-Bye Your Bear", "Ponies") or the cast of characters created for their home videos and TV shows. These costumed characters include Dorothy the Dinosaur (a horticulturalist dinosaur who eats roses), Captain Feathersword (a friendly pirate), Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus, and Officer Beaples (a female police officer who communicates through mime). Another distinctive feature of the group's songs is easy-to-repeat gestures, such as the "romp bomp a chomp" hand motions in the song "Dorothy the Dinosaur." Much of the Wiggles' music has been written by John Field, the brother of the blue wiggle - Anthony. The Wiggles also adapted the Bob Wills tune "Silver Bells That Ring In The Night" with a duck-like "quack quack-quack" in the refrain.

Origins

The Wiggles originally consisted of five people, but for almost all of their career the lineup has consisted of the remaining four founder members. Early on, they adopted differently coloured shirts for each member, which assisted their recognition by very young children, and they invariably wear the Wiggles 'uniform' when appearing as The Wiggles in the media or in public. The colour coding is -- Greg, yellow; Murray, red; Anthony, blue; Jeff, purple. This simple device also allows the Wiggles to go about in public (at least in Australia) with relative ease, since children rarely recognise them without their trademark colors.