In celebration of Arbor Day I thought a look back at Nickelodeon's The Big Help would be fitting. So here's a look back at this event as well as my thoughts on it.

The Big Help started in 1994 as a community outreach effort to teach kids to give back to their community and to help clean up their local parks as well as learn how to help out others that are less fortunate.

The Big Help was a big hit and ran until 2001 and then in 2010 was rebooted as "The Big Green Help" But the name was changed back to The Big Help a couple years later.

When The Big Help was first Rebooted into The Big Green Help.

What the new logo looks like it is now.

The whole event was an 8 hour broadcast with a main stage as well as a touring bus that during the broadcast would show a montage of whatever city's park the bus stopped at. They would usually have a Nickelodeon Celebrity as well as a mascot of one of their characters on the bus tour. As for the main stage they would have Nickelodeon Stars as well as Celebrities and musical artists that would preform and play games at the park that the broadcast was being filmed from.

Amanda Bynes in 1997

98 Degrees on the SNICK Couch

Actors from one of the newer Nickelodeon Shows in the revived The Big Help

A few years after The Big Help's original run ended another event took it's place and now runs along side the new version of The Big Help today and that is World Wide Day of Play. Which was a 3 hour block that suspended airing of their shows to have kids go out and be active it signaled the ending of a much longer campaign the Let's just Play campaign which lasted 6 months out of the year to have gets get out and be active and eat healthy. After the block there usually was a marathon following it as well as premieres of new seasons or new shows.In recent years this event became part of The Big Help. Taking over the games that the original run of The Big Help had.

At first I watched it cause it had a lot of my favorite stars from the shows I watched at the time growing up like the cast of All That, Steve from Blue's Clues and the cast of Gullah Gullah Island just to name a few of the station's celebrities. They also had Musical Guests and Movie stars as well that I ether liked or saw in a recent movie that I saw as a kid. But while researching for this article I came across something that I didn't expect that would happen in my mind. The Big Help actually made giving back entertaining and fun. What I mean is that look at all those PSA ads past and present. Even as a kid they were corny and really felt preachy and forceful of their point. However The Big Help somehow manages to get a message across while not being super annoying. Which seeing this as an adult and still find it entertaining is pretty impressive to see even if mostly for nostalgia. Comparing to the reboot really makes no sense I've seen a few clips of the revive of The Big Help to be fair it's not all that different from the original one. Just new people and stars. But the message was still the same. That message has been and will be "Give Back and do good." Which is always a good message. As for the revamp like I mentioned before nothing really changed outside of them getting rid of the games that they did in the original run. Other then that it hasn't really changed from the original formula. Which is a good thing.

Just to give my opinion of the World Wide Day of Play I find it pointless just because you stop airing shows for 3 hours kids would just change channels and not do anything Nine out of Ten times. I feel that The Big Help had a bigger impact on kids then WWDoP has in it's whole run. But that's just me.

Well that was my look back and thoughts on Nickelodeon's The Big Help. Until next time, Live life and live 90's.