‘Mr. Dressup’ and ‘Polkaroo’: Toronto museum celebrates nostalgia of kids’ TV

Before streaming services, kids would watch all their shows on television. This Toronto museum celebrates nostalgia of kids’ TV. Corey Baird reports.

If you grew up a boomer or a Gen X’er, content choices were pretty limited, with often only a handful of TV channels at best.

A Toronto-based pop-up museum is celebrating that simplicity, transporting people to a time when the world wasn’t at our fingertips.

“Mr. Dressup to Degrassi: 42 Years Of Legendary Toronto Kids TV” is love letter to shows that were shot and produced in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), for audiences here, and exported abroad.

“Before Drake, ‘Degrassi’ was kind of the biggest export out of Toronto,” said Ed Conroy, exhibition co-curator and owner of Retrontario, a digital platform devoted to preserving Ontario’s television history.

“If you went anywhere around the world in the 90s, if you went to Australia and said you’re from Toronto, chances are someone is going to say, ‘Oh, do you know, Joey Jeremiah?’ That was the cultural currency.”

Inside a temporary installation on Toronto‘s waterfront at the Harbourfront Centre, Conroy has amassed a treasure trove of kids TV nostalgia. Timeworn printed promotional materials from shows like “Sharon, Lois and Bram” are displayed in glass cases. The fabled tickle trunk from “Mr. Dressup” sits next to a recreation of the iconic set from the “Polka Dot Door.” A few steps away, decades-old puppets from “Today’s Special” and YTV’s “The Grogs” have been lovingly preserved.

“‘Mr. Dress Up’ and the ‘Friendly Giant’ were on for decades and decades,” Conroy told CTV News Toronto. “You would have a kid watch that show in the 1950s, and then their kids watched the same show in the ’80s. So, when those people come into this exhibit, and they see these characters again and they see the sets, it’s like seeing an old family member because it was a part of their day-to-day life.”

“It was like a ritual and nowadays, our relationship with content is very fleeting. I think for younger people to come and be exposed to the content, whether it’s the videos, sets or puppets, for them it’s like Martian television. It’s like seeing something that is is alien to them.”

During CTV Toronto’s tour of the exhibit, both sides of the generational divide were present.

“We’re having a girls day and this was on our list of highlights,” said Tanya Calligan, a Gen X’er visiting from Niagara Falls along with a pair of friends. “They don’t make TV like this anymore. You don’t get the realism. These puppets on-screen, they weren’t fake. They were our friends.”

On the other side of the room, a pair of Gen Z’ers were busily taking part in a puppet making workshop, re-creating characters from content created long before they were born.

“It’s great to learn about the past and look at these things through a different perspective,” said Surapheo Bogal, a 19-year-old from Surrey, British Columbia. “Content now is kind of brain rotted, just quick dopamine. Before things seemed to be more thought through.”

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Museum of Toronto and Retrontario. It runs through March 2026.