Les Minikeums (partially lost French puppet TV kid block; 1993-2002)

Les Minikeums was a kid show block that aired on French channel France 3 from 1993 until 2002.

It featured a wide cast of puppet characters (the "MiniKeums") who were caricatures of French celebrities, but shown as young operatives at a TV station.

The show was very popular during their airtime; along with screening many cartoons and children's TV series, the Minikeums themselves would have a large variety of skits, centering on some character storylines, movie/TV-series/gameshow parodies or music videos.

Their original songs were famously catchy, such as the main theme but especially their boy band parody song Ma Mélissa.

Les Minikeums remain a solid part of 90s French popular culture, and is a common talking point of French nostalgia communities.

In its later years, however, production decided to shut the show down, because of its cost, although it claimed the children audience was apparently getting tired of it. Les Minikeums was retooled into MNK and given much more less original footage and a more restricted set until it disappeared in 2002. In 2003, a new all-CGI kid show block replaced it, called TO3, but completely failed to gain the same appeal as Les Minikeums, lasting barely a year.

Because of its popularity, taped footage of Les Minikeums keeps on circulating on video-sharing websites. However, the list of found videos and of what is still yet to find is far from exhaustive.