Bluey seems to court its fair share of controversy for an animated show about a family of dogs, but here we are again. The show has had one of its earliest episodes pulled from streaming, because it was messing with real-world business. The long story short of the situation is that one of Bluey’s episodes featured the family going to a hardware store; meanwhile, the real-life hardware store that inspired the episode has since done several Bluey brand collabs with Disney and BBC Studios, which turns out to be a conflict of interest for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). As such, the episode of Bluey that could be seen as promoting the store chain and its promotional campaign has been pulled. At least for now.
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Bluey’s “Hammerbarn” Episode (Temporarily) Banned In Australia
As of writing this, Bluey Season 2 Episode 2 “Hammerbarn” (first aired in 2020) has been removed from “iview,” the on-demand streaming service offered by the ABC. It will remain gone for as long as Bluey-themed merchandise is being sold at Australia’s Bunnings Warehouse store chain. Bunnings was the inspiration for the fictional “Hammerbarn” store in Bluey; in 2024, Bunnings ran a promotional campaign of renaming six of its Australian stores (and one New Zealand location) as “Hammerbarn.” The current collab sees Bunnings selling Bluey-themed products like garden gnomes and other household/lawn care items.
In a statement to PEOPLE, a representative for the ABC says, “This campaign is a BBC Studios and Bunnings partnership. As the ABC cannot align with a commercial brand or partnership, the Bluey episode ‘Hammerbarn’ will temporarily be unavailable on ABC iview while the Bunnings Hammerbarn campaign is live. [“Hammerbarn”] will return to ABC iview at a later date.”
Bluey finished the fourth part of Season 3 in Spring of 2024, including the series’ extended-length event episode “The Sign”, which became a major pop culture moment. The series also ended 2024 by holding a place among the top 10 streaming shows for 112 consecutive weeks, including every single week in 2024. While Season 4 is in development, Disney and BBC have announced that a Bluey movie is also in the works.
“I really enjoyed the experience of working with a longer format on ‘The Sign’ in Series 3, so going even further with a feature film feels like a natural extension of that,” Bluey creator Joe Brumm said in a statement about the film. “I’ve always thought Bluey deserved a theatrical movie. I want this to be an experiential event for the whole family to enjoy together. ”
Bluey is produced by Ludo Studio. The series first premiered in October of 2018, and has exploded into a global phenomenon since that time. The series follows a family of Australian dogs, comprised of a mother (Chilli), father (Bandit), and eldest daughter (Bluey), and youngest daughter (Bingo). Episodes are typically 15-minute shorts that focus on some kind of childhood development challenge, family dynamic issue, or (most cleverly) dealing with adult or parental challenges that can’t be directly conveyed to the kids. The series has been praised for how it both manages to educate kids and provide a level of humorous catharsis to parents. Like Peppa Pig before it, Bluey has gained viral popularity (or infamy) for influencing kids with Australia’s unique dialect and accent.
American and UK audiences can still stream all episodes of Bluey (including “Hammerbarn”) on Disney+ and other streaming or on-demand services.
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