Fiesta Trio. Designed by Helena Giersz.

1998 when I first met with Chris Gifford, he told me about the idea of the show about this fearless little girl who is alone in the jungle, but it’s OK cause she has her best friends Benny Swiper, Tiko, Isa, and of course Boots who is always by her side. That little girl at first was not supposed to have a house or parents or or even school to go to because the Dora the Explorer show was supposed to be a pretend game. That’s why at the beginning we see the arrow going from place to place when she asks a question and the arrow was supposed to represent kids’ answers. Later we spend hours at different focus groups to see how long it would take for kids to respond  and try to adjust the timing. It was very important to make the show engaging. Like in any other kids game there had to be a reward after accomplishing a task and that reward was Fiesta Trio appearing in different situations either flying across or just walking or riding on a bicycle, but always playing that “Ta daaa!!!” sound:).

We didn’t know at first which animals were supposed to be in fiesta Trio my first design was a giraffe an elephant and a zebra but then Valerie Walsh send me a note about making them smaller critters and that’s how Fiesta Trio as a monkey grasshopper and a snail got created.

20 years later Fiesta Trio somehow had to change so at first I did a 3-D model with fiesta Trio as it appeared in Dora the Explorer 2D and then I changed it to the way it is right now so: frog, marmoset, and an armadillo I think I still like the original Fiesta Trio better, what do you think?