>>19But none of us who learned as kids did so because of cutesy kiddy crap. We did it because programming itself is interesting and fun.
This. Most likely people who are all about cute shit all time as kids aren't really interested in programming.
Kids with engineering/technical aptitude and a more logical thinking are more likely to be interested in this shit, but those kids don't need drawings and shit.
I remember learning to program the C64. (It wasn't in the "golden age", I'm not that old though.) The manual was in German, I don't speak German at all. I figured out how it works by looking at samples in the manual and trying out instructions. No drawing/mascot/whatever will make a kid do that, only pure willpower and deep interest will make someone spend hundreds of hours alongside a computer.
This is something about getting kids interested about in basic programming so we will have more trained code-monkeys... or something like that.