Captain Underpants

Dav Pilkey built Captain Underpants on a dare to authority: two prankster fourth-graders hypnotize their principal into a cape-and-briefs superhero, and the gleeful bad taste became one of the most-challenged, most-beloved kids' franchises in print. The catalog here even includes a spin-off, "The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby," carrying Pilkey's comic-within-a-comic gag onto its own shelf.

The screen versions understood the assignment. DreamWorks' "The First Epic Movie" kept the flip-o-rama chaos and the anti-establishment cheek, and the Netflix run "The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants," plus holiday specials and the interactive "Epic Choice-o-Rama," stretched the universe without sanding off its edges. This is rare children's media that trusts kids to find rule-breaking funny rather than scary, and it never talks down to them.

The Captain Underpants franchise spans 2 series, 1 books, 4 films in the CrossBinge catalog.