Remember those Evian babies? They skated, danced and clung onto a wire mesh fence like they were performing adults… in nappies? Remember those guys? Well, they’re back – kinda – with a new dance routine, only this time, with adult heads.

Okay, that might sound a bit terrifying, but this isn’t some kind of Fly-style experiment gone wrong.

Rather, the babies are appearing in stop-frame animation and are looking for co-stars. That means you could appear with some gyrating toddlers. That’s right! All your dreams will come true!

A whole two years have been and gone since we last saw the roller babies and, in that time, it broke all kinds of records for being the most viewed ad online. Presumably, Evian are hoping for something similar with their new Live Young campaign.

And you, dear consumer, have a chance to become a part of the campaign.

You can create your own version of the video over at LetsBabyDance.evian.com. And people have already had a go (and half the time, don’t understand the whole ‘match your body up to that of the prancing toddler body’ thing, but that doesn’t matter as its supposed to be fun, right?). The whole idea is to make the longest music video ever, all soundtracked by ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ by Tom Tom Club, remixed by DJ Mehdi with Uffie.

Visit Facebook.com/evian for updates and stuff.

And all these prancing children got us thinking. Who are the best child performers like, ever, ever, ever? There’s a whole bunch of them knocking around at the moment and there’s been some fine ones from the past. And so, while these choices aren’t strictly babies, they may as well be.

Let us peek at some of the best child singers who ever graced a stage. And no, there’ll be no Justin Bieber.

Little Stevie Wonder

Little Stevie Wonder (or ‘Really Quite Big Stevie Wonder’ as he’s known now) was once a child singing sensation! Yes indeed! Many thought he’d be a flash-in-the-pan novelty act, like a mini Ray Charles (what with his penchant for shades), but how wrong they were!

Frankie Lymon

Frankie, lead singer with The Teenagers, was a young superstar in the ’50s, famous for singing the wonderful ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love?’ (a question no-one has yet answered sufficiently). Alas, like a lot of young stars, trouble wasn’t far away and by the age of 25, he was found dead in his grandmother’s bathroom from a heroin overdose. Cheery.

Willow Smith

When people heard that Will Smith’s daughter was releasing a single, many expected a big fat pile of dross. However, Willow went and surprised everyone by releasing one of the most monstrous pop-singles of the last decade. There’s a very, very strong chance she’ll never top ‘Whip My Hair’.

Helen Shapiro

At the age of fourteen, Shapiro went to the toppish of the charts with the aptly titled ‘Don’t Treat Me Like A Child’ before getting a brace of number one hits in the shape of ‘You Don’t Know’ and ‘Walkin’ Back to Happiness’. That said, she was still a whole year older than Frankie Lymon who hit the top spot in ’56. The old biddy!

The Dilly Sisters

Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! Sorry, these young scamps from The Banana Splits show will be going round your head all day now.

Michael Jackson

Perhaps the greatest child singer of them all. There’s no point talking about him because you invariably know everything you need to know about the Jackson family. Here he is belting out ‘Sugar Daddy’.

New Edition

Featuring a young Bobby Brown, New Edition were seen as an ’80s equivalent to the Jackson 5. They had a smash with ‘Candy Girl’ and… well… they pretty much vanished after that. Bobby, of course, went on to have a great but short career when he got older. Then, like all good child stars, went nuts.

Jimmy Boyd

Jimmy Boyd was a child-actor and singer, who had his first hit at 13 years old. He performed with country and western troupes before hitting it big with the first version of ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’, as well as performing with George Clooney’s aunt Rosemary.

Lil Bow Wow

The most potty mouthed of our child stars, Lil Bow Wow (presumably plain ol’ ‘Bow Wow’ these days) was a protege of Snoop Dogg and rapped his way into the hearts of youngsters, selling 3million+ of his debut LP. He then grew up and everyone lost interest.

George Dawes

He’s a baby! He’s a baby!

We hate things that mislead or confuse us. Just the other week we decided to dine out at an all you can eat restaurant.

Pay your money and grab a plate, that’s the basic premise. Simple or what? Apparently not in our case. Many hours later, the management asked us to leave as we’d supposedly had too much and were ruining everything for everyone else. We beg to differ.

As far as we can remember, The Jackson 5 was made up of Marlon, Jackie, Tito, Michael and Jermaine. Quite recently, one of the members passed away, thus destroying anything that can kind of be marketed as The Jackson 5. But ballsacks to everyone, because the remaining brothers have decided to knock out a brand new compilation album featuring remixes and unreleased tracks. Holy hell, we hope Joe Jackson isn’t trying to impersonate Michael.

Out of all the Jacksons, everyone knows that Michael was the most loved out of the general public. Did you ever see Janet Jackson with a hilarious pet lion that got her into all sorts of jams? What about Tito Jackson, he’s never had any brushes with the law. You’d have thought that after all the attention Michael got during his various court cases, he’d follow suit and do something illegal to boost his popularity.

While many people are still in shock over the death of wonky-nosed Michael Jackson, this hasn’t stopped bucketloads of people cashing in on him. Various writers have unauthorised biographies in the pipeline, badly-printed merchandise is flying off the shelf and that annoying Welsh kid who sung at his memorial has seen an increase of work.

Of course, you’re always more popular when you die. In the case of Michael, he quite literally had the charts all to himself as millions of people repurchased CDs they already had. In the distance you’d just be able to hear the laughter of record company executives and the heavy wheezing of Joe Jackson. And now another release featuring Michael’s work in The Jackson 5 is coming out. Just in time for you to buy it as a disappointing Christmas gift.

To drum up excitement, an unreleased track That’s How Love Is will be released as a single. NME.com reports:

“The 12-track album, called ‘I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters’, is released on November 12. A single from the album, the previously unreleased track ‘That’s How Love Is’, has been released as a single on iTunes. You can listen to the track being streamed online at Ilovethatsong.com/jackson5. An alternate version of ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ also features on the album.”

Crikey! We can’t wait. What’s next in the Michael Jackson money-making music line? Unreleased tapes of himself and Janet trying to teach Bubbles to sing along to Scream and Earth Song? Or samples of a compilation of adverts he promoted in audio form?

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The name Jackson has shifted meanings quite dramatically over the last few decades.

In the seventies you’d know the Jacksons as that annoying bunch of kids whose songs were more infectious then the Ebola virus, while the eighties and early nineties saw Michael Jackson pull away and gain success on his own.

Sadly MJ knackered things up towards the end of the nineties with “botched surgery” plaguing the Jackson name. Then at the turn of the millennium, things got worse as the tags “dodgy alleged child molester”, “rubber masked mo’ fo’” and “strange reality show contestant” were thrown around.

Whilst all the male members of the Jackson family were being beaten daily by their father to perform like dancing bears, poor Janet Jackson didn’t get a look in, with only Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, Michael and Randy involved in the Jackson 5 set-up.

Sadly, she’d have to go alone at it, using her surname like the unfamous sibling of a celebrity does. Yes she released some songs, but they weren’t “omg wow amazing,” though getting her tit out at the Super Bowl XXXVIII show in February 2004 did help.

Employed to entertain a rabble of drunken Americans whilst they waited for a poor man’s rugby game to kick off again, Janet was joined by her mate Justin Timberlake. The song itself was doing little to entertain anyone watching, but the real fun didn’t kick in until the end when Timberlake messed around with Janet’s costume. Tearing open her top, he exposed her right breast. Dubbing it as a “wardrobe malfunction,” the two were in for a right telling off. It made Bubbles the monkey cry for God’s sake!

Because Americans are scared of seeing another human naked, the CBS network was fined $550,000 and forced to show all future Super Bowl events on a delay. You know, just incase Paul McCartney whips down his trousers and makes a daisy chain out of his pubes if he was ever asked to play at halftime.

Because Janet is running out of fresh, innovative ideas, she has had to resort to past glories like these for a money spinning opportunity. Her lingerie line Pleasure Principle – named after a song that no-one really knows about from 1987 – apparently aims to make women feel feminine and sexy. At least she’s not set out to make ladies look hairy, butch and transgender. Janet said:

“People have come to me with other ideas, but lingerie is a passion for me, and just like music and acting, I can’t do it unless I put 100% into it.”

It remains to be seen if there will be a super special bra which will have a unusual pad for you to rip off in order to get that Super Bowl feeling. Failing that, we’re sure that a life size cardboard cut out of Justin Timberlake complete with strange, shocked reaction-face will be provided so you can recreate the moment in your front room.

With Janet Jackson’s bra and knickers to be set rolling out of sweatshops imminently, we hope that Michael Jackson will bring out his own brand of face scarves to cover up any individual’s face. Failing that, at least a Dummies Guide To Avoiding Kiddy Fiddling Charges. Gary Glitter would have bought a copy three years ago.

We’re positively flabbergasted.

It turns out when you add up the stuff from the lives of all the Jackson Five members, there appears to be an achievement in there somewhere, or something. So, let’s give them a lifetime achievement award, shall we?

Be sure to tune in to the award ceremony for the exciting activity where you have to match up pictures of the group from the past and present. If you’re good enough to score 100% you’ll be awarded one of the last un-repossessed llamas from Neverland Ranch.

Don’t get too excited, though. Nobody’s ever won one.

Everyone deserves an award. Especially if you’re a member of the Jackson Five. Whether it be ‘the most siblings in one family to have enough bad nose jobs, thus making them all look like Cabbage Patch dolls’, or ‘the greatest number of sleepovers to date’, the Jackson brothers have a load of shining achievements to boast.

This is why Michael, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon, and Jackie Jackson will receive a lifetime achievement award at the BMI Urban Awards on September 4th. Surprisingly, all of the brothers except Michael were able to cancel their dates with nothing, leaving them free to appear in person and accept the award. The attendance of Michael and his surgical mask is still in question at this point.

It is quite an honor for the Jackson Five to receive this lifetime achievement award, especially since the success of the group is localized largely between about 1966-1972, which is an interesting amount of time when categorizing a “lifetime”. But hey, if we convert that to dog years it turns out to be more like 42 years, which is much more respectable. So we’ll just go ahead and rename this the BMI Lifetime Achievement Awards Doggy-style.

Zing!

Okay, we really should give credit where credit is due: Jermaine. It’s Jermaine that has earned the award, no question about it. Praise be to Jermaine. For as any musical historian will tell you, it is Jermaine skipping around in pink and blue pyjamas singing “Dynamite” that constitutes an eternal achievement award for this life and whatever kitchen appliance he may be reincarnated as after he dies.