Littlest Fans' Favorite Faces

The mind of a preschooler is a mysterious thing. Which properties are preschoolers just finding out about? Which are they tiring of? Does age matter? What about gender? A recent survey conducted by Funosophy Inc. asked moms to shed some light on what's hot with today's preschoolers.

A total of 207 mothers of children ages 3 to 5 were asked, “What character is your child just starting to get really interested in?” and “What character is your child growing tired of?” The open-ended survey garnered a total of 92 unique responses.

Nickelodeon properties Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants share top honors as the characters that more preschoolers are starting to get interested in, followed by the Disney Princesses, Hannah Montana and Power Rangers.

But despite Dora's appeal among preschoolers for whom she's a brand new friend, Dora has clearly run her course among others in the same demographic; nearly 25 percent of moms named her the character their child was growing tired of. Younger-skewing Barney and Blue from Blue's Clues were also high on the list of characters with waning appeal.

The survey found that age makes a difference when it comes to popularity. Although Dora, SpongeBob and Disney Princesses are tops with 3- and 4-year-olds, for 5-year-olds the preferences begin to lean toward much older skewing, gender-specific properties like Hannah Montana, Spider-Man and Star Wars.

Similarly, when it comes to gender, roughly half of the properties on the boys' list are gender-neutral while the other half are boy-specific. The girls' list, though, is dominated by very girl-specific characters. And while kids (and their moms) are aware of nearly 100 preschool-targeted properties, only about 10 of those properties hold real weight.