The classic Soviet-era children's cartoon "Nu, pogodi!" features a hapless wolf trying to catch a crafty rabbit, sort of like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner from those old Looney Tunes shorts. But ...

I waited a long time — though not as long as I’d planned — before I let my daughter watch any sort of television; when I did, I knew her first cartoon had to be “Ny Pogodi,” the strange ...