In one episode of the popular TV series Friends, Joey admits to having lied on his CV and also adds, "I wasn't one of the kids on ZOOM, either."

An episode of the series You Can't Do That on Television began with the cast members running up to camera singing "Come on and boom, boom, booma, boom," before an explosion erupts, causing them to choke on the ensuing smoke.

In the sixth episode of the American version of Queer as Folk, Brian sees 17-year-olds Justin and Daphne at Club Babylon and exclaims, "Well, if it isn't the cast of ZOOM!".

In a rare (for the time) cross-PBS parody, The Electric Company, had a sketch called "BOOM", featuring the Electric Company cast in striped turtlenecks on a mockup of the ZOOM set. "BOOM" was intentionally less polished than most Electric Company sketches, to poke fun at ZOOM's unscripted format.

Similarly SCTV had a regular segment called "Pre-Teen World" which featured the SCTV cast pretending to be preteens who were improvising a television program they wrote and produced themselves. Often, the 'unscripted' segments would turn into disasters as real life turned out to be less cheerful than the kids implied. This was largely a parody of ZOOM (including a parody of the 0-2-1-3-4 jingle) and similar local programs.

Boston Globe: "Children's Show ZOOM a victim of ratings drop", story about 2004 cancellation of ZOOM

Do a ZOOMdo, published by Little Brown in 1975, featured activities from the show.

Season 1 (1999): Lynese Browder, Alisa Besher, Zoe Costello, Jared Nathan, David Toropov, Pablo Velez, Keiko Yoshida. Season 2 (2000): Alisa Besher, Caroline Botelho, Claudio Jimenez, Zoe Costello, Ray MacMore, Jessie Ogungbadero, Kenny Yates. Season 3 (2001): Kaleigh Cronin, Eric Rollins, Rachel Redd, Kenny Yates, Kevin "Buzz" Barrette, Caroline Botelho, Frances Domond. Season 4 (2002): Kaleigh Cronin, Garrett DiBona, Estuardo Mazzu, Aline Ramirez, Caroline Botelho, Matt Runyon, Rachel Redd, Season 5 (2003): Garrett DiBona, Mike Hansen, Elena "Shing Ying" Shieh, Estuardo Mazzu, Kortney Sumner, Aline Ramirez, Caroline Botelho. Season 6 (2004): Kyle Larrow, Mike Hansen, Francesco Tena, Maya Morales, Elena "Shing Ying" Shieh, Kortney Sumner, Cara Harvey. Season 7 (2005): Kyle Larrow, Nick Henry, Taylor Garron, Francesco Tena, Noreen Raja, Emily Marshall, Elena "Shing Ying" Shieh.

ZOOM at TV.com

Studio See (another PBS children's program that used content from viewers)

ZOOM was an American educational television show, created almost entirely by children, which aired on PBS from January of 1972 to March of 1978. A new version of the show, also on PBS, premiered in 1999 and ended production in 2005. Both versions were produced by WGBH-TV in Boston. Christopher Sarson was ZOOM's creator and original producer (1972-1974). ZOOM encouraged children to "turn off the TV and do it!" On the show, a cast of (usually) seven kids (known as ZOOMers) performed various activities such as games, plays, poems, recipes, jokes, and science experiments, all suggested by viewer contributions. The performers in the original series were known for wearing striped rugby shirts and jeans, and for performing the show barefoot. The mail-in request became a pop culture reference for its music exhortation to, "Write ZOOM, Z-Double-O-M, Box 3-5-0, Boston, Mass 0-2-1-3-4: send it to ZOOM!". There was also a language game on the show called Ubbi-Dubbi and another called Fannee Doolee. ZOOM was a new kind of series when it premiered on January 3, 1972. Unlike other children's fare at the time, it was for the most part unscripted. Far from seeking to capitalize by making stars of the child actors, the contracts prohibited them from making any television appearances or doing commercials for three years after they left the show. ZOOM was intended to inspire children to be active investigators, creators, and problem-solvers as well as introduce them to the principles of ethnic diversity. The show's ZOOMSci segment, for example, featured on the later incarnation, encouraged viewers to try the activities shown on ZOOM and to send in their results. When ZOOM made a comeback in 1999, parents who had grown up watching the show could now share it with their own children, and found that it was very much the same as it had been in the 1970s. The theme song was similar, there was still Ubbi-Dubbi, and the ZOOMers continued to play games and perform skits suggested by other children. While the ZOOMers would occasionally appear barefoot for certain games and skits, the entire show was no longer performed barefoot. With the advent of the Internet, the "0-2-1-3-4" jingle was rarely sung, supplanted by one that emphasized "PBSKids, dot org!" Also, when reading aloud the names of contributors, the later version provided only first names and abbreviated surnames (e.g., "Paul T."), presumably as a compromise between crediting the children and meeting modern privacy expectations for child safety. The show was last filmed during the summer of 2005, many episodes taking place off of the ZOOM set. The decision to cancel the show was largely due to failing ratings, with the last season's ratings down almost a fifth from the previous year. There is currently talk of putting ZOOM on either PBS Kids Sprout or soon-to-be 24-hours digital PBS Kids Go! channel. The first ZOOM series lasted six seasons (1972–1978) and featured 49 ZOOMers. The second ZOOM series lasted seven seasons (1999–2005) and featured 32 ZOOMers. At the end of every season of the second series, cast members who had grown too old were replaced by new cast members.

Fourth Season (1974-1975): Andrae Neilsan, Carmen Peterson, Cate Albonda, David (II) Sales, Harvey Reed, Norman Christian, Red Lyman, Tishy Lyman, Tommy (II) Schultz, Tracey Dunlap. (This was the only season of the original show that featured more than seven ZOOMers at one time.) Fifth Season (Late 1976): Arcadio Gonzales, Chris Blackwell, Jennifer Gold, Karen Wing, Levell Gethers (who did not complete the season), Nell Cox, Ron Richmond. Sixth Season (1977-1978): Amy Clark, Carolyn Malcolm, Chee Bong, John Lathan, Nicholas Butterworth, Shona Wiseman, Susan Hobbie. Originally funded by the National Science Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Corporation For Public Broadcasting and Viewers Like You, ZOOM lost its funding in 1975, after the end of the fourth season. It was off the air from the summer of 1975 until January of 1976, when it was brought back in reruns. Later in 1976, ZOOM returned to the air with its fifth cast. Some PBS stations continued to broadcast reruns of the series as late as early 1980.

John Lathan (1977-1978) has had guest parts in The West Wing and was a member of the Engine Crew on Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?

Leon Mobley (1972-1973) is founder of DJIMBE West African Drummers and Dancers (DWADD)^[1], and has performed with the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Peter Wolf.

In 1974, A&M Records released an album of songs from the show entitled Come on and ZOOM (LP OCLC 3060311; cassette OCLC 18900529), featuring cast members from the second season. The catalogue number for the album was SP-3402. There were two books published for children that were based on the 1970s ZOOM series:

The ZOOM Catalog (ISBN 0394825322), published by Random House in 1972, featured the best stories and activities from the show;

In the Hard 'n Phirm music video for their song "тт", they parody ZOOM in a program called ZAP. The kids are named Javier, Jessica, Steve, Susan, and twins Hector & Diego. The show is produced by "WHNP" (whose logo is a clear take-off on WGBH's famous "outline" logo) and is "funded by a grant from the Windsor Pneumatics Foundation". In the video, two unidentified wizards watch the kids do increasingly more bizarre activities, including spinning around on a mop and pretending to kill each other. A phony-looking robot appears, which leaves them enraptured. Near the end of the video, the kids and the robot confront the wizards, who vaporize Steve, Hector, and Diego with laser beams. Jessica reflects one of their lasers back with a mirror, and the robot destroys the other wizard. The three remaining kids are shrunken, and they jump into a portal in the wizard's book.

A segment of Jonathan Caouette's film Tarnation describes an idea that a young Caouette had for a rock musical based on his life. His hypothetical cast included the cast of ZOOM as a chorus of children in foster care. During this segment, a montage of clips from movies and TV are shown, including a few from ZOOM.

On Saturday Night Live in 1998 during the Weekend Update segment, Colin Quinn reported that ZOOM would be coming back to TV "just when we couldn't get that theme song out of our heads."

ZOOM at the Internet Movie Database (1972-1978)

ZOOM at the Internet Movie Database (1999-2005)