New Year's Eve 2015: Netflix tricks children into thinking its midnight with early cartoon countdowns

No-one needs to know that 9pm is not midnight

Celebrate 2016 whenever you want with Netflix's cartoon countdowns (Netflix)

It’s almost New Year’s Eve, meaning fireworks at midnight and the chinking of champagne glasses all round. So long as you aren’t stuck at home babysitting the kids, that is.

Fortunately, Netflix has come up with an ingenious plan to liberate any parents stuck to the sofa tonight in the form of family friendly cartoons pretending to count down to 2016.

The streaming service reportedly found that almost half of 9,000 parents surveyed in the UK, US, Canada and Australia hold fake countdowns for their children at around 9pm so they can get to bed on time.

This year, Care Bears, Mr Peabody and Sherman and Inspector Gadget have been enlisted among others to lead six countdowns of two to three minutes, so that everyone can “celebrate the most famous 10 seconds of the year whether it’s midnight or not”.

Simply search ‘New Year’s Eve Countdown’ on Netflix and you can host your own party anytime you want. It’s not only kids who aren’t too keen on staying up until midnight after all and none of the cartoon characters will give the game away that there’s still a few hours to go.