The death of U.S. savings bonds

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Americans bought over 40 million of the most popular savings bonds in 2000. Last year, the U.S. sold a mere 400,000 of them.

They were often given to students, newly married couples or anyone having a birthday. It was akin to gifting cash, but better. The bond certificate looked extra official, and it encouraged young people to save for the future -- whether for further study, a car or a house.

Savings bonds offer some interest each year -- much like money held in a bank's savings account -- but if you hold the bond to the end of the 10 to 30 year duration, you often make more money due to various adjustment procedures. It's akin to a bonus payment.

But these bonds are going the way of the landline telephone, and there are several reasons why.

For starters, savings bonds, which have been around since the 1930s, are no longer an attractive investment.

Related: Investors chase higher yields in scary places

"The interest rates are so low these days that people just don't even get involved in them anymore," says Jim Moore, a Wells Fargo financial advisor based in St. Louis.

The fixed-rate "EE" bond offers a mere 0.5% interest rate for the next 20 years, barely better than putting money under a mattress. Bonds issued at the end of last year were yielding an even more lousy 0.1% rate.

Moore recommends buying a good quality, high paying dividend stock or exploring other savings options instead. Many parents and grandparents utilize 529 savings plans for colleges that are run at the state level. Investment growth in a 529 plan is tax deferred, and any money taken from the 529 to pay for college isn't taxed at the federal level.

Related: Tax-savvy college savings options

But it's the Internet that really killed off demand for savings bonds.

You can no longer buy a paper savings bond. On January 1, 2012, the government stopped sales of over-the-counter paper bonds and forced people to buy them online via TreasuryDirect.

That's when the big plummet occurred. The goal was to save money, but in the process, the government made it harder for potential buyers.

Many older Americans were raised on ads to be patriotic and buy these bonds to help the country (and yourself). There were slogans such as "Back Your Future." The savings bonds were sold in many places, including local banks and brokerages.

Now you have to go online and fill out cumbersome forms with your taxpayer ID number, the intended recipient's Social Security number, your bank account and other information. It's even more complex if you try to gift a savings bond to someone under 18.

Related: Fewer students have jobs on graduation day

Kate Warne, investment strategist for Edward Jones, says the only time she hears about savings bonds these days is from clients telling her how hard the website is to navigate.

"The complaint I get is 'I have trouble. What should I do instead?'" Warne says.

Those formal looking certificates that made such lovely accompaniments to graduation degrees are history. The only way to get one now is to ask for your federal tax refund to be returned to you as savings bonds.

Even that is convoluted. The bonds are only issued in $50 increments, so unless your refund is perfectly divisible by 50, you get savings bonds plus a check for the difference. It's a small program according to the Treasury Department.

The government has no plans to revive paper savings bond sales. There is a mock certificate people can print out online to wrap up in a box and give as a gift. But that just doesn't have the same appeal.

First Published: June 14, 2014: 9:10 AM ET

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Jetblue's answer to first class

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

That's what Jetblue is hoping to sell to its customers starting Sunday, when the airline launches a new service called "Mint." It will begin with only the New York to Los Angeles route, and will offer the kind of amenities usually seen on international flights.

Billing it "coast-to-coast without the cost," travelers can expect seats that become private suites with a door, food lifted from the menu of a trendy New York City restaurant and tiny bottles of fancy beauty products. There's also a signature cocktail and organic ice cream from a Brooklyn scoop shop, all for about $600 a ticket, each way.

It's not exactly flying behind the first class curtain (there is, in fact, no curtain separating the cabins) but it's close, and built for the everyday business traveler willing to spend a little more.

"I think they can expect a refreshing surprise," said Brad Farmerie, the executive chef of Saxon + Parole, the restaurant behind Mint's food.

He said passengers will be offered options like octopus with truffled portobello mushroom mousse for dinner, and French toast stuffed with banana and homemade Nutella for breakfast.

Related: jetBlue pilots vote to unionize

The beauty company Birchbox will supply the amenities for Mint, with gift boxes filled with products like moisturizers, sunscreens and hair products. Birchbox co-founder and co-CEO Katia Beauchamp said that she hopes the kits will make traveling easier "and more glamorous!"

There are gift boxes for women, and separate ones for men.

The cost for all this luxury? Seats are currently offered at $599 one way, if booked by next week for travel later this year. A non-refundable economy class ticket taken during a similar time is about $330. All the amenities are included with the ticket price.

JetBlue's new service comes at a time when more and more airlines are building in extravagant options for fliers willing to spend. AirFrance recently announced its new La Première cabin, which has four private suites and will debut in September.

Etihad Airways' A380 offers a one-bedroom "residence" on one of its long-haul planes departing from London, at a cost of $21,000 a ticket.

While all that luxury comes with a hefty price tag, JetBlue's decision to keep things less astronomical may signal a trend that combines the casual with the costly.

Like Virgin Atlantic's rather whimsical new option for its higher-paying passengers -- a onesie pajama bodysuit with feet. The airline dubbed the onesie a "fun alternative" for the first class flier.

First Published: June 14, 2014: 9:17 AM ET

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Costa Rica aims to win World Cup ad game

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Many experts, including Goldman Sachs, predict Costa Rica (and the U.S.) won't make it out of the first round, but the Central American nation has it sights on another goal: Winning the World Cup ad game.

"Essential Costa Rica" is a print and TV ad campaign running in major cities in the U.S., U.K. and Germany during the World Cup. The message is simple: Costa Rica is more than a pretty place to vacation, come invest and partner with us.

Related: Brazil 2014 set to smash TV records

It's a push to shed the country's image as a Banana Republic. Only 6% of the country's GDP is agriculture today, although the sector remains a large employer. The U.S. is its biggest trading partner, accounting for about half of its exports and foreign direct investment.

The country is growing its technology industry and promoting the fact that 16% of its population has college degrees now.

President Solís is a good example. His grandfather had no schooling. His father made it to about high school, and he has a master's degree. Before he was elected president in April, much of his life was spent as a history professor and scholar. He ran as a "third party" candidate.

CNNMoney interviewed President Solís in New York this week. This is an excerpt of the conversation.

Q: Intel (INTC, Tech30) and Bank of America (BAC) recently announced 3,000 job cuts in Costa Rica. What are you doing about it?

Solís: Within one month of taking office, I am here in the United States speaking with investors, those already working in Costa Rica and those who may want to go. As a result, we've been able to get an announcement from Intel that their Mega Lab will be installed in Costa Rica, which is extraordinarily important for us, thus moving us from manufacturing to research and development of new products. I hope this will bring about significant change in how we're seen in the international community.

We also have a VMWare (VMW) announcement saying they are expanding their activities in Costa Rica. I hope this will clear any doubt that may exist regarding the commitment of the new government to the private sector or the conditions of the country for direct investments.

Q: Several analysts cut your GDP forecasts in half. Is that fair?

Solís: This is not what the central bank in Costa Rica is saying. In our estimation and that of the World Bank, we are going to grow at a rate of 3.7% this year. I think it's going to go up, not down. I hope so because this is the best way we can deal with a number of challenges that we have: Fiscal, monetary and other ways.

Related: The world's largest economies

Q: How do you move the Costa Rican economy beyond tourism and agriculture?

Solís: It has happened in the last 25 years. We were an early exporter of coffee to Europe. Now we have more than 250 multi-national companies, especially in manufacturing and services.

We have 14 different free trade agreements -- 50 countries -- with China, North America, Europe, etc. Coffee exports today are only 3% of our goods. Bananas are 7%. Services represent 33%. We have already moved beyond agriculture.

Related: CNN selects Costa Rica as one of the top 11 travel spots for 2014

Q: Your currency the colón has fallen a lot against the dollar in recent months. Will this continue?

Solís: Before the government entered into office, the colón depreciation started to jump in the band system that we have. We're going to keep the bands, but we are going to lower the volatility by flattening the bands. The central bank has enough reserves to prevent this volatility without tampering with the trend -- the slow trend -- towards devaluation, which has been good news for the Costa Rican exporters and the tourism industry. We are almost at the level we were before the crisis.

Q: What would you like to see evolve in your relations with the United States?

Solís: I would like to see the relationship evolve in an official way to move more from security issues related to drugs into talk of the environment, green energy and social development issues. These policies will help prevent violence, including narcotraffic.

Q: A mysterious kidney disease is impacting your agriculture workers. What are you doing about it?

Solís: We are researching the problem to begin with because we don't know where it comes from. We were also asked about arsenic. We're trying to find out what the problem is because it seems to be associated with certain regions.

First Published: June 14, 2014: 9:36 AM ET

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Spanish debt en fuego

Investors have developed a taste for European PIIGS.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Their economies were in shambles, there were riots in the streets and even talk of ejecting some of these nations from the euro. They were great places to visit, but you didn't want anything to do with their finances.

Now government bonds issued by Spain, Ireland and Italy are in high demand.

Earlier this week, Spain was able to borrow money from investors for 10 years at a lower interest rate than the United States, the world's safest and most stable economy.

Ireland and Italy have also seen their borrowing costs fall to levels that aren't that much higher than what the U.S. government pays.

What gives?

Investors first started venturing back into the European bond market in 2012, after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi pledged to do "whatever it takes" to hold the euro monetary union together.

Draghi has cut interest rates and unleashed a wave of liquidity on the European banking system. Last week, the ECB announced another round of unconventional policy measures and cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low.

Related: Europe steps up fight against deflation

ECB officials are concerned that very low inflation could snuff out Europe's weak recovery. Some investors believe the ECB could begin making broad based asset purchases along the lines of the quantitative easing program pursued by the Federal Reserve.

By contrast, the Fed has been winding down its quantitative easing, or QE, program and many investors expect the US central bank to begin hiking interest rates next year.

"The ECB probably keeps easing longer than the Fed," said Alan Brown, a senior advisor to U.K. asset manager Schroders. "It's possible the ECB will come in with more programs."

But he warned that investors have been "lulled into a false sense of security" by the lack of volatility in the government bond market, which he says "are being influenced by price-insensitive buyers doing their various QE programs."

Based on economic fundamentals, Brown said there's no reason Spanish bond yields should be lower than those of the United States. "In terms of intrinsic values, it doesn't make any sense at all," he said.

Related: ECB considers Fed-style stimulus

The Spanish economy has been recovering since the middle of 2013. In the first quarter of 2014, Spanish GDP grew at the fastest rate since 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF expects Spain's economy to grow 0.9% this year, but unemployment remains painfully high.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is expected to grow 2.8% this year. At the same time, the U.S. budget deficit has been shrinking. The Congressional Budget Office projects the deficit for 2014 will be $514 billion, or 3% of the size of the U.S. economy.

So why are investors so eager to give their money to Spain, Italy and Ireland?

"Investors are still clearly looking for yield in a world of low interest rates and that desire for carry and income," said Andrew Milligan, head of global strategy at Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh.

With interest rates at such low levels globally, investors have been venturing far and wide in search of assets that provide some sort of yield, or a steady stream of income, above what they have been getting on U.S. Treasury bonds.

Related: Bond investors chase yield in scary places

Spanish, Italian and Irish bonds had fit that bill, up until recently. In addition, the euro has been relatively strong, which offers investors using other currencies an additional incentive.

In a strategy known as the "carry trade," investors had been borrowing dollars at lower interest rates and using them to buy higher yielding assets priced in euros. The carry trade, notes BMO Private Bank chief investment officer Jack Ablin, gave investors "the dual benefit of the incremental yield and beneficial euro appreciation."

Investors also need to consider how European bonds compare to U.S. bonds after inflation, according to Milligan.

The latest reading of the U.S. government's consumer price index showed that inflation increased 2% over the past 12 months. By contrast, inflation in Spain is running at just 0.2%. In Ireland, the rate is 0.4%.

Bonds are very sensitive to inflation because rising prices can severely erode the value of fixed-income investments.

Milligan said his firm has been overweight European bonds for some time. While they are getting more expensive, Milligan still sees value in owning select euro area government debt, given the outlook for continued easy monetary policy.

"Valuations are starting to flash amber, but not red against the backdrop of an ECB which has acted and will need to do more to engineer a sustainable expansion in the European Monetary Union economy," he said.

First Published: June 13, 2014: 2:14 PM ET

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Mickelson's lawyer: He did not trade Clorox shares

Phil Mickelson's attorney says the golfer never owned Clorox stock.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Late last month, law enforcement sources told CNN that a wide-ranging probe was examining stock trades made in Clorox by Mickelson, investor Carl Icahn and a well-known sports bettor, Billy Walters.

But Gregory Craig, Mickelson's high-profile attorney who worked as White House counsel in the Obama administration, said Friday that his client never traded shares of Clorox (CLX). He had no comment beyond that statement.

The sources said the probe involves stock trades made in 2011 after Icahn made an investment in Clorox and announced a takeover bid for the household products maker. The price of the shares shot up 9% the day Icahn's bid became public.

An official close to the matter tells CNN the investigation involving Mickelson, Icahn and Walters is ongoing. The investigation remains a difficult one, made more so after its existence became public through the news reports.

In addition to Clorox, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the investigation also involved trades made by Mickelson and Walters involving Dean Foods. The Times, citing people briefed on the matter, says the FBI, SEC and federal prosecutors are looking into profitable trades made in Dean Foods in 2012.

Related: Insider trading hard to prove

At the time of the initial reports, Mickelson proclaimed his innocence in a statement to CNN but did not give details of his stock trading.

"I have done absolutely nothing wrong," Mickelson said in a statement provided to CNN by his agent. "I have cooperated with the government in this investigation and will continue to do so. I wish I could fully discuss this matter, but under the current circumstances it's just not possible."

Icahn has denied any wrongdoing. Walters' lawyer told the Times that his client hasn't been contacted by authorities about trades.

Mickelson is currently playing in the U.S. Open, which is the only one of golf's four major tournaments he was not won. He has finished second in the Open a record six times, and is the favorite of many fans to win this weekend .

--CNN's Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz contributed to this story.

First Published: June 13, 2014: 4:27 PM ET

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FCC to investigate Netflix-Verizon spat

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Federal Communications Commission chair Tom Wheeler said Friday that he had directed his staff to gather information on the dispute from Netflix (NFLX, Tech30) and broadband providers including Verizon (VZ, Tech30) to understand "precisely what is happening" and "whether consumers are being harmed."

"The bottom line is that consumers need to understand what is occurring when the Internet service they've paid for does not adequately deliver the content they desire, especially content they've also paid for," Wheeler said.

At this point, he added, the FCC is simply "collecting information, not regulating."

The dispute flared up a few weeks ago after Netflix began displaying messages for users whose videos are slow to load blaming Verizon and other ISPs for the problem. Verizon responded with a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Netflix stop displaying the message, calling it "deceptive" and threatening legal action.

Related: Microsoft fights warrant for customer emails stored abroad

Netflix said Friday that it welcomes the FCC's effort "to bring more transparency in this area," adding: "Americans deserve to get the speed and quality of Internet access they pay for."

Netflix has been complaining for months that some big broadband companies are allowing its streaming speeds to lag in order to compel it to pay them for a faster connection. Netflix reached paid connection deals earlier this year with Comcast (CMCSA) and Verizon, though it said it did so "reluctantly," accusing the Internet providers of abusing their market power to extract tolls.

The broadband providers counter that Netflix is generating ever-increasing amounts of data consumption on their networks without helping to pay for the infrastructure upgrades necessary to deliver that content.

Verizon said Friday Internet traffic exchange "has always been handled through commercial agreements," and that it's "hopeful that policy makers will recognize this fact."

Comcast said it hopes the FCC's review will bring "full transparency" to interconnection issues and "enable full education as to how this market works."

The FCC's review comes at a time when it is seeking public comment on its new open Internet rules. But the FCC's rules will only cover how broadband companies treat traffic on their own networks; they don't address the issue of connections between networks, which is at the heart of the Netflix dispute. Netflix also has called for the FCC to regulate those paid-connection deals. Broadband providers say that's not necessary, and that paid-connection deals have long been part of the way the Internet works.

Netflix isn't the first content provider to strike a paid-connection deal with a broadband company; other big tech companies like Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30) and Facebook (FB, Tech30) have similar agreements.

First Published: June 13, 2014: 2:20 PM ET

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Feds to auction $17.4 million in bitcoin from Silk Road

Silk Road specialized in contraband of all varieties, including drugs and illegal weapons.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The digital currency -- about $17.4 million of it, according to the currency converter Preev.com -- was seized from Silk Road, an online black market that authorities say had nearly 1 million users.

Silk Road operated in the largely anonymous dark corners of the Internet and specialized in contraband of all varieties, including drugs and illegal weapons.

The FBI shuttered the site in October and seized the nearly 30,000 bitcoins that will soon be auctioned.

Agents also arrested Ross William Ulbricht, who the feds say owned and managed the site using the monicker Dread Pirate Roberts. They confiscated bitcoins he held and charged him with narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering charges, according to the government.

Related: The Deep Web you don't know about

The auction of the bitcoins seized from Silk Road will be held next week. It won't be for paupers.

Federal Marshals said the bitcoins will be auctioned in blocks of about 3,000 -- worth $1.8 million, according to the Marshals and the conversion site Preev.

Bidders must preregister by Monday and wire the Marshals a refundable $200,000 deposit. Bids may be submitted in dollars between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Friday, June 27.

Specifically excluded from the auction are bidders "acting on behalf of or in concert" with Ulbricht or Silk Road.

Bitcoin has had a rocky year of its own. A series of thefts -- including one that bankrupted Mt.Gox, the most popular Bitcoin exchange -- have shaken confidence in the currency's security.

First Published: June 12, 2014: 7:07 PM ET

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Gas prices could climb on Iraq conflict

Drivers could see higher prices at the pump this summer if the conflict in Iraq continues.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

"There is an excellent chance that U.S. gasoline prices may rise to new 2014 highs in the next week or so," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at OPIS and GasBuddy.com.

As violence in Iraq escalated on Thursday, oil futures climbed to $106 per barrel -- a 2% increase and the highest level since September 2013.

The price of gas typically rises about 2 to 2.5 cents per gallon for every dollar that crude rises, says Peter Schork, editor of industry newsletter, The Schork Report.

Related: Oil prices spike as Iraq violence flares

If oil prices keep heading higher, that could translate into a jump of more than 20 cents at the pump within the next couple weeks, said Schork. Currently, the national average of gasoline is $3.65 per gallon.

The issue is supply: Investors have worried about tight inventory ever since the Libyan conflict limited that country's production, so a decline in Iraq's production could be a big problem for oil markets.

Related: Latest developments in Iraq

"This is the first time in a while where we do have a legitimate concern about the availability of crude oil from a geopolitical standpoint," said Schork. "The market is already missing Libyan oil, and the market has been able to compensate -- but now if you add in a loss of Iraqi exports, that is certainly a concern and should logically push oil prices higher."

Still, Kloza doesn't think gas prices will cross the $4 mark at a national level.

"The country will see modestly higher prices than we saw one year ago, but right now, I don't believe we are on the threshold of $4, which can spark outrage, malaise, and a bit of demand destruction," he said.

First Published: June 12, 2014: 6:30 PM ET

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'More, bigger, faster:' The late Glenn Britt on the cable industry's future

Glenn Britt, pictured in June 2013, suffered health setbacks in recent weeks and died on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

That was last July, when he still the chief executive of Time Warner Cable (TWC). We met in his office because he was preparing to announce his retirement, effective at the end of the year.

A couple of months before retiring, Britt was diagnosed with a recurrence of melanoma, which he had previously battled in 2008. His health deteriorated in recent weeks, and he died on Wednesday.

Glenn had a profound impact on our company and on the entire cable industry over the last four decades," his successor, Rob Marcus, said in a memorandum to Time Warner Cable staffers mourning Britt's death. "In fact, if you examine the history of the cable business, you'll find that at each seminal moment, at each inflection point, at the birth of each critical innovation -- whether it was introducing high-speed Internet or pursuing telephony -- Glenn was not only present, but was a central figure."

Marcus's words got me thinking about what Britt told me during our hour-long meeting last summer, so I revisited the transcript.

When we spoke, Time Warner Cable, the country's second largest cable provider, hadn't yet been snapped up by industry leader Comcast (CMCSA), but consolidation was in the air.

Related: Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable

"I think that we, in the industry, always dreamed about using technology to make communications and entertainment better for people," Britt said, recasting the much-bemoaned cable industry as the force for innovation that he believed it was.

Britt was well aware of his company's ranking at the bottom of the American Customer Satisfaction Index's survey of cable and satellite providers. Referring to customer complaints, he said, "that's what we're always trying to make better."

"The service working well all the time -- that's mainly what they want," he said of customers. "If they don't ever have to deal with us, they're happy! That means it's a good service."

Related: Customers give dismal scores to TV providers

Britt entered the industry in 1972 through Time Inc. (TIME), which launched HBO that same year. In 1974, he became the vice president and treasurer of a startup cable provider called Manhattan Cable Television. Rabbit ears were the norm then, so I asked him if he ever expected that the vast majority of American households would wind up paying for TV the way they do today.

"I thought that it was either going to be a huge thing, maybe in every home, or that it was going to be a complete failure, but I didn't think it was going to be in between," he said.

Back then, he said, "nobody really could imagine what you would do with all these channels."

Related: Customers call Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger evil

"I think part of what is lost in the history is that most of the so-called cable networks, the big ones, were started by cable companies," in order to persuade consumers to pay for the product.

They had to be persuaded to pay for broadband Internet, too. "When we first started messing with it, which was in the mid '90s, what was available on the Internet was basically pretty simple: pages, booklet-printed pages," he recalled. "And most people thought the way to get to the Internet was via a dial-up phone line with AOL. It wasn't clear to us why anybody would want to pay to go faster. I mean, that was far from evident. So we just tried it, and it worked."

Britt became the chief executive of Time Warner Cable in 2001. It was owned by Time Warner (TWX), which also owns CNNMoney, until 2009, when it was spun off as an independent entity. "What we discovered was that the capital markets like pure-play companies, and there really aren't any particular operating synergies between content creation and running cable systems, so I think it's fine that the ownership has moved," he said.

Interestingly, Comcast -- through its ownership of NBCUniversal -- is betting that there are ample synergies between the two.

Related: Univision airs concerns about Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal

Britt identified one exception to what he said about synergies between content and distribution: Time Warner Cable's local news channels like NY1. (I should disclose here that my wife works at NY1.) "It differentiates us," he said, and "it's also a way we can contribute in an age when the local broadcast news in much of the country has been way cut back."

We talked at length about what the future looked like. Britt said he was proud that Time Warner Cable had evolved from a TV service to a TV, broadband Internet and phone service with a "robust physical infrastructure and an employee base that knows how to maintain and operate that infrastructure."

"Essentially what we do is keep finding new uses for the technology and our people skills," he said, adding, "I don't know what's next, but something. There'll be more."

Britt often described broadband, not TV, as the "anchor service" of Time Warner Cable's business.

"It's going to be more, bigger, and faster," he said. "I don't think we know what all the uses are going to be."

Britt's next comment struck me at the time, and resonates even more now. I asked him if he felt disappointed by the pace of progress, particularly with regards to anytime, anywhere viewing of cable TV on the Internet. This concept, known as "TV Everywhere," has been stymied by delays on both the channel owner side and the distributor side.

"It's not something that happens quickly," he said, and then sounded optimistic: "I actually think it's moving along probably as fast as these things move along. We'll look back 10 years from now and say, 'Look what's happened.' "

First Published: June 12, 2014: 7:50 PM ET

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Netflix to air 'Magic School Bus' re-boot

The video streaming service will air an updated version of the popular 1990s children's show in 2016.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Netflix (NFLX, Tech30) is launching a new version of the Emmy-winning 1990s animated children's series that's remained wildly popular despite ending its original run more than 15 years ago.

The new show will be called "The Magic School Bus 360°," and feature 26 CGI-animated episodes. It's slated to premiere in 2016 for subscribers' binge-watching pleasure.

The original show debuted on PBS in 1994. It taught kids science through the adventures of whacky teacher Ms. Frizzle, her inquisitive class and the enchanted bus that took kids everywhere from outer space to inside the human body.

It was big with the coveted millennial demographic in the 90's, and kids still love the show, which was in syndication until 2012. Chief content officer Ted Sarandos said it's been a "huge" hit for Netflix, which streams the original shows.

Like the original, "360°" is being produced by Scholastic Media, which published the book series on which the shows are based.

In addition to its new digital look, the re-boot promises to feature "the latest tech innovations such as robotics, wearables and camera technology to captivate children's imaginations and motivate their interest in the sciences," according to Netflix.

Related story: Netflix's TV guru: "Don't make me wait!"

Forte, who is Scholastic Media's president, said she's excited to bring back a show that fans have told her changed their lives..

"To do an animated show that has actually encouraged young people to pursue careers in the sciences or teaching makes us very, very happy."

Netflix has already had huge hits with original shows like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. Netflix has revived other shows, producing the fourth season of cult favorite Arrested Development.

Scholastic has not yet begun casting for The Magic School Bus 360° so there's no word on whether comedian Lily Tomlin will revive her award-winning role as Ms. Frizzle.

First Published: June 11, 2014: 4:17 PM ET

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