Sorry, I Might Be About to Ruin Your Childhood…

Oh the days that we were all young, innocent little minds. Coming home from a long day of school (skipping and spelling) and having that sweet luxury of watching cartoons for an hour or so, followed by half an hour before dinner dancing around to our favorite NOW cd… played, of course, in our very own portable dc player attached to the belt loop. But have you ever sat and watched those old programmes you used to enjoy? Or the songs you used to sing to? Not so innocent after all, in fact, just down right dirty at times.

If there’s one cheesy pop song that takes you back to the good old school discos, it’s Aqua’s Barbie Girl. “Dress me up, make me tight…kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky.” Excuse me? Some of the crudest lyrics I have written on a page, and yet village halls were filled with kids screaming out the lyrics.

We’ve all heard about crude symbols and hidden images in certain 90s cartoon films (I’m looking at you Disney), but Pixar are bringing it into the 21^st century with Ratatouille. The writer’s minds were clearly drowning in the gutter when Anton Ego, our food critic villain, tells Linguini, “If I don’t love it, I don’t swallow.” We all know what he was talking about. How crude. But I chuckled quietly to myself while my sisters sat there in blissful innocence.

Remember the fun and games that you used to have watching Bungle, Zippy and George? Well there’s a possibility that I am about to ruin all your happy memories of Rainbow. In one infamous sketch, George invites Bungle, Zippy and our little innocent minds to talk about playing. George asks us if we have “a special friend that you like to play with?” and Zippy tells us that “yesterday, we played with our balls, are we going to play with our friends balls today?” I don’t think it could have been physically possible for those writers to cram any more sexual innuendos in there if they tried.

However, my ultimate favourite has to be Spongebob Squarepants’ local fast food joint. Let’s all go and grab a Krabby Patty at the Krusty Krab in Bikini Bottom. Not subtle at all – they’re almost proud of the fact that it’s just plain filth.

We can all sit here and laugh about it now, but is it worrying that this is what England’s kids are growing up with? I don’t think so. In fact, I can imagine that these occasional chuckles were the only thing that got my parents through the tedious hours of children’s TV.