7 Kids’ Characters That Scared the Bejesus Out of Their Intended Audience
I hate to sound like a Boomer here, but kids today have it easy. No, not because they use their phones to do book reports or the internet to look at porn. It’s that entertainment intended for kids nowadays is put under such a high-powered microscope that absolutely nothing objectionable will slip through. In previous generations, kids entertainment was a free-for-all filled with hidden sex jokes and terrifying characters that would fuel their nightmares for years after a single viewing.
All the covert sex jokes have been well covered, but it’s time we finally address all those creepy, objectionable characters that were aimed at us as kids, many of whom still haunt the corners of our subconscious.
The Coachman from ‘Pinocchio’
Most Disney villains are lovably evil, but the Coachman from Pinocchio is the stuff of actual nightmares. He abducts little boys and takes them to Pleasure Island to corrupt them and sell them on the black market. He’s basically Disney’s own Jeffrey Epstein.
Frazzle from ‘Sesame Street’
When designing the Sesame Street Muppets, Jim Henson must have said, “Okay, let’s have a tall canary, an adorable blue fuzzball who loves cookies and a terrifying wild-eyed orange monster with a row of foot-long razor-sharp teeth.”
I know most of the Muppets on Sesame Street are monsters, but Herry Monster is about as scary as any of them should have gotten. This show is for babies, bro, leave your creepy shit for Labyrinth.
All Kinds of Stuff from ‘The Brave Little Toaster’
Who would have thought that a movie about an adorable talking appliance would traumatize so many kids? For one thing, there’s the disgruntled broken air conditioner character who glitches out and explodes in a fireball. There’s a repair shop filled with creepy appliances that have been experimented on. Finally, seemingly just to scar kids forever, there’s a dream sequence with an evil clown! Seriously? Why would a toaster even fear a clown?
Zeebo the Clown from ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’
Speaking of creepy clowns, I vividly remember one from the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark? that burned itself into my brain. For years I couldn’t even remember what this clown was from — I just had this image of a haunting grin deep in the recesses of my mind. Finally, I realized he’s Zeebo, and I absolutely hate him.
Artax the Horse from ‘The Neverending Story’
It’s not so much the horse from The Neverending Story that’s scary as it is what happens to it. In the PG-rated fantasy epic The Neverending Story, a boy’s beautiful white horse slowly dies in quicksand. It’s a truly horrifying scene and absolutely no one who saw this movie in 1984 (or since) was prepared for it. No wonder so many 1980s kids still still talk about how much this scene messed them up.
E.T. from ‘E.T.’
Personally, I love E.T., and he never scared me a bit. But lots of people — and I mean lots and lots and lots of people — found him to be creepy. I have a hard time understanding that. All this little wrinkled dude wanted was some Reese’s Pieces and to chill on his phone — that’s incredibly relatable.
Slappy from ‘Goosebumps’
I know Slappy was supposed to be scary, but I don’t think he was supposed to be that scary. The rest of the Goosebumps books — which are recommended for kids as young as eight — are about things like spooky Halloween masks, haunted cuckoo clocks and kids turning into bugs, but Slappy was a creepy-as-fuck killer ventriloquist dummy. It was next-level scary compared to the other ones.
While I’m blaming R.L. Stine for making me piss my bed as a tween, I should also turn my attention to the guy who drew the original book cover. Tell me, T. Jacobus, did you really have to go this hard?
