To suggest to my 17yo DS that his mortal fear of Balamory was unreasonble?

[fuckinghellapeacock]

Apparently it was the Policeman. We still debate this. AIBU?

I suspect most of these things are dreamt up by LSD users

He is not unreasonable!

I was terrified of DR who as a kid. Just the music still gives me the creeps.

Dd2 (3) freaks out whenever peter rabbit comes on, my nephew was scared of the shapes on Mr Maker and all of the things on yogabagaba .

My husband used to change the words of the theme tune to really rude words. It made my daughter cry. She was such a good girl when she was little. What happened?

My oldest is terrified of Mr Tod. He got shown it once on a trial nursery day, and asked them to switch it off. They wouldn’t take him out, and he loudly snitched as soon as I picked him up that they had forced him to watch. He was utterly hysterical, screaming about how they were on the side of the Fox

My son was four and every day he would hide in his closet around 2pm. I finally discovered that he was terrified of Rosie and Jim and that was their time slot. We would be in the newsagents and the BBC kids magazines would feature them on their cover and he would put his hands over his eyes. He's 28 now and I can't mention them because he still gets the creeps. But he freaking loved Barney. Why wasn't he afraid of that purple bastard, I'll never know.

Spencer used to be a real life bus driver in our town. The kids loved it

My son used to freak out when adverts for The Night Garden came on.

Whoever came up with the idea for this programme must have been indulging in a large amount of "recreational medication"!!

I never got my head around what the hell was going on.

I feel really deprived of this scary TV. My parents didn't approve of children's TV, so I rarely saw any of this stuff when I was at an age to be scared by it, and now I can only watch it through adult eyes. The only thing I was allowed to watch was Play School. I was a bit scared of the cuckoo in "cuckoo's clock", who never moved.

I remember an older version of "I'm the bear, with brown fuzzy hair", which I think was voiced by Penelope Keith, but I can't find that one on Youtube.

I've just watched some of Balamory, but can somebody tell me why it's scary? I can't get past the adult perception of it.

I remember being really scared in a film version of "Tom's Midnight Garden": the grumpy elderly neighbour, played by Liz Smith, who's angered by Tom running about at night. One night, she tries to catch him, and bursts out of her front door, without her wig, looking like a ghost, with her white nightdress and wispy white hair. Scary!

There was this daytime education show "music time" in the late 80s, which we occasionally watched at school. It was incredibly bland, factual, educational, no small bits of comedy thrown in. The scary bit was:

"Listen."

This was said just before they played a tune, and a cartoon gnome with its hand behind its ear would appear on the screen. Lots of the Youtube comments were from people who remember being scared of that gnome, and of the two presenters, who were described as "scary teachers".

Two words; Worzel Gummidge.

@Tlollj

You aren't wrong. What the hell was going on when he would change his head??

Tbf, as an older mumsnetter, I was terrified of spot the dog in the wooden tops. I even remember the nightmare about him.....52 years later. And yet I loved dogs, creepy.

@Tlollj

Two words; Worzel Gummidge.

Were you scared? I just took it in my stride. Completely normal. My kids think it was the weirdest thing ever, alongside that kinder egg advert. Snowflakes.

In this house we don't discuss Rosie and Jim. Even the first bars of the theme tune induce eye twitches in the 25 yr old.
Or Furryboo from Tots TV. Wtf was that thing.

The episode where Henry gets bricked in!! It is HORRIFYING!

Oh, I'm glad I haven't seen that. I used to love the Rev W Awdry books as a kid but there is one that talks about the engines getting scrapped and cut up because of the new-fangled diesels, and there is one illustration of the trains looking all grey and sad. I cried my eyes out.

I used to put Baby Jake on my in my Reception classroom after playtime while they ate their snack. I had a child with sen who was very hard to settle and it worked like valium (sorry /not sorry).

Night garden still scares me. I found all those creatures (or whatever they were) creepy as hell. And the pinky ponk what was that all about.
Almost as bad as Magic Roundabout

I didn't mind Balamory as a parent, but found the Spencer song "climbing up the musical ladder" particularly cringy.

Unfortunately there is a bit in Bruno Mars 24K Magic which reminds me of it. It's that bit I'm a dangerous man with some money in my pocket (keep up) My brain goes "climbing up the musical ladder..."

DS2 was terrified of Auntie Mabel’s dog Pippin from ‘Come Outside’. He would burrow into me sobbing when he appeared

To be fair, seeing an adult so utterly incompetent celebrated like that must have been totally scary for a toddler - she always lost the bloody dog and yet it always still made it home. Like a dead dog digging its way out of its grave every night to come and haunt you.

My problem was: as a child, I didn't feel emotions in sympathy with the characters at all, when watching TV or reading books. I didn't think "poor ugly duckling". This didn't change until I was an adult; I'd re-read a children's book, and think "ah, I was supposed to feel sorry for the duckling at that point". The only time I remember feeling nervous watching children's TV was if a character did something "naughty", and I would then be wondering if I was about to see them being smacked.

I can't watch the witch from Chorlton and the Wheelies, she's so scary she makes me nauseated.
I love Balamory though.

@UncleShady

DS2 was terrified of Auntie Mabel’s dog Pippin from ‘Come Outside’. He would burrow into me sobbing when he appeared

To be fair, seeing an adult so utterly incompetent celebrated like that must have been totally scary for a toddler - she always lost the bloody dog and yet it always still made it home. Like a dead dog digging its way out of its grave every night to come and haunt you.

The dog buggered off on purpose I reckon. Was probably thinking "I'm not getting in that plane with that sodding lunatic."

PC Plum was in my English class in high school 😂

@HeechulOppa shame I didn’t see that - I would have been on your side! If anyone should be ashamed of themselves it’s iggle piggle...