To want to inflict harm on all of the Mr Men

[StayCloseSpooky]

DS 4 is obsessed with Mr Men books. Absolutely obsessed but it's getting to the point where I want to stab my eyes out just so I don't have to read another bloody one.

Why are they all so bloody smug?
Why is everything 'extraordinarily'?
Why does Mr Happy regularly pop up to be, quite frankly, a bit of a parsimonious prick?
WHY ARE THEY SO LONG?

I can't take it anymore. Please tell me I'm not the only one that wants to drop kick Mr Happy for being so bastarding passive aggressive?

I think I need a gin

Mr men books are almost as bad Rainbow fucking magic.
If dd’s school library lets her get any more of them out I might scream.
They are the mills and boons of primary school books. Churn out the same book with a character name.
It’s the same bloody story in every bloody book, I know what’s going to happen because it happened in the last 135.

She came home with 4 last week, 4!!

😂😂😂

Ohh dear!

My Dd is almost 20 but I STILL remember murderous fantasies about Bella from Tweenies and being thoroughly sick of having to say "hoobledoobledo" every night instead of just "goodnight"

It will pass op

But yes mr tickle needs a slap and told to keep his hands to himself and mr bump needs his eyes and ears testing!

Is it just as annoying when it's grandkids I wonder?

They are both my chosen specialised subject should I ever find myself on Mastermind!

Haha! Yes I'm sure back then I'd have smashed a round on the hoobs!

Regarding children's fiction and the appalling messages in them generally (especially for girls! All the "change yourself to suit a boy" and "happily ever after" shit) I ditched that and wrote my own for dd!

Since lost the notes but remember the general stories. I did succumb to making the protagonist a princess

But I used them to teach her things like:

Be yourself
Girls can do anything
Bodily autonomy

And more generally practical things like

Don't hide in a fire
Eat lots of different foods (the princess gets sick after eating only one food for weeks)
What to do if you get lost at the shops

I adored the Mr Men as a child. Adored them. Was excited to read them to my own children and then was shocked to discover that they are terrible. Page after page of 'Mr Tall went for a long walk. A very long walk. A very very long walk. A very very very long walk indeed' type shite.

There were originally only a small number of them, and I think those ones were better than the rest.

Also, the illustrations changed over the years. When I was wee, they all had bigger eyes and more pronounced features. My Greedy had a far far bigger belly, Mr Tickle's arms were about twice the length etc They were far more visually appealing.

On that note, did anyone else have the Roger Hargreaves Timbuktu books as a child? Neigh the Horse, Oink the Pig etc? My abiding memory of Neigh was that he took part in a show and won and they pinned the rosette right onto his face. I was horrified!

Wouldn't it be Mr Mean who's parsimonious and not Mr Happy?!

Thread making me laugh though, even though I grew up on this stuff and loved it!

Mr Uppity made the best yogurts though....

Another whose childhood nostalgia for Mr men and that bloody tank engine translated into a WTF and full appreciation of well edited and beautifully written children’s books.

Some stories are just made to be read aloud.

We are onto you Mr Tickle

This thread has made me laugh. Mr Chatterbox and Mr Noisy do go on a bit! I feel very sorry for Mr Messy when thise 2 blokes force him to be neat and tidy..

The worst book by far is Stepney in the Thomas books. His driver takes a night job without permission, they get lost, end up in the scrap yard and 2 mean diesels try to melt him down. It is all very sinister, "Goodbye Stepney, it's too late now" until the Fat Controller saves him but then the FC gives him a proper bollocking about getting lost! I fail to see how any of it is his fault and the nasty diesels get off Scot-free! This gives me the rage every single time I am forced to read it!!

“I adored the Mr Men as a child. Adored them. Was excited to read them to my own children and then was shocked to discover that they are terrible.”

Think this happened to many of us. It did me. With so many wonderful children’s authors and books around, you are spoilt for choice. There is no need to let nostalgia dictate. Chuck them away.

Thomas the Tank books are even more stultifying. I don’t think I made it through even one of them before they were consigned to the ‘nope’ list.

Also, any book that is simple merchandising - you know, those ‘books’ that come off the back of a tv show, toy or character, like Paw Patrol or Spiderman or whatever...always awful. They went straight in the bin when mine were wee. They didn’t miss them and neither did I.

Clearly an unpopular opinion here, but I think that the originals (the ones written by Roger Hargreaves) are pretty ok. The ones written by his son after his death are dire. And I go to quite extreme lengths to avoid them.

I don’t find them overly long, they take under 5 minutes to read. My 4yo is currently into them but my 6yo has outgrown. They’re basically all about feelings and very human traits. And yes, most of the characters do get punished, but most of the characters have some kind of extreme and often vile character traits. I’ve found they’re a pretty good tool in discussing behaviour and consequence.

@myshoelaces

We are onto you Mr Tickle

[quote StayCloseSpooky]@WiseUpJanetWeiss I cannot stress this enough- DO NOT BUY THE BOX. I repeat, that a no go for the full set. Grandparents bought the box for DS and I've been silently cursing them since[/quote]
Indeed. MJM has convinced me that another option is best:

Buy them one at a time so DS IS FORCED to read each one over & over & over.

as previous poster said, DO NOT GET THR BOX SET, leave the nostalgia of your child hood in the past

Definitely not nostalgia - it’s REVENGE mwahahha.

I feel your pain. Awful books. Mr Tickle should be on a register.

Yanbu op, I fucking hate them. My mum brings another one of the bastard things every time she visits.

My son used to get really upset when Mr Messy was forcibly cleaned up... I think by Mr Tidy?! He became a sad neat little round ball rather than his usual messy self and my son hated it 😂

Other than that, he loved them but is now growing out of them thank god. I'm now waiting for the right moment to get rid of the bloody things before my youngest is drawn in. I cant take several more years of looking at their grim felt-tipped-to-fuck faces and reading about their bleak little lives.

Ugh! Mr Men! Nooooo. My mum got Mr Tickle for DS as it was "the best one". It's absolutely awful! Fortunately DS doesn't know it properly, so if we have to have it (thankfully not often. I feel for those of you having them every night!), several lines get skipped and the plot changes, along the lines of "and Mr Tickle tickled him until he said, 'stop!' and Mr Tickle stopped".

I would like to add the submit to the black list:
Fox's Socks (WHAT has he been doing to find one sock in the clock and one in the attic? And WHY does he only have one set of clothes??)

@Itwasntme101

They sometimes still make sense even if you just read every other sentence

First sentence or two on every page, ignore the rest, generally works I find!

I really like Mr Happy (in his own book with the Wizard. Love me a good wizard.)

Also crap: The Famous Five. I loved them as a littlie but the chapters are so long. I'm re-reading them to DS as his bedtime story (at his request) and making Julian do the washing up every time.

@Wiredforsound

I feel your pain. Awful books. Mr Tickle should be on a register.

😂😂😂

I love Mr Greedy , I used to read that all the time to dd but I do agree they’re so long !
I used to skip over pages when she was too young to notice, was fucked was she did realise at about 3 / 4

@caughtalightsneeze

I adored the Mr Men as a child. Adored them. Was excited to read them to my own children and then was shocked to discover that they are terrible. Page after page of 'Mr Tall went for a long walk. A very long walk. A very very long walk. A very very very long walk indeed' type shite.

There were originally only a small number of them, and I think those ones were better than the rest.

Also, the illustrations changed over the years. When I was wee, they all had bigger eyes and more pronounced features. My Greedy had a far far bigger belly, Mr Tickle's arms were about twice the length etc They were far more visually appealing.

On that note, did anyone else have the Roger Hargreaves Timbuktu books as a child? Neigh the Horse, Oink the Pig etc? My abiding memory of Neigh was that he took part in a show and won and they pinned the rosette right onto his face. I was horrified!

I remember those ! Think I had the annual

Oh shit, I've just ordered the box set

Have read loads - they're really inconsistent. Some terrible, some quite funny. Dc loves the "meta" ones where they meet the writer and their story gets told in that very book you are reading, but they've done this exact story in at least two of the books... pushing the idea a bit far there, or did they think we wouldn't notice?!

love them and my kids loved them . Mostly they read them to themselves cos they knew the story but just loved the pictures. It's the one set of books I can't bring myself to give away . Mr Men (not the Little Miss though)

Luckily we only got the Christmas editions, so they came out in early December and went back in the box with decorations etc in early January every year!!

Actually it was the Nancy Drew book i tried to reread as an adult that gave me the biggest shock. I read every one as a child and used to buy new one every week. But when i read an original one as an adult i just couldn't read beyond the first chapter and stopped trying to encourage my daughter to have a go....AWFUL!!!