Mr Men books and their sadistic lessons

[Borisisabanana]

I tried to post this in a different fashion but MN thought it was serious and deleted it - as an AIBU from the point of view of the villagers in “Mr Nosey”, who stage increasingly violent interventions on Mr Nosey until one villager is standing behind a fence, presumably to saw off his nose if he is nosey?! (It doesn’t come to that, thank god, because Mr Nosey had learnt his lesson, having had his nose hammered previously)

anyway the Mr Men books. My children are obsessed. Anyone care to discuss the most maniacal one they’ve encountered?

There's something about Mr Neat and Mr Tidy (the intervention) which makes me think of Clockwork Orange.

I loved these books, such happy memories of my dad who used to read them to us ❤️

Nothing scarred me as much as James (or was it Edward?) being bricked up in the tunnel in one of the Thomas the Tank engine books, though...

They are extremely 70s books

On a side note what do you think today's Mr Men would be?

Mr Consent
Little Miss Feminist
Little Miss White Fragility
Mr Body Positivity
Mr Offended
Little Miss Anti-Racist
Mr Free-Speech

I absolutely see this and will never unsee it

DS could use a read of Mr Consent. He asked for another sibling and, when I explained DH isn’t so keen, told
me to just “steal
the baby seeds at night and grow a baby anyway”. He’s 4.

maybe Mr Tickle isn't so bad after all

Henry got walked up. The stuff of nightmares.

Walled! Flaming autocorrect

Ah, Henry! Yes, nightmare. Then again, what do you expect if you go around acting brattish 😉

When I was a kid I had a collection of Grimms Fairy Tales which had an anti-Semitic story which horrified me then and still does today - Mr Men is tame by comparison.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jew_Among_Thorns

sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm110.html

Mr Silly has marmalade in his coffee which is supposed to be silly but now we all have syrup in ours so maybe it was prophetic

do you think he was supposed to “starve” to death through lack of fuel, or simply stay there for all eternity, like solitary confinement?

I wish I'd seen your original thread!

It’s unclear if MNHQ thought I was trolling or thought I was actually intending to saw someone’s nose off. Either way I broke talk guidelines

That’s v disturbing. Wow

@Laiste I can completely see that. The smarmy social worker in "Clockwork Orange" was played by a near-relative of mine (whom I never actually met).

Spanking was a big thing with Enid Blyton and I had most of her books all along with a dollop of golliwog racism. they have probably all been censored to fuck nowadays if not banned. I dreamed of being in the Famous Five and having adventures.

www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=1780

It’s unclear if MNHQ thought I was trolling or thought I was actually intending to saw someone’s nose off. Either way I broke talk guidelines

@Borisisabanana this is the best comment I've ever seen on this site 😂

@Borisisabanana I think Henry was supposed to be there for eternity, slowly rusting and forgotten. They make a thing about him not being able to speak once his fire has run out, and - horrifyingly - there are other stories where engines and cars are found abandoned in sheds abc barns, still conscious!

Awful. My kids cried.

I may be raising total wusses, but dear lord it's horrific.

Omg

This is cute - I love that story.

As an aside, this is like when you realise what the words of songs mean that you are singing when you are a child, then as an adult....

My first thought!

My daughter loves mr mean. He is her favourite

All this sadism. You wait till you see Tom and Jerry!

The version I read was an English 1920s version in English which was my dad's book when he was a kid. But the antisemitism of Eastern Europe was rife and would ultimately lead to the Holocaust and the fact that a British publisher of the time didn't think to exclude that was telling. Disney won't ever release the Song of the South (zippedee food daa - zippety day) as it portrays an idyllic life for African slaves on American plantations in the relay 1800s.