Steve Reviews: The BANNED Teletubbies Episode

teletubbies was a weird show like a really weird show [Music] it was a live action children's show aimed primarily at toddlers and began airing in the uk from 1997 right up to 2018 really well they even apparently had little baby teletubbies jesus these things breeding is a horrifying and frightening idea now i was born in 1991 so by the time teletubbies started airing i was already feeling a bit too old for it and had already moved on to older and more sophisticated shows such as cow and chicken [Music] and even at that young age where

your mind is more accepting of weird and illogical occurrences i still remember looking at the show and thinking mate this is [ __ ] weird now i know a lot of children's shows are devoid of logic and rational thought like why is pengu's dad constantly washing and ironing clothes when the family is never even wearing any and also isn't that the woman's job but teletubbies was on a whole nother level and here's something else on a whole nother level did you know that two out of three guys will experience some form of male pattern baldness

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these four characters known as the teletubbies tinky winky dipsy lala and poe who were played by suit actors inside of a costume which by the way were pretty freaking big costumes like christ that must have been effort to move around in the teletubbies would be situated in this fictional land called teletubby land which features open fields fictional flowers and a whole bunch of wild rabbits running about which fun fact the rabbits used in the show were actually a special breed of rabbits known as flemish giants which clue in their title are much larger than your

typical rabbit this was done to make them appear more normal sized alongside the giant teletubby costumes and apparently a lot of reshoots had to take place for the outdoor scenes as the rabbits would be constantly getting it on clads in the center of this land would be the dome-shaped hub which was the teletubbies home officially called the tubitronic superdome which actually sounds like an amazing place to go the filming location of the show was actually done at wimp stone in warwickshire in which the once amazing tubatronic superdome is now nothing but a standard pond thanks

climate change how dare you the teddy tubbies would be watched over by the sun which happened to also feature a baby's face the baby wouldn't really do much other than laugh and react to the teletubbies shenanigans but i always thought it would be cool if when it experiences high emotions it would also amplify its intensity i even once made this hilarious video of the teletubby sun being replaced by the screaming sun from rick and morty i posted it on facebook and yeah people loved it oh and uh fun fact here's how the baby behind the

sun face looks now feeling old yet there were other features in the land such as these weird farting speakers that would appear from the ground a magical windmill and of course some of that ever delicious looking tubby custard and tubby toast the tubby custard was actually made out of mashed potato with food coloring not too sure about the tubby toast but with the teletubbies living isolated with no sign of crops let's face it it was probably made out of ground rabbit each episode of the show would last around 24 minutes and in those 24 minutes

it'd be broken down into three segments one segment would feature each of the teletubbies head aerials beginning to glow in which one of them at random would start broadcasting some random media from their stomach television thing nothing really special from these segments normally just some kids doing a random activity though even some of these would be weird at times like what am i looking at here do these kids even understand what's being sung hell do i even understand what's being sung it works so slow jobs [Music] what's going on i don't know just keep dancing

and don't get in the van and then after the segment was over they would do it all over again no seriously the teletubbies would demand that it be played again and that's exactly what it does with literally no editing or alteration whatsoever i mean that's one way to pad out the runtime and on top of that different episodes would feature segments that have been used from previous episodes so you would get a repeat of the repeated segment christ no wonder this show went on for 18 seasons another segment would feature the teletubbies getting up to

some random activity either from finding a strange object in the lands or just getting up to some silly shenanigans and then the final segment would feature a performance from a random set of external characters often presented in late 90s cgi and one of those segments though not in cgi was deemed so scary for kids that ended up not only getting banned from airing in the uk but also internationally as well and that of course is the infamous sketch of the lion and the bear i'm there i'm the bear and i'm coming [Music] the episode up

until this point has been pretty standard that is until the magic windmill begins to spin faster and we hear this creepy voice the teddy tubbies run up the hill and sit down as spectators and then this thing appears i'm the bear i'm the bear with brown fuzzy hair even though the design isn't meant to be intentionally scary it still has a disturbing look to it the way it mechanically moves by itself and skates across the field gives me the same creepy vibes as of the wheelers from return to oz the characters were actually wooden models

that had certain moving parts which were operated manually the way they made a move along was by using a small piece of string attached to the board for the most part these are actually pretty well hidden making me think that they were potentially motorized but in some shots if you look closely you can actually see the string being pulled oh but if you think the bear is creepy don't worry there's more i am the scary lion with big scary teeth what was that weird like scream from tinky winky the others are just there laughing and

he's like you [ __ ] idiots we're in grave danger run for your lives but yeah i don't blame him whereas the bear looked creepy the lion looks even worse mainly because of those sharp blade-like teeth and that horrifying death stare it gives to you i can see they tried to give it a smile to make it look a bit more friendly looking but honestly i think it actually had the opposite effect i'm so scary on the top and i'm scary underneath [Music] so the lion is basically looking for the bear we saw earlier and

the funny gag is that the bear is hiding and teasing the lion like a game of hide and the seek is it feels less like a game of hide and seek amongst friends and more like a game of life and death of an actual documentary because even though the bear seems to be taking it as a joke the lion really sounds like it wants to murder it [Music] when i get ahold of you i'm gonna rip out your intestines then we get the lion actually chasing the bear in which it's clear that he's really out

for blood [Music] that coupled with the eerie musical school this sinister slow motion shot and the bear just doing this it really makes for quite a trippy sequence the scene ends with the line chasing the bear off screen and that's it you never know what their fate is though you do get this reaction from the teletubbies afterwards which i like to think is their response to just witnessing the bear getting captured and killed off-screen sadistic [ __ ] after the episode aired it didn't take long for complaints to come in from numerous parents claiming the

segment to be too scary for the toddler target audience and reports of their kids running away or crying at the tv now i would be lying to you if i said this was the scariest thing we've looked at that was aimed towards kids but bear in mind this wasn't just aimed at kids but more so toddlers and for them i imagine this was a pretty [ __ ] up viewing hell even me i was above the toddler age when i first watched this and even i was creeped out by it so much so that the

moment someone mentioned it in the comments section i was like oh holy [ __ ] i remember that these complaints from parents grew so large that the episode featuring the creepy sketch was pulled from airing even from international viewings oh and uh remember when i mentioned that the teletubbies would repeat segments in different episodes well yep they did that with this sketch too so as a result all of the episodes featuring the lion and the bear had to be pulled yeah not so smart now are you in a form of damage control the show did

attempt to edit the original sketch in order to make it less terrifying to children this included giving it a more upbeat musical score [Music] changing the voices to make them sound more child friendly [Music] and i'm looking for the bear i am the scary lion and i'm looking for bear adding in random sound effects [Music] and taking out some of the more creepy camera shots unfortunately however the damage was already done and due to all the previous negativity the sketch still remained unaired in some countries funnily enough though this wasn't actually the only segment that

caused the issue with parents one segment included the life cycle of a tree which had it eerily dying towards the end and i mean it's not confirmed that it dies but you can see where the impression came from plus the music at the end gives off a bit of a morbid tone why are you laughing you satanic ball of molten evil another was this cgi dancing bear which apparently crept kids out personally i never had an issue with it but i can see how the cheap cg does give it a cold dead expression [Music] still

beats the weird jazz players though and finally there were some complaints about these three boats being a bit intimidating to kids which i'm gonna be honest i don't see it all but there are other controversies surrounding the show as well which includes the issue surrounding tinky winky who was actually banned in some countries as he was accused of being of and i quote a covert gay symbol that was designed to turn children into homosexuals with the way that he carried a handbag was the color purple which was the symbolic gay color back then and even

down to his aerial antennae thing being in the shape of the gay symbol this drew so much criticism that even the bbc had to officially respond to it stating this tinky winky is simply a sweet technological baby with a magic bag and then ken vizzleman of itsy bitsy entertainment who distributed the show in the usa also had to comment he's not gay he's not straight he's just a character in a children's series brilliant but yeah that's the story of the band teletubbies episode let me know if you ever remember seeing this as a kid and

whether it freaked you out when you were younger or if this is your first time seeing it do you think it deserved to be banned let me know in the comments below along with any other creepy children's media you think i should check out but until the next one take care [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you