To be honest, I feel like every episode of the Teletubbies is disturbing to some degree, lol. My kids were born in the early 2000s, and they occasionally watched the show.
I grew up on a strict diet of Veggie Tales and BBC classics, so I genuinely have no idea what this show is about lol. On the flip side, I remember watching Poirot (one of my all time favorite series) in the 6-7 age range. Sometimes you really just enjoy a good scare as a kid! But this seems like maybe it went a little too far 🙈🤣
I was in my mid-20s when Teletubbies were first on TV, so not the audience but we always thought they were weird. As a kid, I was terrified by the goblins in Disney’s “Sleepless Beauty”.
You know, I wasn’t entirely sure how someone could draw a 1:1 comparison between TCM and Teletubbies… but this is damn good!
For the record teletubbies were always scarier than Leatherface, at least his horrors had a goal, a purpose. The Teletubbies… are like a fever dream when you accidentally have the special mushroom tea when you had the flu.
The way they're propelling about on wheels is creepy - who is pulling them along?
I remember an episode of Noddy from the early 90s where Gobbo the Goblin steals his car and abandons him in the woods *completely naked*. My brother was two or three at the time and had nightmares afterwards for absolutely ages. You'd hear him calling out in his sleep, "No, Gobbo! Nooo!"
Oh my god, that’s horrifying! The oddly sexualised humiliation of being abandoned naked… and the name ‘Gobbo the Goblin’ is just inherently nightmare inducing.
It is so creepy and really - why show that to children? Maybe take his car and his hat, but surely even in the early 90s stripping Noddy naked would've seemed too much?
I was eight years old when I saw Trojan refugee Katarina sucked out into space through an airlock, and a few weeks later Sara Kingdom got aged to a crumbling skeleton by a time device the Doctor was trying to use against the Daleks. So I was a bit older than the Teletubbies audience, admittedly, but in the 1960s kids' TV used to serve up a generous helping of death, darkness and cold grue.
I watched 'The Empty Child' episode of the new Doctor Who with my friends at a sleepover and we were absolutely petrified. Personally though I think it's healthy for a child to spend a sizeable percentage of its life behind a sofa!
It seems to me that the bear was probably intended to be bathetically humourous - ie you build up to "the big scary bear" and it turns out to be just a cutout on wheels. Also I think the "scary round the back" for the lion is meant to be an _arse_ joke - note how the camera pans to the lion's tail waving up and down at that point.
But kids are unpredictable. I don't remember mine being disturbed by the lion and the bear, but my eldest was frightened half to death by The Teletubbies Christmas because she became convinced that a Christmas Tree was going to suddenly appear in her bedroom for no good reason.
I’ve watched the Tellytubbies as an adult with small children but never this episode. Weirdly, I found the bear at the beginning creepier and more foreboding, rather like Carol Anne calling out from the TV in Poltergeist. It’s hard to say what the creators were aiming for with this excerpt but I rather like that it exists. As a lover of horror, I have a real fondness for things that terrified me as a child and this would definitely have fit the bill!
Ooh yes I see what you mean. It immediately feels…wrong doesn’t it? And same I love things like this. A healthy does of fear is good for a kid, right? Didn’t do me any harm twitch twitch
I was about twenty six when Telly Tubbies came out. But I always thought it was somewhat odd. Mind you, the first time I see it, I was on a hefty dose of LSD. That sun with the baby face.
Having said that, I reckon kids' programmes in the 70s were way more horrific. Shows like Pipkins. Although it may be because I was little then. But the 70s was sinister all round. Even the adverts were miniature horrors.
I think you might be right about the 70s, but I also think we don’t talk enough about how the NSPCC basically made horror films about child abuse for the whole 00s.
I saw a bit of Teletubbies when I was a kid and definitely look back on its surreality with incredulous fondness. Hadn't seen this clip until today, and it strikes me as adults thinking they were creating a "fun" type of scary (cued by the way Teletubbies are laughing with delight) and severely underestimated the overall effect of the atmosphere and the unhinged faces of the lion/bear. But I mean, there are plenty of campfire ghost stories for kids and children's books that are similar (The Green Ribbon comes up ALL the time on millenial nostalgia accounts on Instagram), but ofc kids' mileage varies as to how traumatizing they are.
For me some equivalents would have been Pooh's Grand Adventure (where School becomes the extremely forbidding labyrinth of Skull), and the 1999 TV movie of Alice in Wonderland ("the Crow" is interpreted as a terrifying apocalyptic cloud coming to consume everything). I was old enough with those however that they didn't fully traumatize me, they just made an impression on me with their creepiness. There are also tons of Disney movies with nightmare fuel for kids (also widely discussed on social media); for me when I was really young it was Sleeping Beauty's dragon and the various grotesque gods and monsters in Hercules (but that didn't stop me from watching them ad nauseum).
I've got an article lined up that mentions the Green Ribbon in relation to the Sopranos... Was Pooh's Grand Adventure the one where he dreams about Heffalumps and Woozles? I remember being absolutely scared out of my wits being shown that at school. I do remember that Alice in Wonderland though, wasn't there a very creepy bit with a metronome? I've got a whole horror moments series planned on Disney!
Ah will be interested to see where the green ribbon connection goes, and the Disney Horror Moments are going to slap!! Re Pooh I actually think that’s in the original lol—Pooh’s Grand Adventure was like a direct to TV spin off that my parents hated but we couldn’t tell the difference haha. And yes to the metronome in Alice! I’m sure you could do a whole series on that as well
my kids loved Teletubbies - we even have a Po stuffed toy.
the Boohbahs always freaked me out. yes, we have a Boobah toy somewhere and I hope I never find the damn thing.
I can assure you that the latest series of Teletubbies is a lot tamer. It's so calm, that I must have blocked this classic one out of my memory 🤣
To be honest, I feel like every episode of the Teletubbies is disturbing to some degree, lol. My kids were born in the early 2000s, and they occasionally watched the show.
Agreed, it’s completely surreal!
I grew up on a strict diet of Veggie Tales and BBC classics, so I genuinely have no idea what this show is about lol. On the flip side, I remember watching Poirot (one of my all time favorite series) in the 6-7 age range. Sometimes you really just enjoy a good scare as a kid! But this seems like maybe it went a little too far 🙈🤣
Another Veggie Tales kid! Now that's a show that could often be unintentionally terrifying. I was really scared of the rumour weed for some reason...
I think they were going for 'adults being playfully scary'. As a kid, I suspect it works on that level, as an adult it definitely feels creepier!
I was in my mid-20s when Teletubbies were first on TV, so not the audience but we always thought they were weird. As a kid, I was terrified by the goblins in Disney’s “Sleepless Beauty”.
I’m planning a horror moments series on Disney!! LOTS of scary scenes, the goblins were really unnerving.
You know, I wasn’t entirely sure how someone could draw a 1:1 comparison between TCM and Teletubbies… but this is damn good!
For the record teletubbies were always scarier than Leatherface, at least his horrors had a goal, a purpose. The Teletubbies… are like a fever dream when you accidentally have the special mushroom tea when you had the flu.
Absolutely! And I’ve heard similar things about ‘In the Night Garden’ which even has quite a scary title…
The way they're propelling about on wheels is creepy - who is pulling them along?
I remember an episode of Noddy from the early 90s where Gobbo the Goblin steals his car and abandons him in the woods *completely naked*. My brother was two or three at the time and had nightmares afterwards for absolutely ages. You'd hear him calling out in his sleep, "No, Gobbo! Nooo!"
Oh my god, that’s horrifying! The oddly sexualised humiliation of being abandoned naked… and the name ‘Gobbo the Goblin’ is just inherently nightmare inducing.
It is so creepy and really - why show that to children? Maybe take his car and his hat, but surely even in the early 90s stripping Noddy naked would've seemed too much?
I was eight years old when I saw Trojan refugee Katarina sucked out into space through an airlock, and a few weeks later Sara Kingdom got aged to a crumbling skeleton by a time device the Doctor was trying to use against the Daleks. So I was a bit older than the Teletubbies audience, admittedly, but in the 1960s kids' TV used to serve up a generous helping of death, darkness and cold grue.
I watched 'The Empty Child' episode of the new Doctor Who with my friends at a sleepover and we were absolutely petrified. Personally though I think it's healthy for a child to spend a sizeable percentage of its life behind a sofa!
It seems to me that the bear was probably intended to be bathetically humourous - ie you build up to "the big scary bear" and it turns out to be just a cutout on wheels. Also I think the "scary round the back" for the lion is meant to be an _arse_ joke - note how the camera pans to the lion's tail waving up and down at that point.
But kids are unpredictable. I don't remember mine being disturbed by the lion and the bear, but my eldest was frightened half to death by The Teletubbies Christmas because she became convinced that a Christmas Tree was going to suddenly appear in her bedroom for no good reason.
Oh definitely, I think on paper lots of those skits seem innocuous but whoever was designing their props had a talent for nightmare fuel!
My twins and ai watched the teletubbies when they were very young. I dont know if that episode aired in Canada but they were terrified of the bear.
aw bless! The bear is very creepy too.
I’ve watched the Tellytubbies as an adult with small children but never this episode. Weirdly, I found the bear at the beginning creepier and more foreboding, rather like Carol Anne calling out from the TV in Poltergeist. It’s hard to say what the creators were aiming for with this excerpt but I rather like that it exists. As a lover of horror, I have a real fondness for things that terrified me as a child and this would definitely have fit the bill!
Ooh yes I see what you mean. It immediately feels…wrong doesn’t it? And same I love things like this. A healthy does of fear is good for a kid, right? Didn’t do me any harm twitch twitch
I was about twenty six when Telly Tubbies came out. But I always thought it was somewhat odd. Mind you, the first time I see it, I was on a hefty dose of LSD. That sun with the baby face.
Having said that, I reckon kids' programmes in the 70s were way more horrific. Shows like Pipkins. Although it may be because I was little then. But the 70s was sinister all round. Even the adverts were miniature horrors.
I think you might be right about the 70s, but I also think we don’t talk enough about how the NSPCC basically made horror films about child abuse for the whole 00s.
Ha, yeah.
I watched The Tellytubbies as a student, usually when hungover. Weird stuff. I don't remember this one but it's pretty creepy.
I saw a bit of Teletubbies when I was a kid and definitely look back on its surreality with incredulous fondness. Hadn't seen this clip until today, and it strikes me as adults thinking they were creating a "fun" type of scary (cued by the way Teletubbies are laughing with delight) and severely underestimated the overall effect of the atmosphere and the unhinged faces of the lion/bear. But I mean, there are plenty of campfire ghost stories for kids and children's books that are similar (The Green Ribbon comes up ALL the time on millenial nostalgia accounts on Instagram), but ofc kids' mileage varies as to how traumatizing they are.
For me some equivalents would have been Pooh's Grand Adventure (where School becomes the extremely forbidding labyrinth of Skull), and the 1999 TV movie of Alice in Wonderland ("the Crow" is interpreted as a terrifying apocalyptic cloud coming to consume everything). I was old enough with those however that they didn't fully traumatize me, they just made an impression on me with their creepiness. There are also tons of Disney movies with nightmare fuel for kids (also widely discussed on social media); for me when I was really young it was Sleeping Beauty's dragon and the various grotesque gods and monsters in Hercules (but that didn't stop me from watching them ad nauseum).
I've got an article lined up that mentions the Green Ribbon in relation to the Sopranos... Was Pooh's Grand Adventure the one where he dreams about Heffalumps and Woozles? I remember being absolutely scared out of my wits being shown that at school. I do remember that Alice in Wonderland though, wasn't there a very creepy bit with a metronome? I've got a whole horror moments series planned on Disney!
Ah will be interested to see where the green ribbon connection goes, and the Disney Horror Moments are going to slap!! Re Pooh I actually think that’s in the original lol—Pooh’s Grand Adventure was like a direct to TV spin off that my parents hated but we couldn’t tell the difference haha. And yes to the metronome in Alice! I’m sure you could do a whole series on that as well
So glad you wrote this. When I watched 28 Years Later, I was wondering about the inclusion of the Teletubbies but hadn't looked it up yet.
Thanks Jessica! What did you think of the way it was used in the film? Was it effective?
It was really effective. It ties into the end as well. Curious to see if it will connect into the next two films.