May 28, 1993 is a day to remember. It’s when the classic Animaniacs episode “Disasterpiece Theatre/Hercule Yakko/Home on De-Nile/A Midsummer Night’s Dream” aired, and with it, the infamous and hilarious “I found Prince” joke. Television hasn’t been the same since (it hasn’t been as good).
It’s an extremely dirty bit of innuendo, yet it doesn’t show up in Screen Rant’s video of “10 Banned Kids Show Episodes You Won’t Believe.” That’s because naughty jokes about fingering New Girl guest stars aren’t nearly as controversial as Buster, Plucky, and Hamton getting drunk on Tiny Toon Adventures, or the terrorism episode of TaleSpin, or Dexter’s Laboratory‘s homophobia. Even an episode of Sesame Street was taken out of rotation, because children couldn’t handle Margaret “Wicked Witch of the West” Hamilton palling around with Oscar the Grouch.
With all due respect to the Pokémon that gave kids epileptic seizures, the weirdest entry on this supercut has to be the Arthur episode, “Room to Ride,” with special guest star and disgraced Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. After the whole doping scandal, “Ride” was quietly banned, and Armstrong’s name “does not appear on the list of celebrity guests at the page for the Arthur TV show at the Marc Brown Studios website.”
Thankfully, the censors never went overboard: Reruns for Rocko’s Modern Life, inarguably the naughtiest show in Nick history, continue to air nightly.
