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I don't think there was a satanic panic over MOTU in the 80s. I don't think just a few documented attacks on MOTU constitutes that. And out of those, most had to do with MOTU basically being a half hour toy commercial for kids, not the satanic thing. It was Ronald Reagan, a conservative, that opened the flood gates for these toy commercial cartoons.  My mom was pretty religious and she had no issues with me watching MOTU.  It was D&D that had the bad stigma.
I believe my story may be similar to yours. My mother was a serious New Jersey Born again Christian and limited an extreme amount of what I was able to watch, eat or do. And although we celebrated Christmas, we read from the bible before opening presents and we were taught at a very early age that there was no such thing as Santa Claus and that lie was an invention of the devil. And while there was a lot of content off limits, at least with my Mom, MOTU was not one of them (thankfully)! 🙂
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We have the Power! 
My mom wasn't too bad. There were a couple video games with devil/demon type characters she wouldn't let me get. I don't recall her ever stopping me from watching a cartoon. I did get pulled from a Tarzan movie and Return to Oz. I had no desire to play the D&D board game which she would have had an issue with, but I did watch the cartoon. She got more relaxed as I got older.  I watched Dallas and Golden Girls with my parents.
I think there's two relatively separate issues there, given that generations of religious moral coding (by a variety of religions) have seen e.g. huge abuse of women and children too.
Clearly they are not doing it right mate 😆 especially in Christianity and Judism. We already know that behavior is robust in secular families. You can't take the human out of humanity. The question is will the grass be greener or muddier. One should not be dogmatic weighing the benefits of either side.
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success. -James Cameron
New discussion split from thread:
In fact, some research I made suggested that a reason for the after episode PSA's and the Christmas Special wasn't just so that Mattel could say the shows did teach kids some morals so they weren't just toy commercials, but they were also done to appease puritans who thought the shows were Satanic in some way.
I had to pause for a moment there gobsmacked over this little bit. Regardless of Lou being Jewish Christmas specials were good work for Filmation and popular for their time. Lou scored an Emmy nomination for one of them. You can't toss a grenade like this mate without providing some real data connecting motivation with preventing a potential television equivalent to the Salem Witch Trials.
He received an Emmy nomination for The Fat Albert Christmas Special.
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Proof that fear of being associated with satanism can't be assumed as causation for Christmas programming.
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If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success. -James Cameron
My mom had one of those books (I remember the cover had a bunch of toys that included He-Man and Skeletor, and a magic trail lead from Skeletor's staff to form an ominous demon behind the toybox),
Was this some sort of religious paraphernalia?Â
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success. -James Cameron
My mom wasn't too bad. There were a couple video games with devil/demon type characters she wouldn't let me get. I don't recall her ever stopping me from watching a cartoon. I did get pulled from a Tarzan movie and Return to Oz. I had no desire to play the D&D board game which she would have had an issue with, but I did watch the cartoon. She got more relaxed as I got older.  I watched Dallas and Golden Girls with my parents.
Golden Girls was hilarious. Still is! 🙂
What was wrong with Tarzan and Return to Oz (if you don't mind me asking)?
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We have the Power!
I think it was the Greystoke Tarzan movie and there was some nudity and a peeing scene. I've never revisited that movie to recall for sure.My mom wasn't too bad. There were a couple video games with devil/demon type characters she wouldn't let me get. I don't recall her ever stopping me from watching a cartoon. I did get pulled from a Tarzan movie and Return to Oz. I had no desire to play the D&D board game which she would have had an issue with, but I did watch the cartoon. She got more relaxed as I got older.  I watched Dallas and Golden Girls with my parents.
Golden Girls was hilarious. Still is! 🙂
What was wrong with Tarzan and Return to Oz (if you don't mind me asking)?
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With the Return to Oz, we left during the severed heads scene. I think I was a little freaked out by that to be fair and the movie was not remotely like how we thought it was going to be.
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I think it was the Greystoke Tarzan movie and there was some nudity and a peeing scene. I've never revisited that movie to recall for sure.My mom wasn't too bad. There were a couple video games with devil/demon type characters she wouldn't let me get. I don't recall her ever stopping me from watching a cartoon. I did get pulled from a Tarzan movie and Return to Oz. I had no desire to play the D&D board game which she would have had an issue with, but I did watch the cartoon. She got more relaxed as I got older.  I watched Dallas and Golden Girls with my parents.
Golden Girls was hilarious. Still is! 🙂
What was wrong with Tarzan and Return to Oz (if you don't mind me asking)?
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With the Return to Oz, we left during the severed heads scene. I think I was a little freaked out by that to be fair and the movie was not remotely like how we thought it was going to be.
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Tarzan reminds me of a story. My father and mother divorced (much to do with her increased religious following) and one day during a weekend visitation with my father he took me and my brother to see Sheena. It was a PG film but it had a great deal of nudity. Shockingly so. Afterwards on the drive home my Father pleaded with us "Please don't tell your mother. Please!" 😄
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We have the Power!
I think there's two relatively separate issues there, given that generations of religious moral coding (by a variety of religions) have seen e.g. huge abuse of women and children too.
Clearly they are not doing it right mate 😆 especially in Christianity and Judism. We already know that behavior is robust in secular families. You can't take the human out of humanity. The question is will the grass be greener or muddier. One should not be dogmatic weighing the benefits of either side.
Well, there's the stuff about in what circumstances it's okay to kill kids and abuse women that tends to get glossed over -- https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/NUM.31.17-18 for example.
But there's some general differences in psychology. Appeals to a high power being the simplest approach to short circuiting arguments, opposition that isn't afraid of death tending to be more dangerous. Centuries of calling certain groups unclean and/or limiting their activities don't really help. Plus in every generation things get edited, whether it's bibles with the sections about escaping slavery removed, or people just ignoring bits, but even that presupposes essential inherent value plus an 'original' text, rather than people arguing for centuries about what stories to include and collecting and mixing bits of Gilgamesh, Isis worship, etc.
Anyway, accepting that people are made of stories, there'll always be people fighting to claim that their instructional ones are the right ones. Maybe it's a bit harder to do with fewer options for suppressing the opposition and the Satanic Temple getting its tax exemptions the same as other religions, etc, but it never stops people trying. There are some particularly fantastic quotes from Cardinal Bertone and Opus Dei about the Da Vinci Code.
Opposition to MOTU (or D&D) on grounds of satanism is a variation of that. "Our magic is better than their magic."
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Well, there's the stuff about in what circumstances it's okay to kill kids and abuse women that tends to get glossed over -- https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/NUM.31.17-18 /a> for example.
You begin with a disingenuous engagement. In civilized society and its application of religious upbringing it does not instruct followers to imitate an old biblical tale of what Moses did prior to his burning bush awakening. You're limiting your pov when looking for key words or key moments to shout SEE and throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am not arguing that religion brings all good, but we can also recognize it doesn't bring all bad in an intellectual conversation. Have your car break down in a truly religious neighborhood and you'll see some unremarkable kindness. The human experience is more complex than ones and zeros.
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success. -James Cameron
Lets not go off the rails 😆
🇺🇸 SNOUT SPOUT FOR PRESIDENT 🇺🇸
@he-dad Sorry mate. I'll stop being a blowhard. 🙂
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success. -James Cameron
No particular offence taken or intended.
Civilised societies will hopefully keep instructional stories that have aged well, there are still lots of those.
Plus if you go back to apocrypha such as the book of Daniel there's some great folk tales such as the companion narratives of Bel and the dragon, neither of which would be out of place as the rough basis of an 80s kid's TV show episode. Minus killing the bad guys and monster, of course.
And yet the UK's leading high street toy shop chain refuses to stock Harry Potter items because of this.Â
Took me a while to work out you meant the Entertainer. Been a while since those news stories and they stock magic-based stuff like MOTU and alien war robot stuff like TFs, apart from Smyths being more successful around here and more toys selling through supermarkets/Argos if not Amazon. It also smacks of Gary either PR hunting or just being wildly inconsistent, since IIRC the CEO has said similar about Trolls in the past and TFs is an order of magnitude more violent in backstory than Pokemon (also apparently not stocked).
Sorry I thought it was obvious, though I guess this reflects the nature of the UK toy market. Smyths may have a bigger market share (I haven't seen the most recent figures) but is a retail park chain rather than a high street one and toy departments in wider retailers (whether bricks & mortar stores or online) aren't really the same thing.
Whilst I don't know the full details of Gary Grant's (the owner) views and how he rationalises them (though his comments suggest the dividing line is "the occult" rather than magic elements or violence in general), the Entertainer does certainly take some decisions in line with his faith that go against common retail sense. Not opening at all on Sundays is brave in this era and that even includes when Christmas Eve is a Sunday (including this year).
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@timrollpickering Religious or not his staff appreciates the Sundays off.
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success. -James Cameron