December 1, 2005



BBC Censors Pro-Confection Tweenies

Friday July 29th 2005, 11:55 am
Filed under: Media Watch

The BBC pulled a kids’ song from its website after complaints from outraged Christians Muslims Jews dentists.

The offending singer was Milo, a “Tweenie.” Here’s Milo in his own words:

I like apple juice and some of my favourite foods are sausages, samosas, baked beans and apples. I also really love eating Tasty Twisters. I don’t like bathtime or bedtime.

I love rushing around, especially when I’m captain of my own space rocket! Football is good too, especially when we go to the park — I love playing outside.

Also, his favorite color is blue.

All that may be well and good, but Milo got into hot water with the dental hygiene squad when BBC published a recording of him singing about sweets.

Big sweets, small sweets
Stringy, long and tall sweets
These are the sweets I love
Red ones, yellow ones
Soft and squishy jelly ones
Falling from the sky above
The land of sweets is a great place to be

According to the Guardian, the head of the British Dental Health Foundation, who apparently has a difficult time distinguishing between reality and animation, said he was “horrified” that Milo was encouraging children to eat sweets “the whole day through.”

Responding to complaints from the pearly white crowd, BBC removed the link to the song. (A cached version is still available; RealPlayer file.)

More from the Guardian:

The BBC said that during the course of the show, Milo, the character who sings the song, got his comeuppance, but it accepted that on the website it appeared to advocate an excess of sugar. “On the website the song may have been featured out of the context in which it was shown in the programme and to avoid any further confusion and concern we have taken it down,” said a spokeswoman, who added that healthy eating was a recurrent theme of the programme.

The dental profession would at least approve of Milo’s fate in the episode in question. After stuffing himself silly, he ends up feeling sick. Thus, said the spokeswoman, demonstrating “that eating too many sweets is unhealthy and has very negative consequences”.

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