 | Back in 1980s and 90s, there was a rise in paranoia from the right-wing Christian fundamentalists, that kids TV shows were the work of Satan. That characters like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man and the Care Bears were brainwashing kids to fall under Satan's command. And one the top crazies peddling this utter nonsense was an author called Phil Philips. Who claimed after he "studied over a thousand hours of cartoons", that they were full of occult messages and satanic practices. His book Saturday Morning Mind Control, published in 1991, was just one of fanatic Phil's works of raving religious lunacy. He had previously published Turmoil In The Toybox in 1986, which argued that the Smurfs, He-Man, Care Bears, My Little Pony, Cabbage Patch Kids, Mighty Mouse and Rainbow Bright are all the devil’s toys concocted in the deepest layers of hell to lead our children to doom. (Actually he may have a had point with Cabbage Patch Dolls.) |
| He followed that up with Halloween And Satanism (1987), then Saturday Morning Mind Control (1991), and finally Dinosaurs: The Bible, Barney, and Beyond (1994). An indictment of the evil nature of the big purple singing and dancing demonic dinosaur. Turmoil In The Toybox attempts to claim that toy makers purposely use pagan symbolism in toy design. My Little Pony unicorn? Pagan! He-Man? Totally pagan, no question! Yoda and Darth Vader? Big bad pagans! Barbie? A godless pagan worshipping slut! Now rational people can laugh and poke fun at Phil's crazy Christian ravings, but there must be plenty of brainwashed fundamentalists out there who fell for his idiocy. Chucked out all the plastic, turned off the TV and shoved a copy of the Bible in little Johnny's hand. As later copies of Turmoil claimed it had sold over 135,000 copies. |  |
