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Subverted Kids Show / Puppet Shows

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  • Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles is a Muppets-style musical comedy in which puppets have sex, do drugs, and commit mass murder with a machine gun.
  • In a similar vein: Team America: World Police, which was done as an Affectionate Parody of Thunderbirds.
  • The internet's weekly live broadcast The Funday Pawpet Show (once described as "The Muppets as they would be presented by Monty Python") has in big letters on its website THIS IS NOT A KID'S SHOW!
  • Wonder Showzen parodies Sesame Street and the like. Sketches have included a George W. Bush-inspired "Middle America" muppet castrating the cast, a sexual affair between the letter P Muppet and a pile-of-feces muppet, "interview" segments in which actual children "report" on various things out in the big wide world — and ask the folks there questions about their sex lives, and an entire episode parodying Hee Haw, packed full of offhand jokes glorifying domestic violence, inbreeding, and situational homosexuality. What makes Wonder Showzen even more on the nose in terms of this trope is the fact that its original title actually was Kids Show (the title was changed when the creators realized that people might take the title at face value).
  • Greg the Bunny is the result of someone asking "if puppets did live amongst us, what would it be like?" It follows the daily exploits of the writers and actors on a kid's show, but demonstrates how the puppets aren't kid-friendly behind the scenes. There's swearing, "anti-puppetism", drinking, and lots of sex.
    • The show's second pilot on IFC included strong implications that one of the cast members was a rapist.
  • The Sifl and Olly Show is a borderline example. While it does have sock puppets, songs and "educational" skits it was generally less interested in corrupting something pure than it was having fun with its own unique brand of weirdness.
  • Crank Yankers employs Muppet-type characters to enact prank telephone calls, which are usually of a decidedly non-family-friendly nature.
  • The German Freitag Nacht News did Bernie und Ert (later Bullzeye), which took the Ho Yay in Ernie and Bert and cranked it up. With darkrooms and gimps suits.
  • Mongrels, a BBC Three show about a bunch of urban puppet animals; swearing, sex, inbreeding and all sorts of unsavoury shenanigans.
  • Fur TV relied a great deal on Vulgar Humor, paired with Black Comedy.
  • Hale And Pace did a sketch of this once. Among the attractions were a counting game where they "took away" friends with a handgun, not to mention the letters of the day were... P! M! and T!
  • Die Liewe Heksie was a much-loved childrens' show in South Africa, about a winsome witch and her cheerful Elf friends living in a Sugar Bowl country. Comedian Casper de Vries did a wickedly funny send-up with a pretty much adults-only slant, in which Livinia the Beloved Little Witch becomes, for instance, a hypersexed nymphomaniac with a passion for the evil yellow goblins. Apparently this was as shocking to South Africans who'd grown up on LH as vandalising the Blue Peter garden was to the British. American readers: think of the Family Guy skit where Stewie Griffin goes on a psychopathic rampage into the world of Mister Rogers. You just don't do it. Unless it's funny... In a follow-up skit, deVries as the Little Witch goes on a murder rampage against Harry Potter and his chums, as she is incensed at the foreign Britse competition killing her earnings from The Merch and residuals.
  • Tomorrow's Pioneers, a Palestinian show (specifically made by the radical Hamas group) where they indoctrinate kids to hate Israelis and become Suicide Bombers. Here, for example, is a video in which a Mickey Mouse clone named Farfour cheats on a school test, then blames it on Jews. Later, due to Disney threatening legal action, Farfour was killed by a member of Mossad (Israel's even-nastier version of the CIA), whom he calls a terrorist. Farfour was replaced by a bee named Nahool, who taught children not to abuse animals... by hitting cats and picking them up by their tails, and throwing stones at lions. Later, Nahool died of a disease when Israeli authorities refused to allow him passage to Jordan for surgery, and his replacement Assoud (a guy in a Bugs Bunny suit) was killed by Israeli bombing. The next presenters, Nassur and Sarara, managed to survive until the end of the program's run.
  • Puppets Who Kill is a show about puppets who get help with their problems from humans, just like the puppets from Sesame Street or Under the Umbrella Tree. However, those problems aren't everyday kid problems-they are usually related to violence (except for Buttons, who wants to find a girlfriend). It doesn't help that two of the actors starred together in The Noddy Shop and Groundling Marsh, two puppet shows that were actually aimed at kids.
  • Like the web series it's based on, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is a brightly-colored puppet show where its protagonists' attempts to learn something from teachers gradually take a turn for the worse and/or bloody. The show takes the kids' show aesthetic even further than the web series, as it has a cheery Expository Theme Tune and each episode's lesson has a whole scenario along with musical numbers, in addition to a more noticeable satirical theme. There's even a human in the students' attic that looks and acts like a Depraved Kids' Show Host.


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