YMMV / Struwwelpeter

• Common Knowledge:
  • There's a general belief that all the central characters die horribly (promoted by the stage musical, in which they do). In fact, in the ten poems, the only characters who die are Pauline/Harriet, Kaspar/Augustus, and possibly Robert.
  • Due to the Family Guy Cutaway Gag referencing Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher (as quoted on the main page), most people are under the impression that it was the thumb-sucker's mother who cut off his thumbs. It wasn't. The tailor was the one who cut them, his mother merely warned him not to suck on them, because the tailor disliked it and would come for him if he did.
• Fair for Its Day: The book features a very 19th century outlook on family life and children's obedience, marked by its infamous spurts of grotesque violence and Dark Humour (Fingore and repeated Death of a Child, to name just a few). But it features the often-forgotten story of the Inky Boys: Three kids who tease a black boy for being black, and then get their just desserts when St. Nikolas dips them into a big vat of ink. When they continue to tease the boy, they just come off as the ridiculous racists they are. The black boy is called a "moor" by the narrator, which would be considered offensive today, but was very much a descriptive term back then. As you can see, the story isn't exactly pro-racism.
• Karmic Overkill: In most of the stories, the fate of the children is either deserved (Frederick abuses a dog and gets bitten, necessitating an unpleasant doctor's visit, the three boys who mock a black man get dipped in ink as punishment), or a logical consequence of their actions (Harriet/Pauline burns to death after playing with matches, Kaspar starves to death after refusing to eat). Then there's Little Suck-a-Thumb, who gets his hands gruesomely mutilated just because he sucked his thumbs. His thumb-sucking didn't even necessarily bother anyone, he did it while alone at home only for the tailor to barge in with his shears and snip his thumbs off.
• Nightmare Fuel: Seeing a child get his thumbs cut off is disturbing.
• Paranoia Fuel: The roving tailor. To recap: a Humanoid Abomination who, should you suck your thumb, will jump from nowhere and unceremoniously chop them off.
• Parody Displacement:
  • Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher is better known to modern audiences through the Family Guy gag version.
  • The Little-Suck-a-Thumb is mostly known to comic book readers for inspiring Grant Morrison's Scissormen, from their opening arc on Doom Patrol.
  • Also the scene on The Office (US) where Dwight reads it to a group of his co-workers' children (although it's more a sincere reference than a parody).
• Signature Scene: Out of all the stories, the most memorable one is that of Little Suck-a-Thumb, and more specifically the image of the tailor cutting off a child's thumbs, due to how horrifying and disproportionately gruesome a fate it is. The aforementioned Family Guy parody also more than likely helped.
• Values Dissonance: Late 18th century stories, such as Struwwelpeter, were generally darker and often filled with someone dying or otherwise suffering horribly for not having known or learned the lesson it tried to teach. Nowadays, these stories would be considered cruel, mean-spirited, and sadistic to a modern reader, because of the treatment of children in said books, especially since those stories were intended for children.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The reaction most adults nowadays have to the book, due to all the death, bloody violence, and Disproportionate Retribution.