Not according to Sesame Street Unpaved. (Does anyone in child psychology think imaginary friends are “abnormal”?) The concern was that, since the adults didn’t believe Big Bird when he told people about Snuffy, kids might start thinking that adults wouldn’t believe them if they had something important to tell (like “a bad man touched me”).
Alice In Wonderland. Just plain scary [the mad hatter? Scary. The crazy queen? SCARY! Everything else? JUST PLAIN SCARY]. I could never watch or read the whole thing, so I don’t really understand the story that well today. I might sit down and watch a movie of it and see if it’s not as scary as I used to think.
First, let me state that I love roller coasters. Until recently I’d never found one that scared me. I’ve been riding them since I was four years old, several a year.
However, there’s this new kid-geared roller coaster at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom called Road Runner Express Express. My roommate and I looked at it from the tall ferris wheel; it looked harmless. A single car with four seats, going up and down a pretty bright yellow track. Then we rode it.
I’ve never experienced such unimaginable fear in my life. I thought we were going to go over the edge, at every corner. It felt like the car was about to go off the tracks. I hated every single moment of it. Whomever dreamed up that ride needs to have their nosehairs plucked one by one by Wile E. Coyote himself.
The Santa Claus at the mall scared the crap out of me when I was a toddler.
When I was a kid there was a doll family called “The Sunshine Family”. They were supposed to be kind of hippieish, with their big ugly brown plastic sandals and their ,“sunshine van”, right down to their big spaced-out zombie eyes. I got the whole set one Christmas. From then on, I made sure my parents had a list to choose from.
I’ve never gotten over the stupid Jack-In-The-Box my grandparents bought me as a toddler. A lot of kids are already afraid of clowns - who’s the Einstein that thought it would help to have the creepy little bastard jump out at us?!
Bleeaaurgh. ::shiver::
When I was little, there was nothing I hated more than a jack-in-the-box. Worst. Toy. Ever. First there would be the creepy music, and then when the clown (or whatever) suddenly POPPED UP OUT OF THE BOX, I’d shriek and practically jump right out of my skin. I refused to play with jacks-in-the-box, but for some reason I seem to have a lot of memories of other kids playing with them in my presence. Argh!
Later on, I became the best Perfection ™ and Superfection ™ player in my neighborhood out of sheer terror – I was absolutely driven to finish getting all the pieces into their differently shaped holes and then hit the “off” button before the timer ran out, the obnoxious buzzer sounded, and the pieces were violently popped up out of their holes.
I guess you could say I was a little high-strung.
Balloons.
They squeak. They pop. They burst. They explode. They make loud and horrible noises.
They are pure and sadistic evil.
Lady Elaine scares the crap outta me to this day!
Actually, so does Punch and Judy (though they’re rather antiquated now and you rarely see them.)
I always hated the Count on Sesame Street because of the freaky rubber bats that shook (“flew”) around him.
But what did me in one day, scared me so bad I never went back to that kindergarten class, was some TV show that had a skeleton as a narrator. I don’t remember it well (no, it was NOT the Tales from the Crypt guy – it was something much more innocent/insidious). I just remember that it was an old black and white TV show and the skeleton “welcomed the children” to the show, then opened up an old pirate’s treasure chest to pick out the book that had the day’s story.
I burst into tears at the sight of it and the following morning I jumped out of a moving car to escape my fate of returning to that scary kindergarten class.
The Child catcher on ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. Even now!
When I was about five years old, I begged my mom for an outdoor water toy I saw on tv. It was some kind of creature that had big eyes and long tentacles. When connected to a running water hose, the thing would start bobbing up and down, flinging water and tentacles every which way. I remember how excited I was when we got it home and hooked it up.
When it rose up into the air for the first time, I remember the sheer terror I felt as the thing came at me. I screamed & ran. Never played with it again.
On Sesame Street - Nothing, and I mean nothing was scarier than those damn aliens.
I think my sister had those - their eyes popped out pretty easily, and they were even creepier looking.
My Buddy, [My Buddy], My Buddy, [My Buddy]
Wherever I go, he goes
My Buddy, [My Buddy], My Buddy, [My Buddy]
My Buddy and Me!
Kid Sister, [Kid Sister]…and so on
I don’t know that they scared me, but I could never stand baby dolls. They weren’t cuddly, and they smelled like plastic. Those life-sized Barbies, on the other hand, were incredibly scary.
The Count from Sesame Street always sent me running from the room screaming at the top of my lungs. I have no idea why.
I don’t know that it was really intended for children, but the opening theme to “My Three Sons” always scared the life out of me. I could never stand seeing those disembodied hands opening and closing like an accordion to show the opening credits. Gave me nightmares!! :shudder:
Teletubbies. Oh God, Teletubbies.
I was slightly older than the target age but I was always freaked out by Morgan Freeman’s dracula character on The Electric Company. There was a dark nook in our living room and I had nightmares that he was lurking there, ready to come out and be mean and evil to me.
When I was a toddler, I had a Sesame Street Little Golden Book [sup]tm[/sup]. It was called The Monster at the end of this Book. That thing scared the crap out of me. I actually threw it in the garbage, and my mother picked it back out at one point.
[Oz Trivia]
I only saw the movie Return to Oz once a while ago, but I think you may have the names mixed up here. (Or else the movie not only mixes up parts of various books, it also swaps character names around.) Mombi, in the book The Land of Oz is the evil witch who keeps Tip captive (Tip later turns out to be Ozma transformed into a young boy). He brings Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse to life, and they travel around, have adventures, bring The Gump to life, and so forth. In a later Oz Book, which I think was Ozma of Oz, Dorothy returns to Oz (she was absent from The Land of Oz), but first stops in one of the mysterious lands across the deadly desert, wherein dwell the Wheelers, and the princess with the multiple heads, whose name, unless I’m confusing her with someone from a different pantheon entirely, was Languidere. (A quick check around the net informs me that it’s actually Langwidere).
[/Oz Trivia]
I knew an 18 year old man (well, boyman may be more descriptive for that age, he was still in high school) who could not handle the Gollum in the Rankin/Bass movie of The Hobbit. I was at his house once and suggested we watch it and he became nearly hysterical. His little brother used to torture him by chasing him around and lisping, “My precious!”
Me, I was never afraid of any of that kind of stuff. Well, the was the time I was reading a book of scary stories, heard a noise in my room and ran screaming into the night……my parents were not pleased.
You’re right, the movie draws mostly from “Ozma of Oz”, but Mombi’s taken from “The Land of Oz”.