The 7 Most Accidentally Horrifying Children's Characters

Creating a children's character should be a relatively straightforward process: Make it cute, make it relatable, make it simple enough that Hasbro can efficiently pump out a plethora of tiny, plastic clones of it, then profit. But as we've mentioned before, sometimes the creative minds skip all that and instead opt to freebase bath salts while arranging blood-red candles into a pentagram to summon assistance from Barnelzebub, the Dark Lord of Fuck It, The Kids Will Be Fine.

7 Fukurokuju Is A Dick Head

The 7 Most Accidentally Horrifying Children's Characters — NHK

Fukurokuju is hard to type, and let's face it, we're all hopelessly immature here anyway, so we're just going to call him Fuku. Fuku is one of the stars of Nihongo de Asobo (the unfortunate translation of which is "Let's Play With Japanese!"), an unassuming show which teaches Japanese youngsters all about their native language and culture. If you're expecting badass giant robots or creepy old men dressed as schoolgirls, look elsewhere; this is basically VeggieTales on a shoestring budget.

Actual shoestrings were probably involved in making this.

But then they break out the puppets. And bouncing happily among them is Fuku, the puppet that unquestionably has a wrinkly dong for a head. Fuku is not a unique creation -- he's a character from Japanese mythology, the god of wisdom and longevity (ha!). Apparently, we missed the part of the legend stating that he's a grower (not a shower) whose head becomes throbbingly erect as he gets smarter.

"Daddy, why does Fuku remind me of that time I accidentally walked in on you in the shower?"

To be fair to the show's producers, literal dickhead puppets are a holdover from Japanese puppet theater, and existed long before the advent of television. Still, you'd think "stiff penis" would appear in bold on the very first page of The Official Kids' Television Nope List.

6 Mommi Ja Aabits Has Serial Killers Wearing The Skins Of Adorable Animals

Mommi Ja Aabits is what happens when an Estonian TV producer watches the doggy blowjob scene from The Shining and it sparks an idea for a children's show. It's like A. A. Milne anthropomorphized a bear, but forgot to subtract its all-consuming lust for flesh.

We're pretty sure he emptied his honey pot at 0:34.

In an effort to create expressive children's mascots on the cheap, the creators fashioned half-assed masks that only covered the tops of the performers' heads, allowing them to still make full, expressive use of their human mouths. It's a valiant attempt rendered entirely moot by the fact that they also chose to populate the mask's eye holes with dead orbs filled with liquid hate.

This herbivore is wondering if your spleen needs salt.

That single misstep resulted in a reimagining of the Hundred Acre Wood wherein Christopher Robin has been replaced by a young John Wayne Gacy. Oh, bother.

In closing, here's a fox with lanky human legs doing pelvic thrusts:

*Play For Full Effect*

5 Mr. Noseybonk Will Eat Your Dreams

If Mr. Bean hate-fucked Jigsaw, their un-baby would grow up to be Mr. Noseybonk. He appeared in a segment on the early '80s BBC series Jigsaw, and holy shit, we thought we were only joking when we made that Saw quip a moment ago.

"Let's play a game. It's called 'Counting Your Orifices.' Nope, you're about to have one more!"

4 Mummenschanz And The Flayed Faces

Mummenschanz is a Swiss theater troupe that did some guest spots on The Muppet Show back in the '70s. They use masks and Steve Jobs turtlenecks to put on performances that sound kind of neat in concept, but in practice make us want to crawl back into our mommies' wombs as grown-ass adults.

Take this sketch, for example. In it, two performers build their own visages out of clay, as we watch with slowly building dread. One has mastered his art, while the other proceeds to get more and more agitated, until he's trying to flay the doughy flesh from his own face like he's in a Hellraiser outtake.

"God, this skin just never stays where you want it."

We guess the kids have to be introduced to body horror sometime. Up next: Fun With Flesh, Starring Davey Cronenberg.

3 Ratafak Plachta Will Send Its Flying Head For You

If creepy puppeteering were an Olympic sport, Czechoslovakia would handily sweep the gold (after chainsaw-murdering the rest of the competition). We're referring to Slniecko, and its star Ratafak Plachta (or "The King of Loathing, Unborn, and Barren" in R'lyehian), a seven-foot atrocity operated by two people beneath a bed sheet whom we're nearly certain are skinless under there. This is the face of a creature that wants to eat your fingers. Just the fingers.

While still attached to you, of course.

Ratafak is proof that the Soviets attempted to weaponize nightmares by splicing the genes of Christopher Lloyd, a featherless ostrich, a bloodthirsty gecko, and the ghost of your dear departed grandma. And somehow, it gets worse! His world exists in a constant state of fast-forward, so Ratafak seizes around as if madness were body fat and his doctor told him to get in shape.

Insanity doesn't burn off, but we think our retinas just did.

Now watch as Ratafak attempts to go full-on Return Of The Living Dead on a mime, while an audience of children look on in silent consternation.

We repeat: He manages to make you feel bad for a mime.

And have we mentioned that he can behead himself at will? Because he can totally behead himself at will.

"Doing it to viewers takes a little more arm strength."

2 EC Is The Faceless Child Who Haunts Your Sleep

Welcome, mates, to Australia, where even the children's entertainment is horrifying. Case in point: Lift Off, an early '90s show about a group of little 'uns and their faceless friend / everlasting tormentor, EC.

"Hi, I'm EC! I have no mouth, and I must scream!"

EC, or Every Child, is another example of good intentions gone terribly wrong. What the producers intended to create was a blank slate -- a character whom any kid could relate to, regardless of said kid's race, gender, or having of a fucking face. What they succeeded in creating was a character whose one and only rightful place is perpetually disemboweling itself to the accompaniment of a bass solo in a Tool music video.

After rescuing EC from the garbage -- which is preposterous, because everyone knows you can only dispose of such a thing via the vigorous application of fire -- Poss and Kim and the rest of their school-age gang follow the stuffed abomination through myriad adventures in locales such as the ancient pyramids, the circus, and outer space. Along the way, they learn many important lessons, such as acceptance of your fellow man, the ins and outs of planetary rotation, and how to most effectively strangle your parents in their sleep.

"First you look both ways ... which I can't do because, well, no eyes, but anyway ..."

1 Biss Och Kajs Is ... W-What Is This?

Young kids are obsessed with bodily functions, so in a way, the Swedish TV show Biss Och Kajs makes perfect sense, inasmuch as a show starring a walking assloaf and a sentient stream of piss can make perfect sense. After all, if only someone had bothered to teach us proper evacuation etiquette at an impressionable young age, our living rooms might not be wallpapered in restraining orders.

Our Swedish is a bit rusty, but from what we can gather, Piss and Shit are roomies who care for a terminally ill skeleton when they're not too busy having bondage play. Together, they work through their problems and chill on their couch, which must have one hell of a layer of Scotchgard on it. So it's essentially nothing more than a shittier (and pissier) version of Friends ... right up until we meet the butts, which have googly eyes and talk by booty popping.