Remember Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Well, they’ve been making a comeback recently so the answer to that is probably “yes”. But they first appeared during the 80s in a comic and then later a cartoon series. Back then, the idea of a cartoon series with the word ‘Ninja’ in the title was so upsetting to the BBC, they forced the series’ makers to rename it Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
Times have moved on. I was looking through the schedules yesterday and came across Shuriken School over on children’s ITV. It’s a cartoon series about a ninja training school, it turns out.
For the unenlightened, a shuriken is one of those ninja throwing star things*. And the Beeb was worried about the word ‘ninja’? What next? Uzi School? Two-by-four-with-a-rusty-nail-in-it school?
I’m not that fussed. I’m just amused by the change in standards…
* Okay, there are other kinds of shuriken, too, not just the star-shaped ones. But how do I know what a shuriken is? My first encounter with these lovely things was back in 1985, form 2(iii). I was walking along merrily when my spidey sense started to tingle. I stopped and a second later a razor-sharp metal star embedded itself in the wooden door about six inches in front of me. It was Steven King’s (not Stephen King the author, but Steven King) shuriken – he was practising his throwing technique and hadn’t noticed me, he claimed. Hmmm. He also carried a box of home-made HNTD explosive around with him, and stashed wooden nunchaku in his school bag. Ah, we had happy times growing up in SE London…
