One of children’s TV icons had his fingers doctored for the Japanese market for a chilling and surprising reason.
In the country’s most feared mafia – the Yakuza – cut off their little fingers as a sign they can be trusted and have strength of character.
Bob The Builder, who famously has four fingers like many animated characters, was therefore given an extra appendage for the Japanese market so he wouldn’t appear to be glamourising gangsters.
The show’s creators, Hit Entertainment, also decided to give all merchandising of four-fingered Bob an extra digit to comply to the region’s rules.
Bob, who was the UK’s most popular animated character in the late 90s and early 2000’s, is not the first to have got the five finger makeover – in 1994 Postman Pat also got the same treatment for export.
Chilling reason children’s TV icon has extra finger in Japan (Image: Getty)
However, not eveyone in the far east country agrees with the fascinating decison. Japanese journalist Chika Miyatake previously pushed back saying she thought it was all a bit silly.
“If Japanese kids saw this cartoon with the character having four instead of five fingers then they might make a joke that he is in the mafia but they wouldn’t be scared of it.
“With Pokemon and other Japanese cartoons being much more violent they are much more used to seeing frightening animation on the TV and anyway parents in Japan don’t monitor what their children are watching in the same way as in Britain,” she added.
Nicholas Durbridge from the Copyrights Group Limited, which represented Postman Pat, said animated characters tended to have four fingers for technical reasons.
“Animators find less digits are easier for gripping and holding,” he said. Although, in the case of Postman Pat the actual animation was not touched.
Don’t miss… [UPDATE]
He explained that would have meant re-filming all the episodes and would have been too expensive.
Bob the Builder and his friends Scoop the Digger, Dizzy the Cement Mixer and Pilchard the Cat made their debuts on One in 1999 and became an instant hit.
The 10-minute show for pre-schoolers children stars the happy and trustworthy Bob going about his day to day work helped by his talking vehicles.
While Kid’s TV reigned supreme in the Nineties and early to mid-2000’s, today, available to children on social media platforms such as , including potentially damaging amateur uploads.
Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Floella Benjamin, 75, known to millions as a former host of classic children’s TV shows Play School and Play Away, addressed her concerns about the rise in social media video usage by children during her guest-editorship of Radio 4’s Today programme, earlier this month.
Lady Benjamin, who has previously warned that this shift in children’s viewing habits will be “detrimental” to the future of British young people because of the over stimulation and lack of regulation.