I do mean stuff like removed scenes from international airings, replacing objects like cigarettes or vine with any other objects.
I do mean stuff like removed scenes from international airings, replacing objects like cigarettes or vine with any other objects.
It’s more about nobody ( that wasn’t already into Asian food) knowing what it was. Even parents. And it not really being easy to look it up in the late 90s
It might have been easier to learn about if shows didn’t censor it out from the start. How are people supposed to talk about something if it’s deliberately removed? It’s like people went, “Americans don’t already know about this food, so let’s make sure they don’t learn about its existence.”
I remember 1997 on The Simpsons, when Marge wanted to open a franchise. One of the options (which her rivals took) sold pita. I was a kid, and this was the first time I had ever heard of pita and tahini. They were simply described as “pocket bread” and “flavor sauce.” The introduction of new foreign food items didn’t upset or confuse the audience.
It’s simply bizarre that riceballs are treated like some particularly incomprehensible thing.
Also, research may have taken longer (and involved trips to the library), but anyone who wanted to learn about something in the 90s still could’ve done it. It wasn’t pre-literate, just pre-internet.
I had the same experience when I watched the Pretzels episode with Fat Tony from the mafia as a kid, but in Spanish. They called them pretzels.
But Pokemon was a show about a fantasy world of made up animals with magic powers. 4Kids felt kids would be able to grasp that, but not rice balls.
Kids could accept a weird yellow mouse that could shoot lightning bolts, they would have accepted some weird food they hadn’t heard of either.
Kids probably would have just assumed it was part of the fantasy setting