Current Events > Remember when R-rated movies used to be heavily advertised toward kids?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlAbQx8xbec

Freddy Krueger somehow became an icon for 9-year-old boys

A lot of 90s parents let their kids watch whatever

Infinite 2003 posted...

A lot of 90s parents let their kids watch whatever

I was one of those kids, for sure. I chose to avoid R-rated stuff until I was like 12, though, because I was afraid of how scary they might be.

Turns out they're not scary at all.

You ought to rewatch Rocko's Modern Life

Turbam posted...

You ought to rewatch Rocko's Modern Life

Oh I have. Lots of adult jokes that just blow right over a kid's head, but at least that's still presented without profanity, overt nudity, and violence.

Terminator 2 is a pretty violent movie. Let's not forget Robocop, either; one of the most excessively violent films from an excessively violent era, and it had this commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufNob-aEqbA

Aliens was another one. Had a shitload of those toys.

ScazarMeltex posted...

Aliens was another one. Had a shitload of those toys.

I owned at least six different Predators and 10 different aliens. This one was my favorite Alien:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/6/AAFUDuAACryy.jpg

When you flexed the head up, the spikes retracted, and when you pushed it forward the spikes flipped out. Was cool as fuck to me as a kid.

Game of Thrones has a lot of kids merch too

I lived it.

Yeah I had a ton of the Aliens toys and I didn't see any of the movies until around the time Alien Resurrection came out.

Those Robocop toys were weird af. Robocop had a cartoon series around the same time that those toys in that video came out, but those particular toys weren't tied in with it...or really the movie. They were some weird offshoot

They got cartoons too.

__aCEr__ posted...

Yeah I had a ton of the Aliens toys and I didn't see any of the movies until around the time Alien Resurrection came out.

That was the first one I was brave enough to watch. Then I went back to watch the original Alien and it was not scary at all, just badass. Aliens was even better. I had been missing out on a whole world of awesome movies because I was scared of an R rating, lol

The 90s was a pretty wild yet awesome time for a kid. Even as a teenager during the 90s, I always thought it was weird as fuck that a game known for being violent like mortal kombat got a saturday morning cartoon, alongside the already noted stuff like robocop.

I can also comfirm that my parents was pretty "whateves" on whatever we watched....if we got nightmares, it was on us lmao. If anything my dad used to crack up at the mortal kombat fatalities right alongside us.

Hell yeah and I'm glad I saw them as a kid cuz they were rad as FUCK!

They literally made a Robocop Saturday Morning Cartoon lmao

MadDewg posted...

The 90s was a pretty wild yet awesome time for a kid.

I know it's a cliche to say "the 90s were the best," but looking back, that was when we were in the sweet spot with everything being marketed toward kids with almost no concern for violence or adult themes. Cartoons were racy and unchecked, extreme sports were hitting their stride so every kid had a skateboard/roller blades/BMX bike, video games were hitting a massive high point with the SNES/Genesis and N64/Playstation eras...

I cannot think of a decade in all of human history that can compete with the 90s in terms of being a kid growing up through it.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Oh I have. Lots of adult jokes that just blow right over a kid's head, but at least that's still presented without profanity, overt nudity, and violence.

Terminator 2 is a pretty violent movie. Let's not forget Robocop, either; one of the most excessively violent films from an excessively violent era, and it had this commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufNob-aEqbA

Robocop was weirdly one of the ones I wasn't allowed to watch as a kid. But T2, Alien, and some others of that sort were ok

Gobstoppers12 posted...

with almost no concern for violence or adult themes. Cartoons

Nah, Mortal Kombat was a huge controversy and forced the ESRB to be formed to prevent government regulation. Plus there was this political backlash against Doom after the Columbine shooters said they took inspiration from it

Smackems posted...

Robocop was weirdly one of the ones I wasn't allowed to watch as a kid. But T2, Alien, and some others of that sort were ok

Robocop had more grisly violence than either of those, honestly. Alien with the chest burster was pretty gnarly, but in Robocop you have the main character literally getting blown apart piece by piece by gunfire while screaming, then shot through the head while we watch the exit wound blow out the back of his skull. Not to mention the scene with one of the thugs getting melted by chemicals while still alive: gasping, croaking, and begging for help for nearly two minutes straight, before being hit by a car and exploded into a bloody mist.

It's kind of intense, even compared to a lot of others of its era, lol. It's in the Total Recall range of excessive violence and disturbing imagery, but not quite matching The Thing or The Fly.

Its weird how scary some of them were when you were a child and now all you see are actors acting.

ArgonHawk posted...

Nah, Mortal Kombat was a huge controversy and forced the ESRB to be formed to prevent government regulation. Plus there was this political backlash against Doom after the Columbine shooters said they took inspiration from it

Yeah, the 90s are when the backlash started, but it hadn't really taken effect, yet. We still got tons of violent games with questionable ESRB ratings (I'm surprised GoldenEye was only T when the death screen is literally a flow of blood sliding down your eyes while you die, and characters got bruised and bloodied to mark where they had been shot)

We didn't see the real kick of the ESRB until later.

there should have been a sarah conner action figure!

It was a great time. I could watch anything but beavis and butthead and ren and stimpy probably because of jokes I didnt get but my parents heard. If I have kids they are going to grow up knowing the greatness of 80s and 90s action movies.

Yeah because we used to be less p****** back then

God forbid a kid sees an R rated movie! The real f****** news is worse for a kids mental health than a movie

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Cartoons were racy and unchecked

Cartoons were far more extreme in the 2000s imo. Billy and Mandy had ridiculous amounts of gore

Background_Guy posted...

Cartoons were far more extreme in the 2000s imo. Billy and Mandy had ridiculous amounts of gore

Yeah, taking off the nostalgia lense I actually agree with this completely. (not counting anime OVAs of course, because maaaaaan those were pretty nuts in the late 80s and 90s). Billy and mandy was some wild shit, lmao:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhF1UfOZpec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2ADIYWjBYc
https://youtu.be/rwftr7z3Yx8?t=121

Definitely in my top wtf this cartoon is wild'n moments.

There were a lot of movies in the 80s and early 90s that probably would have been PG13 if that rating had existed. But it didn't so you had either G, PG or R to pick from. All the cool movies were R

Also Rambo, it had toy machine guns and my cousins used it all the time.

I just dont understand why it wasn't given a 2nd thought back then

Weird, I went into this topic thinking about T2 and the GnR You Could Be Mine track in the trailer, edgy teenager, explosions, Linda Hamilton was pretty hot back then, etc.