Was Tipper Gore involved?

Just for reference The author is on BlueSky :) - @evansmithhist.bsky.social And has a book "No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech"

had a series of hero turtle books sent to me as a kid from UK family. still strange to see haha

That was necessary context to your original question

Normal Island.

Britain is afraid of Japans power they know they are the inferior island nation

this has brought back my visceral reaction to the British phrase “video nasties” which sounds like something Mary Poppins would tut at

They thought it would encourage kids to act it out in the playground at school, pretending to do Kung Fu and hurting each other.

We had that discourse in the US in the earlier 90s when They brought over Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (though it didn't amount to anything).

I’m sure the UK also had this discourse over Power Rangers - I firmly recall a news report when I was a kid where people were campaigning for it to be banned after one kid kicked another so hard he got kidney damage or something (it didn’t happen but of course people called for a ban, it’s the UK)

And the Tango man, apparently a kids eardrum exploded when someone done it to them

A totally appcryphal thing I heard that is almost certainly not true is that Bruce Lee made nunchaku a popular weapon for gang violence in the 70s and so they were banned from TV and anything but R18 movies, which is why Mikey got that dumb grappling hook in later cartoon seasons?

I lived in the UK in the 1980s and regularly watched the "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" cartoon. Everybody knew that the name had been changed to replace the 'ninja', and everybody thought it was stupid. Nobody knew who was responsible for making that absurd change.

I also don't know who made the decision to make it an offense requiring discipline for a child to say the word 'gun' at our elementary school. That also seems over the top. They're literally not allowed to say the word 'gun'.

This almost feels like superstition, the promise isn’t anything supernatural but there’s some kind of idea that if you say the word gun too much one is liable to appear

They also invented a category of knives from movies called "zombie knives" in order to ban them.

If we start a campaign to give nunchucks to trans people, Britain would be defeated overnight.

!!!!

i don't know what the status is these days, but when i was kickboxing in the mid/late 90s, "ninja weapons" could only be purchased by 18+

In the US, it depends on the state Aka I got into an argument, & walked away saying “Wait, are nunchucks even legal?” and looked it up later