Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids/YMMV

"Chico's father: Explain this interruption! Chico's mother: I'm sorry, dear, but what's-his-name's been drawing on the walls again. Chico's father: "What's-his-name", who? Chico's mother: Your son Chico. That thing over there. Chico's father: Oh, him. Is he still here? I thought we decided to put him out with the rubbish months ago. How tedious!"
 * Adaptation Displacement: Finding out the CITV cartoon was based on four published books frequently becomes a shock to many of the cartoon's old viewers. Now those books became out of print in the mid-2000s (just as the book series got revived, interestingly), they've essentially become invoked Vaporware, so the shock and discovery is now more common.
 * Bizarro Episode: Several, usually most of the stories that weren't adapted for the cartoons. They are often not Nightmare Fuel.
 * "The Man with a Chip on his Shoulder", "Sock Shock" and "The Big Sleep" are if Big Lipped Alligator Moment were stories, both sticking out because they are based on a single punchline and incredibly shorter than the rest in their books (the first being three sentences).
 * "The One-Tailed, Two-Footed, Three-Bellied, Four-Headed, Five-Fingered, Six-Chinned, Seven-Winged, Eight-Eyed, Nine-Nosed, Ten-Toothed Monster" is a heartwarming story about prejudice, whereas "Fast Food" is an animal road safety story.
 * Common Knowledge: It's often joked the franchise exists as a thinly veiled Would Hurt a Child fantasy, but some actually believe this. Jamie Rix later revealed he was inspired by Shockheaded Peter and when making up The Spaghetti Man to scare his eldest son into eating foreign cuisine when they vacationed in France worked.
 * Complete Monster:
 * Dorothy May, the sadistic prankster from "The Piranha Sisters", who often gets her sister Petey into trouble with her practical jokes. Hours before the ultimate pranks (on Petey's birthday, no less!) a skeleton spirit vows revenge and warns that "all the jokes will turn on you". Unsurprisingly, Dorothy May ignores him.
 * The cartoons' presenters:
 * Uncle Grizzly, who takes sadistic pleasure in seeing children die horribly and laughs at and jokes about their horrific demises.
 * The Night Night Porter is even worse. He runs his personal Hell Hotel where he imprisons children in their rooms which are more like prison cells, taking obvious delight in the misery of children who have committed evil (or even just slightly mischievous) acts.
 * In "Fat Boy with a Trumpet", sadistic Johnny Bullneck and his gang take Timothy's bullying to such torturous extremes (stripping him of his clothes, throwing him to the mud and planning to throw cricket balls at him that would seriously injure him) that it's actually a relief when he is fried.
 * Chico's parents in "The Stick Men".


 * Critical Research Failure: Greta Gawky in "The People Potter" is overly clumsy, but the story is framed to make the reader despise her. Whenever she says that she cannot control her clumsiness, the Literalist Snarking automatically claims she is lying and/or refusing to take responsibility. However, unexplained clumsiness can be caused by a variety of medical conditions, such as sudden growth spurts, hearing loss, and there is also a disorder named dyspraxia. So with her parents, children at school and the story itself against her, Greta becomes Unintentionally Sympathetic.
 * Fridge Horror:
 * The implication that the lives of many of the parents of these children are much better when their children are killed, kidnapped, or mutilated. The mother of tantrum-throwing, mouthy and embarrassing Thomas from "Sweets" doesn't even remember he exists after he disappeared.
 * Gateway Series: The franchise using all the Horror tropes you can think of introduced millions of children to horror fiction.
 * Genius Bonus:
 * Due to Parental Bonus of certain horror clichés and conventions, audiences might accurately predict outcomes the moment a new character/object enters the story.
 * "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" is a parody of Enid Blyton's Kid Detective stories. Because of Blyton's dwindling popularity (and controversy), this flies over the heads of the majority of the audience.
 * Holy Shit Quotient: The outcome of "The Fruit Bat", in a meta context. Other stories had mentioned mutilations and violent injuries but never mentioned gushing blood like this story did.
 * Inferred Holocaust:
 * Huge Hugh's neverending growth and spraying lisp would surely crush billions of people and/or drown them.
 * When "Well'ard Willard" steals the Sun, the book mentions that his school is shut because the pipes are frozen, but nothing else, apart from a few mentions of the sun setting earlier and earlier throughout the weekend as well as his parents' skin turning grey and clammy. No mention of a worldwide food shortage because crops cannot grow or people getting ill from the lack of Vitamin D, etc.
 * "Crocodile Tears" implies Earth is on the brink of one, where the book mentions a news report on television about a potential intergalactic war.
 * It's the Same, Now It Sucks:
 * The longer the book series went on, a lot of characters were learning similar lessons to the last (i.e. "The Spaghetti Man" and "The Fruit Bat" are about eating what your parents gave you, and too many spoilt children stories to list). Part of this made it seem like Jamie Rix was struggling for inspiration, but in his defense: many stories overlapped in how terribly the protagonists behaved, the CITV cartoon adaptation started out-living the books, and there was no harm in repeating morals to children. What didn't help was some of the appropriately lengthened stories didn't get adapted for the cartoons ("The Well", "Guilt Ghost") yet were unique, in comparison.
 * The villains throughout the franchise suffered from Suspiciously Similar Substitute. Notably, "Simon Sulk", "The Spaghetti Man" and "The Butcher Boy" are stories that end with the antagonistic characters revealing themselves as shape-shifters and turning the Villain Protagonist children into food as punishment.
 * Moral Event Horizon:
 * Monty's mother in "Monty's Python" only makes an appearance to stop her son from feeding his sister to the pet snake, but seems to be oblivious to her son constantly bullying her before and after this incident, as well as her son making the pet snake eat all the other pets.
 * Farmer Tregowan in "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" when he shoots Stinker the dog. It all goes downhill from there.
 * Serena in "Death By Chocolate", when she ate her sister's food in front of her.
 * Narm:
 * "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" is full of this.
 * It's such a good parody of a typical children's novel by Enid Blyton, it's easy to see it as a victim of Poe's Law, from the Food Porn descriptions of the picnic Aunt Fanny packed the kids, to the Nostalgia Goggled, wholesome, post-Second World War Britain atmosphere. It would make The Hays Code vomit.
 * This also makes farmer Tregowan's violent, gunslinging appearance all the more hilarious, especially when he has to clash with the children that are still acting no different to the characters they're paying homage to.
 * The Chipper Chums themselves, as well as their family members. They all talk in 1950s Stock British Phrases — the sort that are parodied nowadays, like "I say!" or use words like "spiffing" and "chaps" — and are unnaturally polite and enthusiastic all the time. The narm is Up to Eleven when they keep their Stiff Upper Lip as Tregowan is threatening them with a shotgun; they chastise him like a misbehaving child.
 * Uncle Grizzly whenever he was Chewing the Scenery. The best example is at the end of "The History Lesson".
 * Nightmare Retardant: The franchise is categorised as "horror comedy" for this reason.
 * Paranoia Fuel: In spades, especially when there are no explanation of the supernatural elements' existence.
 * Mr Frankenstein in "Jack in a Box" invites himself to Rosie's birthday party.
 * As Steve Reviews noted, the ending of "A Tangled Web" may have caused children to panic the next time they had a tight chest when they had a cold.
 * Periphery Demographic: Adults are the second-biggest fan demographic of the franchise. Some parents, others respect and claim the franchise could easily rival adult horror.
 * Replacement Scrappy: The Night Night Porter, and the HotHell as well, especially for the audience that grew up with the Uncle Grizzly and his Squeam Screen cinema.
 * Rooting for the Empire: Many of the obnoxious behaviours the characters have is enough to make the audience cheer when the supernatural event occurs.
 * Spiritual Successor: The TV show, to Wolves, Witches and Giants.
 * Squick:
 * Jack Delaunay de Havilland De Trop insists on showing his foot verruca to people instead of getting it treated.
 * Some of the kids' habits/trolling: nose-picking, farting, spitting, etc.
 * The Running Gag of "The Giant Who Grew Too Big For His Boots" is that a giant's spit is raining on the Earth.
 * Serena Slurp eating chocolate from anywhere she can find, even wrappers she finds in trash.
 * In "The Pie Man", Donald's dummy is thrown away by his dad, so he inhales so hard, it flies out the bin and back into his mouth.
 * Unintentional Period Piece:
 * The story "The Dumb Clucks" ends with the two antagonists agreeing to visit Bombay. By the time Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids was published (1996), the Indian city had officially changed its name back to Mumbai in November 1995.
 * "The Lobster's Scream" features an anecdote where one-year-old Shannon orders her parents to take her to Euro Disney for her birthday. With no specified time in history when this took place, the children reading in 2007 unlikely knew this was Disneyland Resort Paris' original name before the 1990s (and years before they were born), and puts into question whether it's a secret period piece or Jamie Rix didn't know/remember the name changed years ago.
 * Values Resonance:
 * The cast is of the cartoons are very multicultural, pointing out that anyone of any race can be an asshole and/or a Nice Guy.
 * Everyone has a story to represent them, whether it be the habits they have, the behaviours they exhibit or the situations they've been in.
 * The Woobie: Kitty from "It's Only a Game, Sport!" has a bullying older brother with self-esteem issues and parents who encourage his behaviour. Like Bruce, she also isn't athletic at school so there could be parental resentment.