Following complaints from a meddling mother, Netflix has pulled an episode of its original kids’ series, Maya The Bee, that featured a drawing of an erect penis in the background, where it once stood proudly as a beacon for parents stranded in the otherwise-stagnant churn of children’s programming.
In a video posted to Facebook, Chey Robinson honed in on the spotted dick appearing in the aptly titled episode “King Willi”—a dick she’d discovered nestled inside a log, peering out as if to say, “Hello there, weary grown-up who’s likely spent the past hour watching the dully innocuous adventures of an animated bee! Come and rest your eyes on the cozy, adult content oasis of my pendulous ballsack!” Yet Robinson dared not linger there. Thinking only of the children, Robinson demanded that this dick be yanked immediately.
“I know I’m not going crazy and I know that something like this shouldn’t be in a kids’ show whatsoever. I’m extremely disgusted by it, there should be no reason my kids have to see something like this,” Robinson said of this half-hidden drawing of a penis that had apparently escaped the attention of countless animation supervisors, producers, and Netflix executives, and would likely have remained unnoticed by everyone had it not somehow called out to her. And almost certainly, it would not have been comprehended by children who are not already versed in dongs.
Nevertheless, after Robinson’s complaint was picked up by Boing Boing and soon went viral, Netflix quietly removed the episode from its lineup. Neither the streaming service nor the show’s producers have yet commented on the incident—which is, of course, part of a rich tradition of hiding dicks in kids’ cartoons that stretches back to the golden age of Disney features like The Little Mermaid, where they have long amused bored adults desperate for something to cut the saccharinity and snickering 12-year-olds of all ages. But thanks to Robinson, any parents who are trapped watching Maya The Bee will just have to amuse themselves with the dicks etched into the cave of their mind.