A cartoon character whose seemingly innocuous adventures has this month fallen foul of health and safety fears after parents complained that the five-year old animated figure was seen travelling in her father's car without a seatbelt. Now the creators of Peppa Pig are reported to be spending three months adding belts some of the 105 episodes which have already been made, and in any future shows Peppa and her brother George will be firmly strapped into their seats.
Animation firm Astley Baker Davies said it had originally toyed with the idea of adding seatbelts to the cartoon car when it created Peppa Pig in 2004, but it feared it would limit the family's range of expressions and decided it was not necessary. Producer Phil Davies commented, "We thought, this is a family of bloody pigs for God's sake." However, the programme has since sparked complaints from parents, with one mother writing to Nickelodeon to say that her daughter had refused to wear a seatbelt because she wanted to be like Peppa.
On online forums parents have been responding in their droves to the announcement that the cartoon was being redrawn. One user wrote, "What next? Will Sponge Bob have to stop living under the sea because some kid won't wear armbands in the water because Sponge Bob doesn't need to?" Another branded Peppa as a "cartoon scapepig", commenting that, "The Pig family live on top of what is clearly a hill and I have not once seen Daddy Pig put his handbrake on when he pulls up! Unbelievably irresponsible driving."
However, Professor Marie Messenger Davies, director of the Media Studies Research Institute at the University of Ulster said Peppa and her parents were "surrogates" for a human family and television producers would want to ensure that no bad examples are set.
This is not the first time popular cartoons have sparked health and safety controversy. In 2006 Ofcom launched an investigation into Tom and Jerry after receiving a complaint about a scene which showed a cat smoking a cigarette. Early episodes of Sesame Street which were released on DVD in 2007 also carried a warning that they may not be appropriate for children. Scenes of the Cookie Monster smoking and eating too many biscuits were among those which prompted the warning. Perhaps more disturbing is that now the Cookie Monster still eats cookies, but the producers have changed the content of recent shows so that he learns about "anytime foods" such as fruit and "sometimes foods" like cookies.
