An oft-repeated right-wing claim today is that the Left has produced a “cancel culture,” where individuals, companies, and creative works are at risk of being deemed beyond the pale if they transgress the boundaries of “wokeness.” But “canceling” films, television shows, books, and musical acts has long been a tradition of the conservative right on both sides of the Atlantic.

One of the more unusual examples is the late 1980s moral panic over ninjas and martial arts weaponry, which meant that when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first appeared in the UK in 1990, it was rebranded as the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Though this incident has been forgotten by many, those who were children around this time remember it well.

To explain how the UK ended up with the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, we need to look at concerns about portrayals of violence in film and television in the 1980s and the “law and order” agenda of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. The moral panic about violent martial arts and their depiction in film was preceded by the moral panic about extreme horror films (primarily from the United States and Italy) being available on home video, known as “video nasties.” With the Video Recordings Act of 1984, many infamous films such as Driller Killer, The Last House on the Left, and The Evil Dead were effectively banned.