An old episode of SpongeBob SquarePants has been pulled from TV over claims from some viewers that its content is inappropriate.
The classic kids’ cartoon, which started in 1999, follows the daily lives of SpongeBob and his friends, who live in the undersea town of Bikini Bottom.
More than 300 episodes have been broadcast, making it one of the longest-running cartoons on TV, and it still remains hugely popular.
However, one episode has been pulled from future broadcasts after it was deemed to feature content unsuitable for a daytime cartoon.
The controversial instalment, titled Mid-Life Crustacean, first aired in 2003 and features a story involving SpongeBob, his neighbour and best friend Patrick Star, and SpongeBob’s boss Mr. Krabs.
After Mr. Krabs expresses that he feels ‘old and dried out,’ SpongeBob and Patrick take him on a whirlwind tour of pranks and hijinks to lift his spirits.
Unfortunately, one of the pranks depicted in the Mid-Life Crustacean episode is a ‘panty raid’ – a college pastime that was popular between the 1940s and 1960s.
During a ‘panty raid’, male students would invade the living quarters of female students and steal their underwear to parade and keep as trophies.
SpongeBob, Patrick, and Mr. Krabs sneak into the houses of women in Bikini Bottom, stealing their underwear as they go – until they’re caught red-handed by Mr. Krabs’ own mother.
A statement from Nickelodeon said: ‘Mid-Life Crustacean has been out of rotation since 2018, following a standards review in which we determined some story elements were not kid-appropriate.’
While the prank ends up being flipped around on the main trio, who are scolded by Mr. Krabs’ mother, older fans have SpongeBob have long deemed it to be unsuitable for younger viewers.
On Reddit, @ToyboxofThoughts said: ‘I was actually the victim of a panty raid and it was mildly traumatic, but stuff like [the SpongeBob episode] normalized the concept for me.’
@ActivateGuacamole commented: ‘A panty raid isn’t normal sexual behavior, it’s criminal and gross. As much as I love this episode, I would not have given a green light to the script if I had been in charge.’
Meanwhile, @ViridianKomorebi added: ‘There’s so many things wrong with their behavior in this episode. It’s completely out of character. The 2000s were horrible about normalizing disgusting behavior towards women.’
In 2023, the episode was accidentally reuploaded to the Paramount Plus streaming service, but was quickly pulled once the error had been detected.
Pirated copies of the episode have been uploaded to other streaming services like YouTube, while it is also available on DVDs of SpongeBob SquarePants’ third season.
Another banned episode of the show is Kwarantined Krab, which was pulled from TV in 2022 due to its plot following the outbreak of a serious virus.
SpongeBob SquarePants is available to stream on Paramount Plus.
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