Tonight I was reading an article that had a mention of Romper Room in it. I have vague recollections of Romper Room as a child, namely seeing it when we visited friends with satellite television. Not the little pizza box sized dishes of today, the gigantic fucking quarter-Death Stars that could control Skylab and shoot down Russian ICBMs after a game of tic-tac-toe. In any case, I perused the Wikipedia entry about Romper Room and discovered this gem of a story:

"The Japanese version had a controversial episode; when hostess Midori Utsumi (second hostess) asked the kids, Tell me a word that begin with "Ki" (き or キ). A boy answered with "kintama" (testicles). Miss Midori replied "Do you know any words that are more beautiful?" The same boy responded with "kireina kintama!" ("beautiful testicles"; the word "kireina" (beautiful) also begins with "Ki"). After a commercial break, the boy was replaced with a teddy bear."

Believe it or not, while "beautiful testicles" are hilarious, I find the funniest part of the story to be the image of a little boy being unceremoniously replaced with an inanimate teddy bear.

"Should we just yank him when we go to commercial?"

"No, no. That doesn't seem insulting or obvious enough. Let's replace him with a teddy bear."

"Ha! That'll serve that testicle-lovin' motherfucker!"

"Indeed."