I just finished reading my son a bedtime story. Rather than our usual storybooks, instead I chose a story from a magazine that my wife subscribes to as part of her day care offerings. Reading these stories made me vomit in my own mouth, and here are the top five reasons that I hate Mickey Mouse’s clubhouse stories and want them to be banned and burned.

Reason number one: Inane banter

The characters definitely seem high. All they talk about is how glorious everything is, how happy they are, and as many Disney brands as they can mention in three sentences.

Reason number two: posing as educational material

Having a story about a blanket in which they boldface every instance of blankets, does not instantly make that story educational. In my experience with my son after the third of eight frames of spelling the word blanket, bed was looking more inviting than the story.

Reason number three: completely implausible scenarios

In the story I read, the blanket is, several times, picked up by a gust of wind and gets stuck in a tree. Mickey Mouse solve these problems by making a trampoline appear and jumping on it, and by pulling a lever in a tree and making a shelter appear in which they eat all their food from the picnic. Well first of all, there’s the obvious bit that once you are eating inside it is no longer a picnic. But more importantly, I don’t want my son going on a Boy Scout outing, have trouble with his tent, and expect a lever to appear in a tree, with which he can make a shelter magically appear. The story is encouraging a generation who expects all their problems to be instantly solved without thinking.

Reason number four: branding, branding, and more branding

I know I mentioned this above, but it is worth mentioning again. Can you imagine if Disney didn’t have a marketing department? What if, instead, they were forbidden to mention any Disney brand-name that didn’t correlate directly to the story and even within the story they could only mention for example, Mickey Mouse, 100 times or less. The stories might read like, well, stories.

Reason number five: so many other examples of stories that do it right

Tiki Tiki Tembo is a story about two brothers. One has a long name, and the other has a short name. Sequentially, the short one first, they fall into a well. In this story, there is no magic lever next to the well for the other brother to pull. Instead, he has to walk all the way across the city and climb up a mountain to find an old man with a ladder who is sleeping and doesn’t want to see him. This is much more realistic.

In conclusion, Mickey Mouse clubhouse creates fantasy worlds that only serve to give children unrealistic expectations, and dumbed down minds, rife with propaganda and bizarre magical solutions to all problems.

Now where are my Muppet show DVDs…..