At the glorious age of nine, I had already served in Call of Duty, Freedom Fighters, Black, and Killzone, survived the haunted mansion of TimeSplitters, and suffered in silence through the game’s Siberia opening cutscene. But none of this prepared me for Doctor Who’s newest episode: ‘Blink’ (2007). This iconic episode featured the Weeping Angels as angelic statues that hunted you down every time you took your eyes off them. It was a glimpse into adult horror that I had never seen before and made blinking terrifying. For years later, I watched the gargoyle statue at the bottom of my road like a hawk, making sure it never moved.
At this tender age, I was also terrified by Goosebumps. The trash monster in Escape from Horrorland had my brother fall off his chair, and my sister and I strategically threw The Haunted Mask VHS behind the radiator, never to be seen again. But while these things may have scared me as a child, they are tame compared to Mob Entertainment’s Poppy Playtime.
I can’t get my head around mascot horror
Popular mascot horror game Poppy Playtime sees you playing as a former Playtime Co. employee returning to their old place of work, where things, as always, aren’t as they seem. The only signs of life are you and the wide-grinning, creepy-looking, long-limbed toys that are trying to kill you.
These toys include the uncanny valley Kissy Missy, the incredibly creepy Huggy Wuggy, and the panic-inducing Pug-a-Pillar, which each have a layer of realism in their behavior that only adds further to the frights.
Despite its terrifying premise, Poppy Playtime is actually pretty easy to play. The gameplay is mostly made up of simple puzzles and chase sequences, making it easily consumable for children.
Poppy Playtime should not be for kids, and yet it’s for ages eight and up. Unlike the original Five Nights at Freddy’s games, which appealed to a younger audience but were difficult to complete, the simplicity of Poppy’s gameplay means children can easily pick up this terrifying game and skip the content creator middleman.
Horror wasn’t as easily consumed when I was a kid. Plainly put, the things that used to scare me were scary faces, creepy music, and bad CG. But nowadays, horror is readily available for everyone, and kids have their hands in multiple cookie jars at once, gluttonous for creepy childish things. Poppy Playtime satiates that hunger, planting scary concepts right in front of their eyes, asking them to idolize rather than fear them.
Damn you internet
Mascot horror rose in popularity with Five Nights at Freddy’s in 2014, played by popular content creators like Jacksepticeye, CoryxKenshin, and Markiplier. The purpose of this horror subgenre? To attract younger audiences to a familiar figure like a toy or Disney character and turn them into something evil. Mascot horror has memorable mascots that are both profitable in-game and out (merchandise or films). Because all children want to look at this while they sleep, right?
Mascot horror would not exist without the internet and the rise of YouTubers. The likes of PewDiePie’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent series have seen a rise in indie horror games and introduced many young kids to horror. This gap of children watching and playing horror games was later filled by Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Five Nights at Freddy’s and Poppy Playtime are enjoyed primarily through watching content creators get jumpscared. Because Five Nights at Freddy’s was too tough for children to beat in the earliest entries, they had no choice but to watch Markiplier complete 20/20/20/20 mode in the first Fnaf.
While rated as an age 12, later Five Nights at Freddy’s entries lowered in difficulty, and the latest release, Security Breach, offered simplistic gameplay that all ages can enjoy. The nightmarish Freddy Fazbear who taunted players before he killed them was now seen as the supporting character in Security Breach. After four years of terrifying Fnaf games with Freddy, the move to make him a sympathetic character is one that I strongly disagree with.
I did it all for Freddy Fazbear
Kids nowadays could probably look at the long list of things that scared me when I was little and stare at it blankly. These modern-day child soldiers could play the real horrors of Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Fatal Frame, and likely laugh as they face off against Huggy Wuggy and Freddy Fazbear.
Mascot horror uses stories aimed at children with subject matters unsuitable for child consumption. The infamous bite of 83’ in Fnaf showed a child getting killed by Fazbear, but it’s okay because we all love Bonnie, right? Poppy Playtime’s Huggy Wuggy smiles terrifyingly at you as he folds his body inside the vents in a desperate effort to eat you, but it’s fiiiine because Jacksepticeye does some voice acting in it.
I believe horror should never be targeted at children. In recent years, horror has been thrown into the spotlight for younger audiences to enjoy. This newfound horror craze in video games, films, and TV shows sees more children being killed on-screen than ever before. With a rise of children’s limbs being torn from their bodies (IT Chapter 1), teenagers getting cut in half or mounds of flesh coming together to create the Mind Flayer (Stranger Things), or their heads sliced open by a bread cutter (Fear Street). How is any of this appropriate for a child to watch?
In extreme cases, the viewing of children being murdered for horror entertainment has led to terrifying consequences. The 2014 stabbing of Payton Leutner (who thankfully survived) demonstrated the rare instance when a child mimics violence on behalf of a fictional character. While children mimicking violence is a phenomenon documented in Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment, the Slender Man stabbing is a rare, horrifying, and concerning incident.
Poppy Playtime is a game that should only exist for adults who want to look back on their childhood and be disturbed by an evil child’s plaything. Instead, we are seeing more and more horror content being put directly in front of a young audience and telling them to smile instead of scream.
