Being the jaded cynic that I am, one of my most favored past times is ruining things for people. Make no mistake, everything we enjoyed as kids was the product of a committee piecing together an elaborate plan to soak as much money as they could from us. You shouldn't be shocked at the corporate evil that was put into your childhood, but I've been yelled at more than once about my criticisms for the following products.

"Lion King" is Plagiarism

Plagiarism? In my childhood classic? It's more likely than you think! The Walt Disney corporation has absolutely no respect for intellectual property. Just ask Michael Eisner, who might as well be the face of executive meddling. Eisner's blatant jerk nature cost the Disney corporation millions of dollars with brilliant moves like losing Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation to Miramax and nearly causing Pixar to pack their bags and leave Disney forever. So it's no secret that their lack of respect and almost open disdain for their own business partner's is only compounded by their tendency to steal ideas from others.

For instance, "Aladdin" has more than a few ideas that it owes to a little-known film that was over thirty years in production. And how many times is Disney going to try and copy the success of "Harry Potter"?

The "Lion King," however, is the most blatant example I can think of. What's it plagiarizing? A somewhat well-known anime all the way from Japan known as "Kimba the White Lion." It wouldn't be so bad if they had just taken a scenes or plot elements but they had to go one step ahead of the stealing game and copied essentially every character design. There's a boatload of evidence to support the theory that Disney may have been trying to Westernize an adaption of the anime. Even Mathew Broderick, the star of the film, admitted that he thought the film was an adaptation of "Kimba."

Except that in adaptation, the original authors tend to be compensated in some way or at least receive credit. The creators of "Kimba the White Lion," Tezuka Productions, got zilch. They didn't even dare try to sue Disney over copyright because Disney lawyers are akin to Cthulu in that provoking their rage put the universe at risk for destruction.

In the end, Disney stole intellectual property from a foreign company, refused to compensate them or give credit, and made more money off of it than you can imagine.

Hakuna Matata.

"Milo and Otis" were Horrifically Abused

Remember "Milo and Otis?" The most adorable movie ever where a kitten and a puppy are best friends? Yeah, that movie wasn't made in the US or in Europe where movies involving animals have to have specialists and handlers on set to prevent them from being harmed. It was made in Japan, where it was known as "A Kitten's Story." This was also 1986, where CGI and other techniques weren't widely available for film makers.

So that scene where Milo is limping? Falling off a cliff? The scene with the bear? How do you think they shot those scenes, because they certainly weren't using animatronics. That's an actual cat being thrown off a cliff. And when you throw in the fact that each scene required multiple takes, you have to wonder how many times they threw that cat and how many cats they had on set. How many of them got hurt? How many of them survived the fall? How did they get it to limp?

When the American Humane Society asked these questions and investigated, they couldn't find any answers because the film had long been finished. We honestly don't know what happened behind the scenes of this film. But odds are, that cat and that dog were both just one of many other animals on that set that ended up getting hurt.

The amazing Lindsay Ellis, formerly known on the internet as the Nostalgia Chick, did a video on the subject.

So that's two movies ruined forever by the truth. Let's move away from cinema and look at something more innocent. What about candy? Kids love sugar! What could possibly be wrong with that?

Nestlé and Baby Genocide

I've already told you about the horror behind the chocolate industry and how young children are tortured and killed to make it. I hardly even started with the human rights violations that Nestlé is behind. If human trafficking and child slavery/torture wasn't enough, they're also responsible for the systemic murder of millions of babies!

Jinkies, how did the Willy Wonka brand end up killing babies? Well, back in the 70's there was a push by Nestlé for their brand of baby formula to be used over good old fashioned breast milk. They subtly implied with advertisers dressed up as nurses that their special baby formula was safer than breast milk, and implied that breastfeeding might cause harm to nursing infants. That doesn't sound that bad, a lot of women bottle feed their babies- and nothing's wrong with that. But then it comes to light that this push and misinformation was also enforced onto third world countries where women were hardly making seven dollars a week. To cut costs, the baby formula was diluted with water by the impoverish women buying it. Unbeknownst to them, diluting the water lead to their hungry babies dying of malnutrition because they weren't absorbing nutrients from the formula.

Whoops.

It still continues to this day as Nestlé reinforces the push for their baby formula and break the World Health Organization's International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes.

Genocide, human trafficking, torture- wow that's a lot for a Butterfinger. And there's also a number of other horrible things Nestlé has to answer for.

So, how does that childhood feel now that you know it was made up of lies and suffering? I haven't done my job until everything you once loved is burned into ash. Until next time, I'll be sipping on a nice tall glass of your tears.