Known for its surreal black comedy and horror, the franchise was immensely popular with children and adults, and the cartoon became one of the most-watched programmes on CITV in the 2000s; a reboot of the cartoon series was produced for Nickelodeon UK and NickToons UK in 2011 with 26 episodes (split into 2 series) with the added tagline of Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam!.
Due to how far-fetched and fantastical the stories could become, it is up to the reader whether they found the series frightening or amusing, but the franchise is usually categorised as children's horror.
When the series was adapted for the CITV/Nickelodeon cartoons, the book chapters became ten-minute episodes that were narrated by comic actor Nigel Planer, and created by Honeycomb Animation, with author Rix as co-director.
The franchise received critical acclaim, noted by the themes of horror surrealism and adult paranoia blended with common children's book absurdity.
The Daily Telegraph said of the CITV cartoon, "Mix Dahl with Belloc and you can anticipate with glee these animated tales of Jamie Rix.
Even William Brown's antics pale..."[1] and The Sunday Times wrote: "They are superior morality stories and Nigel Planer reads them with a delight that borders on the fiendish.
[2] It was about a little boy who refused to behave at the kitchen table and is kidnapped by an invisible force, that takes him to a factory to turn him into lasagne.
Rix took note of how the lie had made his four-year-old eat every meal without hesitations, which would inspire a series that could scare children into behaving themselves.
The Independent on Sunday pointed out, "Jamie Rix’s splendidly nasty short stories can be genuinely scary, but as the protagonists are obnoxious brats with names like Peregrine and Tristram, you may find yourself cheering as they meet their sticky ends.
"[1] Some of the characters' surnames implied their roles in the story (Mr and Mrs Frightfully-Busy were workaholics,[10] Johnny Bullneck is an aggressive school bully,[11] and Serena Slurp is greedy)[12] whereas the more ridiculous the family name is, the more unpleasant they are in the story: Fedora Funkelfink the con artist;[13] and the upper-middle-class Crumpdump family, who trophy hunt to impress their spoilt children.
Story issues and morals were relatable to the reader (particularly the parents that would be reading to their children), such as television addiction,[20] sibling rivalry,[19][12] trying to fit in with their friends,[21] personal hygiene,[22] refusing to eat their dinner,[3] punctuality,[23] but others are about theft[24] and deforestation,[25] as well as an implied anti hunting message in "An Elephant Never Forgets".
Some of the workaholic parents are too busy to notice that their child has either been maimed or has disappeared[3] and others are implied to be such insignificance in their children's lives that they do not appear as characters in the story.
Honeycomb producer Susan Bor explained: "What really appealed to me about adapting these wonderful stories for TV was that they were new and fresh, there was nothing out there like it and I particularly wanted the design and look of the series to have that originality.
[64] Reviews noted a connection between the franchise and other respected children's media: "This beautifully conceived and executed series follows in the centuries-old Grimm tradition of sadistic fairy-tale fantasy," wrote Victor Lewis-Smith in The Evening Standard, "and there's something reminiscent of Heinrich Hoffman's Shockheaded Peter about the fiendishly cruel (yet satisfyingly appropriate) fates that befall badly behaved children..."[65] The Daily Telegraph compared the series to Roald Dahl, William Browne, and Hilaire Belloc,[1] a possible reference to Belloc's poetry book Cautionary Tales for Children.