The sixth episode of Hulu’s reboot of The Animaniacs was briefly removed from the streaming service earlier this week, and was returned a few hours later with some minor changes. During the Pinky and the Brain segment, Brain is airing a TV commercial having to do with his plans of world domination. It included a fake phone number and a fake mailing address for ACME Labs. Unfortunately, the phone number wasn’t quite as fake as they thought.
It turned out to be the phone number of a phone sex hotline.
Once the problem was discovered, the episode was yanked, and the troublesome titles were just sort of carded over instead of being fixed, probably leaving viewers who saw it later a bit confused about what was going on.
You can here in the side-by-side comparison of the screen shots that there was a hasty but necessary revision (don’t call the number, obviously. Unless you’re into that sort of thing. Don’t blame us.)
We can guess that the episode will receive a correction edit after the holiday weekend. It was sheer dumb luck that the 1-800 number would turn out to be a real one, but a quick check on a real telephone might have exposed the problem before release.
Animaniacs returned last week, with a renewal that will last at least two seasons on the streaming network. The original series, which ran from 1993 until 1998, was such a fan favorite that during the intervening 20+ years, the stars constantly got asked about the possibility of a revival. SCIFI.radio was first to break the news that the show would be returning during our on-the-air interview with Rob Paulsen on The Event Horizon in November of 2019.
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