“1-800-SPANK-ME”: How a child from Washington and a sex hotline got ‘The Santa Clause’ temporarily banned
Unless you’re a real humbug, you can’t deny the fun of watching a festive film at Christmas, whether it be something classic like It’s A Wonderful Life or perhaps something a little more recent.
You wouldn’t ever expect something as joyous as a Christmas movie to be banned, though, yet in the 1990s, a bizarre incident involving sex phone lines left The Santa Clause temporarily withheld from markets.
The film was released in 1994, with Tim Allen’s Scott appearing as a man who, startled by the sound of Father Christmas on his roof, accidentally causes him to fall, and when he finds the red suit on the ground, the man is nowhere to be seen, but he soon discovers a note instructing him to put on the outfit and step into the role of the jolly gift-gifter. Desperate to keep the magic of Christmas alive for his son, Scott becomes Santa, very cleverly operating under the ‘Santa Claus’.
The movie was pretty well-received, and it remains a festive favourite several decades on, even spawning various sequels and spin-offs, but there was a time when it had to be temporarily pulled from circulation, all because a little kid in the small town of Steilacoom, Washington, decided to ring a number they saw on screen.
There’s a scene in which Scott says the rather un-family-friendly line “1-800-SPANK-ME. I know that number”, and of course, it wasn’t long before children started to ring the digits, which really was a sex line.
For the first few years of its release, Disney ignored complaints from parents about the number, but by the time it was available on VHS, the company could no longer turn a blind eye to the fact that countless children were calling a sex line as a result of their movie. The issue came to a head when a young girl called the line and racked up a phone bill of several hundred dollars, leading Disney to finally make a move to censor the line.
According to the Seattle Times, the child was so disturbed that she actually had to have counselling following her incessant phone calls, clearly hearing things that no ten-year-old should’ve heard. I bet that taught her not to be nosey again.
So, eventually, after years of complaints and years of young children probably getting traumatised by what they heard on the other end of the line, Disney had to do something about it. They tried to buy the number so that they could disconnect it, but it was no good, and the only way to fix the issue was to completely re-edit the scene. It was thus removed from subsequent broadcasts and physical releases, and these days you can hear Allen’s character saying “1-800-POUND” instead, which hasn’t caused the same issues as “1-800-SPANK-ME”.
You can never be too careful when putting phone numbers in movies, because people, especially naive children, will call them, even if they have to sneak over to the landline and dial it when their parents aren’t looking. These days, though, little kids have their own smartphones, so God knows how many calls 1-800-SPANK-ME would be getting if the movie were released today.
