The Dreaded Pretend Tea-Party

Top: Supportive Dad. Bottom: Unwilling Participant.

Webby: As soon as I'm done polishing my teapot, we can have a tea party with all my dollies!
Huey: Thanks for the warning.

— DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp

There are children who are capable of self-entertaining. Leave them alone with a book or some toys, a video game console or even the television, and you won't have to worry about them for hours.

Then there's the child who invites you to The Dreaded Tea Party.

This child may be capable of self-entertaining but bored of it, they may be lonely and want real companionship, or they may just be a brat. Whatever the reason, plushies, toys and dolls around the tiny table all dressed up in their frilly, sparkly, pink finest are not enough and one more is needed to round out the attendance of the most important tea party in this child's life (for now).

The child who ropes others into The Dreaded Pretend Tea Party can be a genuinely sweet kid who just wants someone new/different to play with and honestly doesn't see why someone wouldn't want to play tea party; or a devious and conniving Bratty Half-Pint who either has something to hold over the head of the one they invited, or will throw a major tantrum to get what they want. Expect older kids and adults to attend only under duress and with an expression of resignation.

In more fanciful settings, the tea party host and/or their hostage doesn't even need to be human. A dog or cat with Amplified Animal Aptitude will do; or whatever other sentient being happens to fall in the child's scope.

Applied Phlebotinum or Shrink Ray may result in the protagonist and/or cast having been miniaturized to just the right size for little hands, resulting in the child discovering "new toys" or "playmates". Such a child in this case can be sweet, and will either understandingly free their new playmates, or a Spoiled Brat who must be tricked or distracted and will then throw a major tantrum at the loss of their new toys.

What it boils down to is that almost nobody older than a year or two beyond the child in question ever goes to play tea party willingly and must be coaxed, coerced, blackmailed or forced into it one way or another. This is especially true for grown men — the tougher they are, the more they will resist. The visual cues that accompany this reaction support the resistance: Pink Means Feminine. Pink Is for Sissies. No self respecting guy (unless he's a dad and it's his own daughter, or maybe a guy who believes Real Men Wear Pink) will want to humiliate himself in a girly pink environment.

Resistant or willing participant aside, at the core, the kid hosting the tea party really just wants someone to play with, no matter how cruelly or sneakily or viciously they go about making that happen. The "dread" of any older kid, adult or creature at participating is the idea that adults should not ever do anything childish, even for children they love; and if they do, they should only do it with a sense of embarrassment and humiliation. Unfortunate Implications ensue because the dread in teen boys and men comes from the idea that it's awful and terrible to participate in anything girly or feminine, and that such awfulness gets worse if their male peers should also see them doing such a thing, no matter how vehemently they protest having been forced into it somehow.

The "tea party" is the most frequently employed scenario, but sometimes the child is playing some other form of make-believe. The host of the tea party is almost Always Female, but there are the odd few boy examples.

The most common variation of the trope is frequently used in family programming with a father acquiescing to his daughter's wishes. He puts on the wig, makeup, and dress, sits at the tiny table and hopes his buddies don't see him (or, increasingly often these days, doesn't care and is happy to be seen playing with his daughter). This is often used as shorthand for "Daddy really loves his little girl" and "is a supportive parent who doesn't stifle his child's creativity". If they're not trying for the Aesop about good parenting, Daddy has to be bribed into it by the sweet-but-clever child.

A variation that involves the same girly acoutrements and a resolved but unhappy dad is that the girl is working on a sewing project and he is being the dress form, Played for Laughs, as dad and daughter almost never are that close in body type.

This trope is quite rare in Asian works, especially in anime, as tea for them is considered Serious Business with tea ceremonies more prevalent than tea parties.

This trope has nothing to do with parents throwing their small children genuine tea parties with real tea and cakes. Also should not be confused with the American historical event called the Boston Tea Party, nor the 21st Century American political movement calling itself the Tea Paty.

Related to And Call Him "George", where a character also plays with another one against the latter's will, but with more fatal consequences. The tea party is frequently seen in the company of the Slumber Party, where it's part of the agenda along with the makeovers. Compare with The Mad Hatter-style tea parties.

Also likely to overlap with Pet Dress-Up.

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Examples

Advertising

• In the "Be a good parent" PSAs we see we see a manic looking guy doing a weird cheerleading routine - but then we discover that he's actually doing it so his daughter can practice (and he seems to be genuinely into it, not just going through the motions).
• A Dorito's ad plays with the trope.  A dad is tiptoeing past his little girl's room, where she's playing tea party with her stuffed toys.  She invites him to play tea party.  He tries to gently tell her he can't because he's meeting his friends. She says "I've got Doritos."  Gilligan Cut to him at the table clinking cups with the teddy bear.  A moment later his friends pop in to see why he hasn't showed.  As they start to make fun, the little girl invites them as well, using the same Doritos enticement.  By the end of the ad, the little girl is having pretend tea time with six grown men, all dressed up like fancy ladies, much to the amusement/dismay of the little girl's mother... whose closet was raided for the outfits.
• Haribo Golden bears has the kid using the candy to bribe a handful of adults, male and female, into joining the tea party.
• A Robinsons fruit juice commercial has a little girl rope her father and brother into a tea party while in the garden. She pours water from a teapot to serve as drinks but the son sneaks some Robinsons into each cup to make it taste better. Then the girl dumps mud on their plates and cheerfully says "Eat it up!"

Comic Books

• Invader Zim (Oni): In issue #40, one of Gaz's alternate-universe counterparts is a psychotically cheery girl who loves to have her friends over for tea parties. We then see that her "friend" is tied to a chair, gagged by having several candies stuffed in her mouth, and electrocuted with a cattle prod when she tries to struggle out of her bindings.
• The trope is played with, in that it's not a child, and inverted in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): the ponies meet a scary cave troll, but Pinkie discovers he's a nice guy and is happy to have tea with him.
• In the final issue of Sonic X, Sonic has joined Cream for one of her back yard tea parties at the Thorndyke Mansion. However, the tea party is interrupted when Shadow and Metal Sonic suddenly appear.
• The cover for Wolverine and Power Pack #2 (from Marvel Comics' all-ages series) depicts Katie holding one of these tea parties with her siblings and Wolverine. Alex and Julie play along but Jack and Wolverine are clearly bored. This event doesn't happen in the story itself, though.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • After Calvin stole Susie's doll Mr. Bun, Susie retaliated by taking Hobbes. When Calvin came to Susie's house to return Mr. Bun in exchange for Hobbes, Susie was having a tea party with Hobbes. Calvin was furious that Hobbes seemed to be enjoying himself.
  • On another occasion, Susie invites both Calvin and Hobbes to a tea party, which Calvin rudely refuses. After realizing that Susie is genuinely upset at having nobody to play with, Calvin has second thoughts and goes to join her, claiming that he never accepts invitations because it's more fun to crash a party uninvited. The fact that she had cookies may also have been a factor.
  • An early strip had Susie invite Calvin to a tea party with her various plushies, which he rudely turned down (of course) due to not wanting to play with a girl and because he was looking for Hobbes, who had previously been stolen by a dog. However, when he notices Hobbes is among Susie's guests, Calvin thanks her for finding him and kisses her hand in gratitude, though not before all the cookies are stolen. Due to the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane nature of the comic, it's left ambiguous if the thief was Calvin or Hobbes.
• Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace (US) has Dennis scrupulously avoid Margaret's tea parties, unless there's plenty of cookies available. No amount of cookies, however, can compel Dennis to attend one of Margaret's piano / violin recitals.
• In Footrot Flats, Pongo often forces the Dog to be a participant in tea parties with her stuffed toys, usually dressing him as a baby. The Dog hates it (apart from the raspberry drop tea).
• One Garfield arc saw Odie get temporarily adopted by a little girl who had him participate in a pretend tea party with her dolls, which is promptly invaded by pretend mercenary guerillas.

Fan Works

• Evershade: The protagonist was a boy who underwent an Attractive Bent-Gender, His little sister takes that as a reason to have this with him, now her:
  A little later, I dashed into my room, and slammed the door behind me. I knew Gabby liked me, but playing 'tea time' with her and her dolls? She thought that because I was going from boy to girl, my usual excuse of 'boys don't play with dolls' was null and void. It didn't mean I wanted to play that with her any more now than I did back then.
• Weaponized in the FusionFall fanfic Haywire — in order to get the misogynistic Albedo to help them save Ben's life, Professor Utonium forces him to attend a tea party with some of the biggest Girly Girls that he knows, refusing to rescue him until he relents.
• The Loud House:
  • Lincoln's Memories: In "Nighty-Night, Lisa", Luna finds the pretend tea party she has with Lola boring.
  • Shrinkin' Lincoln: In Chapter 4, Lola holds a tea party with a shrunken Lincoln. In contrast to her pretend tea parties from Loud House canon, this one actually manages to be both clever (Lola actually manages to give some fairly in-depth characterization for her toys' personas) and adorable (since Lincoln quickly finds himself drawn into the game), even ending up being a surprisingly emotional bonding experience for Lincoln and Lola.
• In Tealove's Steamy Adventure, Big Jim the cave troll captures the pony protagonists and treats them like they're his toys—and this includes making the ponies have a tea party. The ponies are too distracted to complain about the tea party, until Tealove flips out over how bad the tea tastes.

Film — Animated

• Alice in Wonderland is an inversion of the trope. Alice is the only child and finds the whole thing rather bizarre. The rest of the attendees are either adults or nonhuman and having a ball.
• Despicable Me: Gru treated the girls like unwanted pets at first, and let the Minions do most of the interacting with them. A sign that Gru is beginning to warm up to the girls is that he no longer delegates playing with the girls to his Minions. He is happily clinking cups with them at a pretend tea party (even teaching them how to do a tea party) when the adoption agency comes to take them back, much to his dismay — and surprise.
• In Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, Raggedy Andy complains in song ("No Girl's Toy") about having to participate in girly tea parties, among other humiliations.
• In Snoopy, Come Home, Snoopy is captured by Clara, who gets a case of And Call Him "George", puts him in a dress, and makes him play tea party, much to Snoopy's outrage.
• Toy Story Franchise:
  • Toy Story: Played with in the original movie. Buzz Lightyear, despondent over having found out that he is not a Star Command space explorer but a mere toy, ends up grabbed by Sid's little sister and put in a frilly apron and hat for her tea party. Woody rescues him.
  • In Toy Story 3, Bonnie throws tea parties, but none of the toys mind because she plays nice.

Film — Live Action

• Con Air plays with the trope. One of the serial killers joins a little girl at her pretend tea party willingly. But he's fascinated by her innocence, and a little taken aback by her compassion, so he actually leaves with the jet and does her no harm at all.
• In Gulliver's Travels (2010), a giant girl from Brobdingnag forces Gulliver to participate in one.
• Happens in the movie Mr. Nanny, starring Hulk Hogan, where his character is forced to do this with one of his charges.
• Under the Shadow: After Iraj leaves for his station in the Iran-Iraq War, we see Shideh having a tea party with Dorsa in her bedroom, Dorsa's doll Kimia being in attendance.

Literature

• In the children's book A Cup of Orange by Nathan Bryan, Katie entices Giggo the fox by showing off her interesting tea party accoutrements. When he is close enough, she captures him and ties him up, forcing him to participate.
• InCryptid: In the short story "Snakes and Ladders", six-year-old Alice is abducted to be sacrificed to what a snake cult believes is a god (actually a Snake Person). He turns out not to be. Alice, after being very freaked out, ends up making friends with the giant snake man, teaches him a few human customs, and presses him into playing tea party. When her mother finally finds her, she recognizes the would-be god's expression as one her husband often wears when their daughter presses him into playing tea party against his will.
• The children's book Vader's Little Princess by Jeffrey Brown includes no less a grown man and Big Bad than Darth Vader himself, having a tea party with little tiny Leia.
• The Unadulterated Cat by Terry Pratchett mentions this as one of the indignities that occurs to a cat in a house with children.

Live-Action TV

• In "It's All About You" from Bear in the Big Blue House, Treelo complains that Ojo is making him play tea party with her for third time. She says that it's not the third time, then admits that it's actually the fourth before telling him that if he's so bored with it to think of something else to play.
• Criminal Minds makes use of this trope in a disturbing way. In the episode "The Uncanny Valley", a woman was sexually abused as a child by her father who bought her dolls as an apology. Decades later, he took her dolls and gave them to other girls whom he abused. His daughter, desperate to have her dolls back, abducted women who happened to look like her dolls, sedated and force-fed them, dressed them up, sewed a wig into a poor woman's scalp and forced them to attend a tea party. All while acting like a well-meaning little girl.
• The Pajanimals:
  • "Super Squacky" opens with Cowbella, Sweetpea Sue and Apollo all playing tea party, and Apollo moaning and groaning. When Cowbella asks him if "Poodlepants" wants sugar in his tea, he bemoans the name "Poodlepants" and says that what he really wants is to stop playing tea party. When she presses him, however, he asks for "two lumps of sugar, please."
  • In "Mind Your Manners," Cowbella invites Apollo and Squacky to one, but neither want to play because they're busy playing a space game involving alien ducks. Then Sweetpea Sue walks in with cookies, saying that their mom made for the tea party. Suddenly both race over to join, Squacky saying that they love tea parties and asking when it starts.
    Apollo: We want cookies!
• Supernatural: In "Wishful Thinking," the guys go to a town where a wishing well is making wishes come true. One of the wishes they stumble across is a little girl who wished her teddy bear to life; said teddy bear is depressive and suicidal. At one point it bemoans its existence:
  Teddy bear: It is a terrible world! Why am I here?
  Audrey: For tea parties!
• In "A Good Day to Dog Hard" from Turner & Hooch (2021), Turner is assigned an important diplomatic mission - namely a playdate with the daughter of the head of the Olympic Committee. She promptly sets up a tea party, dresses Hooch in a pink tiara, and disconnects the phone when Turner tries to call up room service for the wi-fi password.
  Turner: I could drink some tea. Yeah.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): The episode "Stopover in a Quiet Town" features one of the most disturbing uses of the trope. A couple who were drunk driving wake up to discover themselves alone in a town they can't seem to escape from. The Plot Twist is that they're in an alien child's dollhouse and surrounding toy town, and the child is just playing. After they ran off the road, the child's parents took them home to the child as playthings. Whether the child and parents are giant or there was a Shrink Ray involved is never explored. But the fear of the couple is genuine in this case given the owner of the dollhouse is at least 6 times their size.

Video Games

• Batman: The Telltale Series: The Joker uses one as a Truth-Telling Session in Episode 4 of the The Enemy Within.
• The "You Are Cordially Invited" questline in Borderlands 2 requires you to collect guests and crumpets for Tiny Tina's tea party. Her guests are Princess Fluffybutt, a hand grenade in a doll's dress, Sir Reginald, a tiny Varkid in a jar, and Flesh-Stick, the bandit who sold Tina's parents to Hyperion as test subjects. Tina tortures and kills him.
  Tiny Tina: <after disintegrating Flesh-Stick with ridiculously high voltage> Best tea party ever!
• Mortal Kombat 11 has Mileena's Friendship, where she holds a tea party with three teddy bears. Said teddies are dressed like herself, Kitana, and Jade.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: Giggles the chipmunk enjoys having tea parties with Petunia.

Webcomics

• Cirque Royale has a subversion with Red; Red holds one of these with her dad Kingston and friend and mentor Ron in Non-Stop. But rather than a tea party, it's actually her plotting her pretend destruction of the royal Rock Kingdom family on the Rock King's wedding and them playing this out.
• In El Goonish Shive, a brief flashback is shown of Grace playing tea parties with Ellen. Note that they are both teenagers, although Grace is (or was at that point) a bit of a Womanchild. (And The Rant says it's exaggerated in this scene for comic effect.)
  Ellen: Later on, if anybody asks, we spent the day playing video games, OK?
• Forestdale: Kyle Kendricks is blackmailed into participating in one such tea party with his little sister after she threatens to post embarrassing footage of the first songs he ever wrote when he was six, the girl even getting him into a dress and wig during the whole affair.
• The Monster in the Darkness in The Order of the Stick. The guests at the tea party are a stuffed dragon, a paralyzed O-Chul and Roy's corpse. Here's the first comic in which it's seen.

Web Games

• There's an online game called Baby Hazel Tea Party, in which Baby Hazel has a number of tasks to perform to prepare for her tea party. According to the description text, though, everyone is happily participating, making this a subversion.

Web Original

• A particularly odd example in Fat, French and Fabulous, involving a disturbed solider having a pretend tea party with the bodies of the fallen.
• Gaijin Smash: Azrael notes that Ultimate Sweetness could induce I'm Taking Her Home with Me! in him, at which point the police would find the two of them having a tea party.

Western Animation

• In the Animaniacs episode "Kiki's Kitten", the eponymous Killer Gorilla plays this with Rita the cat, who is torn between wanting desperately to escape, and feeling terrible at how sad the gorilla is when she does get away.
• Arthur: In "D.W.'s Backpack Mishap", Arthur follows D.W. while she tries to find out who took her backpack. One stop is Emily's house, where she invites Arthur and D.W. to a pretend tea party; Arthur reluctantly goes along with it, but is very bored.
• Big City Greens subverts the trope. Tilly is happy to invite her doting, eager father to her genteel tea party. But Bill ruins it by sitting on one of Tilly's favorite dolls, flattening it. When he realizes what he's done, he gets up, and shatters the tea set in his flustered stumbling around. The coup de grace comes when he tries to make amends: he bends to pick up the broken tea set and farts. A traumatized Tilly declares the tea party over.
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Dollhouse Drama," Dexter's sister Dee Dee loves to play tea party and dress up. Dexter, being a paranoid and suspicious sort, is dubious that she hasn't invaded his lab once in this particular day. He shrinks down to go in her room and spy on her. Dee Dee works him into her doll house soap opera, and because the shrink ray has the side effect of confusing reality with fantasy, Dexter soon believes everything in the setting to be real.
• Doc McStuffins: "Tea Party Tantrum" has the pretend tea party, and a cranky doll, rather than person, who ends up being Doc's patient.
• In DuckTales (1987), Webby likes to play tea party. The nephews hate being pulled into it. The page image depicts a scene from DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, in which the genie (who is posing as a normal boy at the time) is pulled into a tea party. Hilariously, the genie was fine with participating when he thought it was going to be like the Boston Tea Party... but when Webby explains the actual game, he immediately complains of boredom. (Unfortunately his complaint that the other guests are "lifeless" inspires Webby to wish for all her dolls to be brought to life, which the genie is forced to grant. Hilarity Ensues.)
• Shows up a couple times on Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • In "Sir Ed-A-Lot", the Eds get pulled into playing servants to self-proclaimed Queen Sarah, and a tea party is just one of the embarrassing activities involved.
  • In "Rambling Ed", Eddy convinces Ed to move out and get away from Sarah's bossiness, with a thinly-disguised Johnny 2x4 taking Ed's place. Johnny actually seems excited at the prospect of going to one of Sarah's tea parties.
• Family Guy: Stewie tries to have a tea party with Brian (even throwing his teddy bear Rupert away in order to get Brian interested) but Brian spends the whole time texting on his phone.
• On Franklin and its All-CGI Cartoon spin-off Franklin and Friends, Franklin's little sister Harriet loves hosting tea parties with her plush, and sometimes bringing in her best friend Beatrice as well. Franklin often ends up getting roped in, but he's generally actually pretty supportive.
• On "Spy HQ" from Joe and Jack, Joe and Jack visit the hut set up by their friend Tallulah, thinking it's going to be a spy headquarters, only to find she wants to have a tea party with them.
  Jack: I have to get some air!
• Kick Buttowski: "Sleepover" has a played-with example. The tea party with pink dresses and princess tiaras is part of his sister Brianna's Sleepover, which she knows Kick will try to ruin because he wants to watch stunts on TV. Brianna has commandeered it for her favorite Action Girl cartoon with her friends.
• In a flash animation based on Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl, Lenore throws a tea party with a creeptastic twist (does anyone know if anyone shows up unwilling?)
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Fun-Gus makes Wolf, Benson and Dave have a pretend tea party with him, but this sequence turns out to be an illusion by Mulholland so Kipo and friends could escape.
• Kaeloo: In the episode "Let's Play Tea Party", Kaeloo manages to get Stumpy, Quack Quack and Mr. Cat to join her in having a pretend tea party. While Quack Quack is nice as usual, Stumpy and Mr. Cat are rude and sloppy (since they don't care about the party, just the food). At least, until they find out that there isn't any real food - after which they go out of their way to be annoying.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012): A bratty little girl mistakes Vinnie the lizard for a baby alligator and begins to introduce him to all her dolls, making them play together. It takes a fly and some junkyard rats to rescue him. The little girl throws a very loud tantrum on losing her "baby alligator," and leaves Vinnie so traumatized that while he's touched she misses him, he's terrified of going anywhere near her, episodes later.
• The Loud House: Several of the kids employ the trope or variations of it:
  • Lola is a tea party expert. She knows the proper serving temperature for Earl Grey as revealed in "Read Aloud". In "A Tattler's Tale," she finds out all her siblings' secrets and threatens to tell their parents in order to blackmail them. She forces them to be butler, maid, jester, and musician for her tea party with stuffed toys. And in "Study Muffin", she throws a tea party for hot English tutor Hugh.
  • In "The Price of Admission," Lincoln throws himself one with pizza rather than tea and faces drawn on pillows to help himself stay awake after seeing a scary movie without permission and being freaked out about it.
  • Lucy knows the other kids want nothing to do with tea parties thanks to Lola. In "Spell It Out," she has a flip board Secret Passage in the attic that looks like a tea party to disguise her seance setup.
• Lloyd the Rock'n Unicorn episode "Lloyd and the Little Tea Party" has the titular Lloyd taken hostage by a powerful foe - the little girl who lives next door, for tea party purposes.
• Making Fiends: Charlotte inverts the trope. She throws pefectly delightful pretend tea parties. No one minds going to them except Vendetta, another child, who happens to hate everyone and everything, but none so much as Charlotte.
• On Max and Ruby, "Ruby's Tea Party" involves Ruby trying to involve Max in a tea party with her dollies when Max wants to play pirate.
• Rob Renzetti created Mina and The Count for Cartoon Network, intended as a series, but never got that far. The pilot episode has Count Vlad invade Mina's bedroom, seeking virgin blood. Young Mina's cuteness is too much for the Count, who finds himself playing with the child, including hourly tea parties. A fearsome, deathless, magical vampire cows before this waif, whining, "Not another tea party ..."
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: "Party of One" has a disturbing inversion on the trope. Childlike Pinkie Pie has come to the (mistaken) conclusion that her friends don't like her anymore and want to be rid of her because they all begged off with excuses to Gummy's after-party. She throws it anyway, and populates it with pretend "friends" Madame LeFlour, and "Rocky" (among others), whom she puppeteers and voices. Rainbow Dash comes to get her and take her away from the party.
• The Owl House: In the penultimate episode of season 1, Hooty does this, forcing the coven scouts he just roughed up into a tea party with him, with one of them struggling to get away. Late in season 2, one coven scout mentions that he was traumatized by experience and still hasn't gotten over it.
• Pound Puppies (2010):
  • "Cuddle Up Buttercup". A Lonely Rich Kid ends up getting the last Buttercup toy in the store. Only she's a real, live puppy! Lucky goes to rescue her, and ends up sitting through a royal meal with the boy pretending to be king, and splashing grape juice everywhere until the other dogs arrive with the toy so they can escape.
  • "Lucky Gets Adopted". Lucky is adopted by a little girl who is not rich, but still lonely because she's a little eccentric as compared to other kids. He gets pressed into tea party duty here and barks at her to startle her so he can escape. He eventually comes back of his own volition though.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • "Slumbering With The Enemy": Inverted. Mojo Jojo in disguise as "Mojeisha" is fully in character as an excitable little girl, and produces a tea set for the slumber party the Girls have thrown. But this is because he has some sort of plan to destroy the girls, and is masquerading as one to get close to them.
  • "The Powerpuff Girls Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever": Due to rain and lack of crime, the girls play pretend their adventure in the city from their room. As Blossom plays a giant crocodile, Bubbles plays Buttercup, and Buttercup plays Blossom, they drag Professor Utonium to play Bubbles.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Lisa's Pony", Homer joins one of Lisa's tea parties while trying to make amends with her. He is even shown to be enjoying it. At least before Bart and Milhouse show up and mock him for the tea party, causing Homer to chase them in anger.
  • In "Lisa's Date with Density" Lisa shows her crush Nelson around and tries to put Snowball the cat into a baby carriage for play. As the cat resists, she claims that Snowball usually loves to do it, but it's clear that Snowball hates it.
• South Park: In "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut", Cartman is mortified to find the other guys have covertly videotaped him having a pretend tea party with his dolls and action figures, together with his giving them distinctive funny voices, and have the video submitted to America's Stupidest Home Videos.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Elmyra Duff throws one in the short "No Deposit, No Return of the Trash Bag Dispenser" (part of "Pollution Solution"), roping several animals in and dressing them as babies against their will (one turtle even hopes his family isn't watching the episode). When Plucky (as his superhero alter-ego, the Trash Bag Dispenser) tries unsuccessfully to tell Elmyra that she is polluting his pond with tin cans which can easily be recycled, Elmyra ropes him into her tea party and dresses him in a bonnet and a diaper against his will.
• Tom and Jerry: In "Baby Puss", Tom only barely tolerates being put in a baby bonnet, booties, and a diaper by the little girl of the house because it means he gets a bottle full of milk. His tolerance ends when Butch and the other tough alley cats of the neighborhood find out and begin mocking him mercilessly for it.

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