YMMV / Mr. Benn

• Fair for Its Day: Whilst the "Cowboy" episode has a lot of "outdated" language when referring to Native Americans, it does subvert The Savage Indian trope. The Native Americans (here called "Indians") talk about how they are going to "beat the Cowboys", which Mr. Benn perceives as an attack. It's later revealed that the Cowboys and Natives a merely friendly rivals, playing an innocent game of hide-and-seek.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The show was made early in The '70s, and this sometimes shows up in the sequences set before and after Mr Benn's adventures.
  • In the opening of "Red Knight", a lorry is delivering coal in Mr Benn's street. Routine coal deliveries haven't been a part of London life for decades.
  • Mr Benn (when out of costume) is dressed in a stereotypical Quintessential British Gentleman in a suit and bowler hat. This fashion fell out of favour as the decade progressed.
• Values Dissonance:
  • "Cowboy" uses terms like "Indian", "Red Indian" and "Red Skin", which are now considered offensive to Native Americans. Somewhat doubles as an international example as well, since "Indian" is still in the UK today.
  • A minor one, but both "Caveman" and "Zookeeper" have Mr. Benn gathering locals to help with large building projects, respectively, stone huts and larger animal cages. Despite the scale of these projects, the narrator specifies that the "men" did all the work, and images even show the women just standing around watching. Depending on how one interprets the scenes, a modern viewer may accuse the women of being lazy, or the men of being chauvinistic. However, back in the day, women would never be expected to do heavy lifting unless obsoletely necessary. In fact, expecting or allowing a woman to do heavy lifting when there are able-bodied men available would be considered "ungentlemanly".

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