YMMV / The Twits

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Mr. Twit smears superglue all over the branches of the Big Dead Tree to catch birds for Wednesday’s Bird Pie supper. While it sounds silly, putting gluesticks on tree branches is a real method of catching birds to be made into ambelopoulia, a dish from Cyprus.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Mr. Twit catching sentient birds with a glue trap and putting them in a pie? Not funny. The accompanying drawing of the pie with all the bird feet sticking out? Hilarious.
• Funny Moments:
  • Mr. Twit pulls a prank on his wife by hiding a frog in her bed. Mrs. Twit Faints in Shock when Mr. Twit tells her about a monster, the frog, that wants to bite her toes. He pours water on Mrs. Twit's face to wake her up, the water attracts the frog and scares her. Mrs. Twit sleeps on the sofa, while the frog sleeps on the water soaked pillow for the rest of the night.
  • Mr. Twit sitting outside the house and feeling very pleased with himself for getting rid of his wife... and then looking up and seeing her descending on him from heaven like the world's ugliest, dirtiest avenging angel, waving her cane and screaming at him in Angrish.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The story begins with Roald Dahl asking how there are more and more bearded men "nowadays". The book came out in 1980, after beards had been trendy in The '70s, but before they went out of fashion in the decade that followed. Come The New '10s, beards became popular among men again.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • In the 2nd chapter there is a very Squicky description of Mr. Twit's beard. Later on in the book, Mrs. Twit puts worms in Mr. Twit's spaghetti.
  • Both of the titular characters shrinking is also horrible. Mercifully, we can at least remember it's impossible in real life. They also deserve it.
• Nightmare Fuel: They completely deserve it, but the Twits getting the shrinks is pretty disturbing to say the least.
• Values Dissonance: Lines like "the weird African language the monkeys spoke" wouldn’t exactly be warmly received by readers today.

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