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The original U.S. dub of Pokemon was the same re: riceballs. It didn't make sense in the 90s, and it doesn't make sense today. The worst thing that can happen is a kid asks their parents if they can try onigiri.
Oh no! Now we either have to tell our kids "no," or we have to do the research to find somewhere that makes/sells it, or attempt to follow a new recipe ourselves. How will U.S. culture, composed of nationalities from across the globe, ever survive this tremendous upheaval!?
In all seriousness, onigiri is delicious and I wish there were greater demand for it across the U.S. Even in my ethnically-diverse blue state, I only know of one place that makes onigiri, but it's far and a pain in the ass to travel to.
Weren't they dubbed as 'donuts' or am I having a Berenstain Bears moment?
"Jelly filled donuts are my favorite!"
That they were. I was so confused as a kid, because I was a big fan of donuts but had never seen one with a rectangular hole coming out the side (how would that even work?)
Onigiri is really easy to make yourself if you can get the ingredients. Tuna mayo onigiri is the bomb when you wake up with a hangover.
In the Mexican Spanish dub the Onigiris became sandwiches lmao.
It was kind of a missed opportunity to sell onigiri in the west
It's more about nobody ( that wasn't already into Asian food) knowing what it was. Even parents. And it not really being easy to look it up in the late 90s
It might have been easier to learn about if shows didn't censor it out from the start. How are people supposed to talk about something if it's deliberately removed? It's like people went, "Americans don't already know about this food, so let's make sure they don't learn about its existence."
I remember 1997 on The Simpsons, when Marge wanted to open a franchise. One of the options (which her rivals took) sold pita. I was a kid, and this was the first time I had ever heard of pita and tahini. They were simply described as "pocket bread" and "flavor sauce." The introduction of new foreign food items didn't upset or confuse the audience.
It's simply bizarre that riceballs are treated like some particularly incomprehensible thing.
Also, research may have taken longer (and involved trips to the library), but anyone who wanted to learn about something in the 90s still could've done it. It wasn't pre-literate, just pre-internet.
I had the same experience when I watched the Pretzels episode with Fat Tony from the mafia as a kid, but in Spanish. They called them pretzels.
But Pokemon was a show about a fantasy world of made up animals with magic powers. 4Kids felt kids would be able to grasp that, but not rice balls.
Kids could accept a weird yellow mouse that could shoot lightning bolts, they would have accepted some weird food they hadn't heard of either.
Kids probably would have just assumed it was part of the fantasy setting