‘SpongeBob SquarePants’: Banned Episode Returned to Streaming — But Not for Long

Update: July 22, 1:45 p.m.: The banned SpongeBob SquarePants episode, “Mid-Life Crustacean,” has been pulled from availability just days after resurfacing. IGN confirmed the removal and got a statement from Paramount about the return/removal.

“Due to a technical error, the episode was inadvertently posted for a brief period on the Paramount+ Channel on Amazon Prime Video. It has since been removed,” a Paramount rep told the outlet.

Original Story: A previously banned episode of SpongeBob SquarePants has just made its way back to streaming. “Mid-Life Crustacean,” which was first released in January 2003, is available to stream on Paramount+ through Amazon Prime Video after it was taken out of TV rotation in 2018 and subsequently pulled from the Paramount+ library in 2021.

While SpongeBob SquarePants has dominated TV for more than a decade and is known to be a fan-favorite animated children’s programming, “Mid-Life Crustacean” proved to be controversial, with many declaring it unsuitable for the young audience the show is geared towards. The episode finds three of the show’s male characters – Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob, and Patrick – going on a “Panty Raid,” involving them breaking into a woman’s house to steal her underwear.

The banned Spongebob SquarePants episode, ‘Mid-Life Crustacean’ is now available on Paramount+ through Amazon Prime Video.

The episode was previously removed from Nickelodeon & Paramount+ while ago. pic.twitter.com/OUMkrNXtWX

— ToonHive (@ToonHive) July 17, 2023

The episode was removed from rotation on the network in 2018 “following a standards review in which we determined some story elements were not kid-appropriate,” David Bittler, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, told The New York Times. Several years later, in 2022, the episode was scrubbed from Paramount+, the series’ streaming home. That latter move sparked outrage among SpongeBob Squarepants fans, eventually leading to the launch of a fan-created Change.org petition calling on Nickelodeon to “Bring Back ‘Mid-Life Crustacean’!” 

The petition noted that while “Mid-Life Crustacean” was removed, its sister episode, “The Great Snail Race,” “still remains.” It argued that “Nickelodeon already knows that a large portion of the fanbase is composed of nostalgic adults,” and as such could have been bumping “up the rating on this episode or include a warning or something else, because if media is to be removed from streaming due to its content, it should be for reasons such as racial insensitivity or anything else of the like that actually proves harmful to society.”

While “Mid-Life Crustacean” has returned to streaming, it seems that another episode, “Kwarantined Crab,” is still on the banned list. That episode was pulled in 2021 after it aired as part of SpongeBob’s 12th season amid the coronavirus pandemic and the rise of anti-Asian violence. The episode finds the Krusty Krab going under emergency quarantine after the Health Inspector finds a “Clam Flu” case in the restaurant. As anxiety grows among those locked in the Krusty Krab, those who are assumed to have the virus are shunned and isolated, with Mr. Krabs locking SpongeBob, Patrick, and several other characters in the restaurant’s freezer. In a statement confirming the episode was pulled, Nickelodeon said, “We have decided to not air it due to sensitivities surrounding the global, real-world pandemic.”