Lost Morals

I know what you're thinking and no this is not about some scantily clothed celeb. Rather it's about a show that I watch every day with my son.
The show has a great premise, it's called "Super Why?" and it's about a group of "superheros" who when they have a problem, they look in a book for the answer. They use their "powers" of spelling, rhyming and reading to help the stories protagonist find their way though the book to a happy ending while looking for "super letters" that make up the answer of their question. Now most of the time, this is a great little show. The super readers will go into a book like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and help Goldilocks, who professes her innocence, find out who really was eating the porridge, and sleep in the bed (a wolf in case you were wondering). It's a fun little show.
What I do have a problem with is what they do to some of the stories and the morals that those stories have in them. These stories are a teaching tool and they have been completely watered down to the point of uselessness. Like "The boy who called Wolf, " instead of being eaten in the end (admittedly a gruesome ending but still it's supposed to show why you shouldn't lie) the little boy throws a party for all the villagers to make up for lying. Or "The ant and the grasshopper," instead of the grasshopper not getting to eat because he kept putting off for tomorrow what should have been done today, the ant helps him find food and it turns into helping friends. Or "The Ugly Duckling," the story that's been told over and over again to little kids about not judging on outwards appearances because you never know who's going to be beautiful, and a story of comfort to all the children out there who feel ugly that they may grow up to be a beautiful swan, instead, the ugly duckling, who for some reason is still ugly, can't swim and the super readers teach him how. Huh? Really what is the point in that. I really don't care that they mess around with stories like "Beauty and the Beast" so that the Beast just wants to be friends, or "Sleeping Beauty" where Beauty learns to try new things so that she's not just sleeping all the time. But when you take "The Emperor's New Clothes" and make the emperor feel self conscious and make his own decision to wear clothes, instead of a cautionary tale about not allowing peer pressure to make you do something foolish, you water it down and make it useless.
I love that they are trying to encourage kids to read more and that they are showing the stories to kids and showing how reading can be a superpower. And I love that the whole show is smarter then some of the things out there that actually have lines like "What do they do in the tundra, for fundra, I wondra?" but if you take out all the morals in these stories we're taking away their timelessness and the universally taught lessons. I grew up on these fairy tales and to see them butchered just so that they have a happy ending every time, despite how fake it feels, well it just rubs me the wrong way.