The Missing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Children

image via Blastr

In 1964, Roald Dahl released his third children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The plot essentially consists of a gleefully deranged candy maker methodically picking five children to slowly kill off one by one in his candy factory, turning them into the very delicious treats his factory produces.

But what if I told you there originally wasn't just five children Wonka was leading to their deaths?Because in Dahl's original draft, there were fifteen children.

image via Wiki

"Now with only 1/3 as many murders!"

That's right. In addition to Augustus Gloop (sucked up a fudge pipe after falling into a chocolate river), Violet Beauregarde (blows up like a blueberry while chewing experimental gum), Veruca Salt (attempts to stupidly steal a squirrel, discarded down garbage chute), Mike Teavee (shrinks himself with a TV remote), and Charlie Bucket (stupid, but honest child, completely ignorant of the murders going on in front of his face), there were ten other children who were supposed to get golden tickets too.

Some of the children are still unnamed in his early drafts. Others, like Marvin Prune don't have a written fate yet, though one can assume he dies while being added to Wonka's candies.

But then there are some like Wilbur Rice and Tommy Troutbeck, who go for a ride in a mine-cart down a fudge mountain right into Wonka's “Pounding and Cutting Room” where they are turned into fudge (that particular chapter was deemed too immoral for children). Or there was Miranda Grope who falls into the same chocolate river as Augustus Gloop, but then tumbles down a waterfall.

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Before promptly being overshadowed by a catchy musical number.

And then there is Miranda Piker, whose chapter was cut just before publication due to it being "too gruesome for children". Because the rest of the book clearly wasn't.

Miranda Piker comes to the factory with her father who is a school administrator. At one point Wonka is showing off a candy that gives children spots so they can fake illness and skip school. Seeing this as (rightfully) an afront to the education of children, Miranda and her father charge in to sabotage the candy-making machines. Something goes wrong and explodes, baking Miranda and her father into the recipe as apparently planned by Wonka when he remarks: “We’ve got to use one or two schoolmasters occasionally or it wouldn’t work.”

image via Wiki

“How are you all still here!? Run!”

But in the end, despite Dahl's intentions, he had to trim it down the five children included in the book, allowing an entire generation to grow up two thirds less traumatized later in life upon the realization of what they loved as a child

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