So how about these anti-drug PSAs? Are you enjoying them as much as I am?
Here's another classic from the 80's.
This PSA doesn't make a whole lot of sense, once you really think about it. If I'm understanding it correctly, drugs make my brain delicious and safe to eat. While I understand the message, I think that The Partnership for a Drug-Free America could have made their message a little clearer.
Evidently, I wasn't the only person who thought so. In 1998, they decided to re-tool their classic PSA.
Ha! Now we're getting somewhere! This time, they've done everything right. Smash the egg instead of cooking it. Destroy everything associated with the egg! It just makes so much more sense on a number of levels. Rachael Leigh Cook does a great job of driving her point home. Drugs are bad, and they'll destroy you.
I have one more PSA coming next week, and then we'll get back to some random commercials. I've got some real gems lined up, and maybe even a guest entry or two. Until then, stay off the pipe, and don't eat raw eggs!
Continuing on our special PSA arc, today I bring you one of the finest anti-drug PSAs ever produced.
This one, starring the Ninja Turtles (from the hit television show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), starts off just like any other PSA. There's little Joey, minding his business, when he is singled out by some random mullet-headed drug enthusiast. He tries to entice his little friend with something he's just gotta try. This guy has some balls, because he just pulls out a couple of joints out in the open! When Joey refuses, the mullet-headed kid calls him a chicken, and starts bock-bocking at him.
I'm now coining the phrase "bock-bocking". It's mine.
Joey's in quite the jam! Luckily, the Ninja Turtles are there to help, kinda. You see, Joey's dilemma seems to be nothing more than a show to teach children about drugs. One of the girls has the right idea, to get a teacher. Michelangelo suggests getting a pizza. Another child suggests that Joey get out of there. (I wanted to make a remark about how you're not supposed to get the pizza until after you smoke, but I'm a lot classier than that.)
When we cut back to Joey's little show, he speaks one of the most awesome lines to have ever graced the television airwaves: "I'm not a chicken! You're a turkey!"
Say that to yourself a couple of times. Remember when you were growing up, and people called you a chicken? I bet you wish you had that line. I know I do.
All in all, this was a great PSA. Much like Pee Wee's PSA about the dangers of crack, this one also uses well-known characters to help drive the message home. And that line! After all these years, I have yet to hear anything that could top that line! I'm not a chicken! You're a turkey!
In April 1990, Michelangelo came back to television to continue the war against drugs. A cartoon special called Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue aired simultaneously on ABC, NBC, CBS, Nickelodeon, and USA Network which starred all the big cartoon names from the time, including Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Muppet Babies, Slimer, Alf, and Bugs Bunny. If you ever wanted to hear Michelangelo, Huey, Dewey and Louie sing a song together about how to say no to drugs, then seek this video out!
Growing up, we were taught that drugs were bad. It seems like back in the 80's and early 90's, you couldn't watch TV without seeing some sort of PSA about drugs. A lot of them weren't very convincing, and had no real effect on us. There are some, though, that just stick to your soul. This is one of them.
I grew up watching Pee Wee's Playhouse. It was a strange show, and Pee Wee Herman was a strange, strange man. He was loud, and his attention span on the show seemed almost non-existent. Let's play with toys! Let's find out the word of the day! Let's watch a cartoon! Oh boy, a talking chair!
The contrast between his Pee Wee's Playhouse persona and the tone of this PSA is what makes this PSA so powerful. He's no longer a man-child with ADD. He's speaking as an adult who genuinely cares about our well-being. It was pretty powerful stuff, back in the day.
I'm not sure, though, that this PSA holds up anymore. In fact, have you noticed you don't see drug PSA's on television these days? I should do some poking around to see some statistics on how effective they were.
In the next little while, I'm going to review some other PSA's from back in the day. There are some real gems out there, so keep your eyes peeled for more PSA entries!
Long before the modern "Got Milk?" campaign, this old gem would play on TV all the time.
Being a very scrawny little pipsqueak in my childhood years, I feel like these milk commercials gave me a sense of hope. Maybe one day, if I drank enough milk, I'd grow up into a strong, attractive man. Maybe then I could seek revenge on the bullies, or I could get that attractive girl at the beach. There was nothing I wouldn't be able to do, because dammit, I drank milk.
The problem with this whole thing, though, was that I couldn't stand the taste of milk. Even as a child, the whole concept seemed strange to me. Think about this: one day, back in history, someone was walking by a herd of cows. As they passed by the field, they thought to themselves, "Hmm, I wonder what the secretions from that cow's nipples would taste like!" It's hard to imagine, isn't it? But somewhere down the line, this situation had to've happened. Don't even get me started on cheese!
It's funny to see how advertisements for milk have evolved since 1985. Instead of appealing to the benefits of drinking milk, sometimes you just need to try and make it cool. The Dairy Farmers of Ontario did just that a few years ago.
Just another reason Canada's awesome, eh?
I may not ever get the urge to sip on a nice, cold glass of cow nipple secretion, but I sure know a great advertising campaign when I see one. Those classic milk spots, my friends, were good stuff.
Today, we're going to wrap up Bumperpalooza with a guest entry by my good friend Jess. Because I grew up in Canada, and I didn't even have cable, I was never able to see anything from Nickelodeon. I missed out on all sorts of classic shows, including The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Clarissa Explains It All, and GUTS. Missing those shows were bad enough, because now that I'm living in the States, I can't talk about them with my friends!
When Jess sent me links to these videos, I realized that I missed out on some pretty epic bumpers. I think they were well produced, especially the Nick at Nite bumpers. I'm extremely grateful that Jessica offered to write about them!
Before I hand it over to Jess, I'm probably going to be snowed into my apartment until tomorrow afternoon. My area of Missouri is expecting about 20 inches of snow today, so maybe I'll spend the day updating this blog.
Ok, enough of me. Jess, take it away!
From the age of about 7 on, I watched a LOT of Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite. Back then, Nick at Nite came on every night beginning at 8PM, and they still aired shows like I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, etc. On Nickelodeon, Nicktoons had just started back then, it consisted of three shows (Doug, Rugrats,and Ren & Stimpy) which aired in a block beginning at 10AM Sunday morning.
One of the distinctive features of both Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite was the collection of bumpers from each channel. These bumpers, to borrow a phrase from Pat's recent entry, "served one main purpose: to reassure viewers that their shows would, indeed, return after a few short commercials."
First, we have a collection of bumpers from Nickelodeon. These would air between shows beginning about 6 in the morning until 8PM. There are a few block-specific bumpers (for example, the one at about 2:47 which explicitly advertises Nicktoons), but see if you remember any of these:
These bumpers are little slivers of my childhood. Those were Nickelodeon's golden years, in my opinion. I remember when they started SNICK and my brothers and I could stay up until 10PM on Saturday nights. I remember the premieres of shows such as Ahh! Real Monsters and Rocko's Modern Life and the ends of other classics such as Salute Your Shorts and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Others of my immediate peer group(those American children born in the early 80s) should remember these, right? They'll probably get stuck in your head, fair warning.
After 8PM, Nickelodeon became Nick at Nite. Check out these bumpers from those years. I think they were likely done by the same folks:
The thing that sticks out to me with these (and the other bumpers FVA has been writing about) is how fast-paced and frenetic they are. The human mind can only take in and remember so much at a time, and so these bumpers were probably effective at ensuring long-term channel and brand loyalty. At the very least, they were effective in getting jingles stuck in our heads (but what would you expect after hearing the same eight-second jingle hundreds of times a day).
In any event, these bumpers serve to remind us that childhood television watching was made up of many different components, all designed to zap us at our core and stick with us forever.
