Why not just educate? Joel, have you seen modern education, it's pretty much non-existent, it prioritises the wrong subjects, so education about dangers will offend most. People need to be shocked. That's the only way it'll stick with them. Its the human condition
As a German GenX who wasn‘t allowed outside for a good year after the Chernobyl catastrophe, all those fallout warning film ring very true…my dad used to go and check our balcony with the Geiger counter every time it rained and decided if we could walk to school that day!
GenX are a direct result of social media, people like Facebook was the start of a generation of children who live with violent content, and total lack of reality.
That's why, even today at the age of 70, I still remember these films as clearly as if it were yesterday. They made an impact, but no one I knew was ever traumatised by them.
I was actually very worried about the Nuclear ones. I would have been around 10 years old at the time and even I had worked out, that hiding under a table, or behind some doors leaned up against the wall and covered in bin bags weren't going to help me survive a Nuclear attack. I seriously had sleepless nights over it....I think the Government should compensate me for the trauma they caused 😂
Growing up in the 70s they were very effective: it was normal to play outside unsupervised for hours on end. I have never flown a kite near electricity pylons and am here to tell the tale! :)
We had a mostly abandoned train track on our way to elementary school and it was a daily dare to cross the tracks…. Only three kids dies in 10 years…yeah! My parents made me promise to never attempt it, and at the time I went to secondary school, the track had been disassembled! No warningsigns, though!
I’m a boomer so yep played outside unsupervised at age 3 in the mid 50s with the rest of our little gang ..near a railway track where I found a part of the fence where we could get in to get a better view of the trains going by … but even at that age we were not stupid and were well aware to be careful
I grew up in the 1960s and 70s (born 1962). It was a terrifying time when I was likely to get trapped in abandoned fridges, drown in puddles, sink in quick sand, be electrocuted if I went to retrieve a lost ball, die in a nuclear attack or maybe be attacked by aliens from outer space. Then moving into adulthood, in the 1980s there was AIDS. What a time to be alive 🎉
They worked! I'm still terrified of electricity sub-stations. I grew up in the 80s and they still showed lots of the 70s information films on TV. It made me scared of crossing train tracks, saucepans of hot stuff, anything related to electricity and I always made sure to wear my seatbelt. There was one particularly horrifying one in the 90s where a boy kills his mother because he was sitting behind her in the car without his seatbelt on, and when she had to brake suddenly he slammed into her and smashed her skull in, blood everywhere and the daughter screaming with her mum's blood and brains splattered over her. Totally unnecessarily gory. Whoever made that one had a lot of fun.
Back then, we children played outside 90 percent of the time, usually far from parental oversight. Warning signs, well they were for grown ups! Dares and peer pressure encouraged us to try things you'd consider suicidal today. These ads, though gruesome and horrifying, may have saved some lives. Once our "gang" of preteens or tweens were out in the fields, or hiking the fells, or even playing in the sites of bombed out buildings, rational thought was rapidly replaced by boyhood bravado.
When I was in Primary school, we where shown the ones about the dangers of Farms, Train lines, Quarries, Swimming Pools, Quicksand, flying kites near electric wires and climbing pylons. Scared the hell out of me, but also did their purpose.
My mum pointed to some bottles of photography chemicals at the top of a cupboard. She told me never to take them down or drink them because l would die. So I didn't 😅😅
It was great to be young and we were free. We were tomboys playing out all day. We didn't want to be inside, but it is useful to know the dangers out there. Someone l know had a best friend who reached over and touched an electric train cable or something and was electrocuted on the spot. Dead 😢
I lived in a rural village as a child, and we were shown "Apaches" at the age of 8. Scared the living shit out of me, as did "The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water". Mind you, farms are dangerous places, and kids have no place there. You should also check out a film called "Threads" - about a nuclear bomb dropping on Sheffield iirc. That one almost caused PTSD in half the population. No joke.
Both of those flash through my brain when near deep water or even just watching water or farm life on tv. The kid disappearing in the sludge pit gave me nightmares ( I grew up around farm life).
For us in Germany it was reading *the Cloud* in 7th grade, after having had to read Anne Frank and Friedrich….the peeling skin really got to me! I‘ve always had a very vivid imagination…my father was a scientist/physicist and unfortunately delighted in giving me a lot of background knowledge We even toured the site of a Uranium mine in the Black Forest with a Geiger counter….yep, it was buzzing like crazy and Daddy was all excited 😅🤯😤
I was 10 yrs old when l first started driving a tractor. By 12 yrs old l could reverse a full trailer full of hay bales and spike Harrow a hayfield. Farms were dangerous if not treated with respect
@@kathpengilley3925Is The Spirit of Dark Water the one with the kid playing near a pond and the feckin Grim Reaper (or something like it) is across from him? If so then yes, Jesus Christ that was beyond terrifying 😱
At school in the 50's/60's we used to joke that the best advice in the event of a nuclear attack was to dig a hole about 5 feet deep and hide, the theory being that it would either save you or leave the place tidy afterwards
The take your doors off to build a makeshift shelter was hilarious, so much so several comedians latched on to it as a routine. Who could find a screwdriver, remove the doors, go dig the garden to put soil on top ALL IN 3 minutes, not forgetting 2 weeks supplies with a whole family, how many doors do they think we had? Watch the film "Threads" It's a nuclear event and done the British way.
That's hilarious, mate I grew up in the 70s and 80s and I remember the ones that said In the event of a nuclear attack hide in the cupboard under the stairs, like that's gonna save you.
Just taking the railway tracks. Twice as many children per capita die in the US on railway tracks than in the UK. Think about how railways are a much bigger thing in the UK, and you realise that is a huge difference. Kids who were taught the danger of playing on railway tracks pass that knowledge on to their own kids and so on. Don’t forget the kids who grew up watching these videos wouldn’t have been traumatised like your generation and younger. Our parents grew up during the war, so watching a ‘scary’ video was nothing to us. They brought us up strong and self-sufficient, so we could make good decisions for ourselves.
I was more the Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety generation. But then I now work for the railway and I do know that someone did die sticking thier head out of a train window, and that image from the book is still there.
I grew up with a father who was part of a team who rescued steam locomotives in the 1970s. I spent most of my weekends with Dad, clambering over locos and various railway tracks, and I knew the dangers. That said, I saw 'The Finishing Line' in school when I was 8 and it gave me nightmares for weeks. It was the only one of these films to ever make me react like that.
It didn't make us "Not want to do it" it just made us "Not want to die doing it" and as a child born in 1974 and who grew up with these in school and on tv, I am SOO Grateful. That's why our generation is the greatest produced by humanity, there were no limits, no 'heath and safety', no overbearing parents, just "This can kill you, so don't die" and then we were left to go out and do whatever we wanted. Most of us came home but the idiots chose to see if it's "Actually as dangerous they say" didn't, so the Darwin Awards started with us weeding out the weak and stupid.
Well, and here you are, being very unkind and without gratitude. It strikes me you didn't witness or suffer friends who were affected. Otherwise you wouldn't refer to them as 'idiots'. I've known a young person being horrifically burnt at the age of thirteen because an adult just didn't explain something that was obvious to his adult brain. The child didn't deserve 'the Darwin' award for not knowing but he bears the very visible scars for life.
My dad was born in the 50's and myself the 80's. He's a typical defender of these films. He knew and lost several friends to such accidents. He worked on the railway most of his adult life after being in the Navy. He was almost neurotic about my brother and I fully understanding safety around tracks, platforms, waterways and electric overhead wires. So yes these videos were for a very good reason. Edit; and due to his experience in the Navy my dad was such an individual sent regularly to retrieve the bodies of those unfortunate to meet their end on the railway tracks and electric wires, and there were many of them. He got to defer his duty after the horrific crash at Paddington Station.
Norman Fowler, Health Secretary 1981-87 during the AID's crisis and responsible for the over the top films and health campaign was once asked [paraphrased] "In hindsight, do you think you went over the top with the fear mongering advertising campaign?" His answer was "I'd rather go down in history as the person who overreacted than the person who didn't do enough." Regean could have done with taking a leaf out of his book. It's hard to know how many lives were saved because of it, but compared to the US, the UK faired considerably better.
He did exceptionally well considering he had to persuade Thatcher to sign off on it. The only change she insisted on was removing the WW2 air raid siren from the start. The public remember the TV adverts the most but it was a massive package of information through GPs and hospitals, schools, newspapers, billboards, and even guidance to funeral homes who were refusing to deal with the bodies at one point. Fowler also got the needle exchange off the ground after a large number of AIDS diagnosis in Edinburgh’s injecting drug users… I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when he told her the taxpayer should fund clean syringes for drug users.
so many things i like to say, but Norman Fowler, likes to take responsibility for his own kudos. there were a lot of un-named people working a lot harder than him to get the message across
@@ianroberts5745 not really - he usually acknowledges that he couldn’t have got it over the line without the likes of Willie Whitelaw, who had the PM’s ear.
@lynnm6413 Briefly, when they thought it was caused by sniffing poppers but that originated in the US. Once they realised it was a medium term virus they introduced ARC (AIDS related complex) to describe people with some symptoms but not severe enough for an AIDS diagnosis. They (in the US) only seemed to do that so they could delay people qualifying for any form of support or care, which they would when they developed AIDS! There’s a documentary on TH-cam called Killer In The Village which discusses the emergence and handling of AIDS in the US and UK. Really interesting to look at it retrospectively. I had a friend die from AIDS defining illnesses in 2019… he had acquired more than one strain and one was treatment resistant. The side effects of a couple of drugs were making him seriously ill so they had to switch combinations to find something that worked that he could tolerate, but eventually they exhausted what we have available. Made me realise that we’re not out of the woods but I suppose the 13m AIDS orphans in Africa could have told us that too.
The people earing dinner are actually at a wake ( they're all wearing mourning clothing). I grew up in the 1970s and remember many of these, the authorities seemed especially concerned that we didnt get trapped in abandoned refrigerators - and it worked because to this day ive never found myself inadvertently trapped in an old fridge
We were shown those films simply because most children played outside the home with no adult supervision. Yes accidents happened, as well as other harmful events and we were shown these to instill a little common sense and critical thinking. Nowadays, the entire world is wrapped in cotton wool for fear of hurting their feelings, and the idea of a child under 14 being unsupervised seems unthinkable. But our generation was given the freedom to build our own interpersonal relationships, and taught how to take a calculated risk. Young people these days can't have verbal conversations, tie shoe laces or even cross the road, without either being offended, frustrated or responsible for themselves. These days it seems that accountability and punishment are dirty words, or worse yet, abuse. That is why this current generation at university don't understand the world they live in.
Older generations had a mix of approving of anything that toughened us up and an aversion to stopping us expressing ourselves. They might have been right, but so was fear mongering over real dangers during that milieu.
I'm 55yrs old and these public information films and as a child it made me stop and think , I was brought up with a train track 30 seconds from the back door all I'm saying is that it worked for me 👍
OMG I'm an American and that ad about having to drag a family members body into another room if a bomb dropped would have scared the living daylights out of me. I bet alot of British children who watched it back then would wake up at all hours of the night to check up on their family members because I know I would have. On the bright side even though those ad's may have been scary, they also helped their British Citizens become the lovely people that we all know today. Love the vid and just Subscribed. Thanks so much for sharing it with us all. ❤ ya UK.
That parody programme "Look around you" is absolutely hilarious! Unbelievably accurate to the old 70s BBC information shows... written and starring Peter Serofinowicz
I'm in my 50s I grew up in the 1970s and all of these adverts were shown on tv and scared me, but they worked I didn't play on train tracks or by electric pylons, and I didn't swim in ponds etc The 1980s one's about Aids made me always have a condom in my handbag. And the protect and survive one about nuclear war, I asked my Dad why aren't you building a bunker his reply was "your better off dead your only building your own grave" which looking back was true because everything would be contaminated ( no water, no food, the air you would breathe) so better a quick death. I survived 😂
We were not snowflakes. At least we were a lot more responsible as children than most teens of today. We were more able to cope with the realities of life.😅
We spent all day playing on the pit tips, swimming in the reservoir, ponds, and rivers . When was the last time we saw kids climbing trees, etc? I actually encouraged my daughter to play rough, climb trees, etc. When she was a little kid in the 2,000s .
That wasn't quicksand. It was a settling pond or slurry pit. Common around mines and on farms. Often they had a hard crust on top which you can fall through. Living in a mining area in the North these were the things we were warned about.
@@antonycharnock2993 I didn't mean that one specifically. It seemed like every film/tv show/warning ad had quick sand in and someone drowning. I was traumatised.
@@jamesmeredith5551 I still remember by American host mum telling me the swamp had quick sand and snapping turtles, and me having never seen either, just nodded and told her I’d take one of the dogs to alert her if something happened…never understood the despair until 20 years later, when I watched an adult snapping turtle almost take the head off of a man on yt….lol
@lottie2525 There was a quicksand one. I think if you're from the north West, you should be pretty careful on Morecambe Sands they can be dangerous apparently.
One i remember in the 90's that was shocking, 'Julie Knew Her Killer', its here on TH-cam. Basically, a mum is taking her kids to school and the son isnt wearing a seatbelt in the backseat behind his mum, they have a crash and him being flown forward and headbutting her results in Julies blood all over the windscreen while the daughter screams in the front passenger seat. It ends with 'Always Wear A Seatbelt'. I Think there was another similar involving some friends and a pizza topping dripping down the windscreen.
HI FROM UK HERE, i remember one of these safety adverts that featured a little girl wearing a nylon nightie, she stood too close to an electric fire and the nightie caught fire and went up in flames with the child screaming. moral was beware of synthetic fabrics being a fire hazard and dont stand to close to fire.
I don’t need to imagine anything… I was in the target audience (born 1970) and got to watch some of the earlier films at school, apaches about farm safety was truly the worst one and I still remember the horror of watching it, the child sinking into the silage container is indelibly marked into my memory. My friends and I have often commented on how traumatising it was… lest to say we never went and played on the farms or on the railway tracks, so I guess the message landed! 😅
I will always remember seeing the railways one when I was at primary school, when they picked dead children up off the lines with blood marks around their legs. I’m 58 now and railways still scare the crap out of me.
And the fact is if you got hit by a train it would be a lot worse than shown. It would be body parts they'd be collecting not complete bodies. Especially on high speed lines. Pity the train drivers who had to deal with the aftermath.
@@antonycharnock2993 I’ve once sat 3h in a train that was delayed due to human unalivement problems…and you aren‘t allowed to exit the train until they‘ve located all the parts…. Yep, don‘t do it, folks!
I grew up on the outskirts of a City in Devon. We had working farms on our doorsteps and used to play outside in all weathers. I can remember watching the British Safety film about the dangers on farms, for me, it wasn't too shocking as we knew the dangers already... 😆 I've never before seen or heard of the used Condom ad.🤮
I grew up in Cornwall in the 60s/70s & the couple of times a year we visited Plymouth I was terrified of escalators after the PSA featuring a girl and her doll. It did make getting up to see Father Christmas in Dingles a challenge.
Unfortunately, children are still killed or injured on farms and a few years ago, two children were not being kept an eye on by their parents and were killed on a railway line near where I live. The films were as much aimed at adults as at children.
The condom advert was part of a comedy show . There's an old say "You can tell a child not to play with fire but until it burns it's self it never knows why ".
I remember growing up with those adds on tv, signs near railways warning about the dangers is not effective for kids playing near/on them but if you see something on tv with kids getting killed by a train that image flashes back when you go near railways as a kid, don't forget railways are everywhere in the uk, there are loads of crossings in rural areas where there is just a gate to walk through to cross the railway, there is one 5 min walk from my house. I remember the one about the kid getting electrocuted climbing to retrieve a Frisby
@@grahvis my elementary friends always wanted to be like Indians in the western movies and put an ear to the rail to listen if the iron horse was coming….omg
This was back in the days when children were credited with having a modicum of intelligence and not encouraged to be snowflakes that would have a meltdown , be traumatised or " triggered " by a gritty dose of reality . At the end of the day , the primary motive was to protect children , not disturb or scare them . There was no sinister malintent at work .
To be fair, the one about the child in bed wasn't aimed at children, as the message was about not leaving children alone at home. That one was aimed directly at parents. And yes, the condom ad was part of the parody section!
I'm still traumatised by the child's Wellington boot being sucked into a moving escalator 😮 I remember very well the Frisbee & the power station. Completely missed the used Condom ad 😂
I remember the nuclear public information film. In the early 80's we were literally 5 minute's to midnight, as the saying goes. You lived with it, but it was there in the background. We now know that whatever precautions were offered, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. There is a docu drama called Threads, about a nuclear attack in Sheffield known for its steel industry and where my family come from. It's worth a watch.
I wish people would be more aware of danger. Every day I see people driving or crossing roads with their noses buried in their mobile phones. And speeding drivers should ask 'What if I ploughed into a bus queue and killed a child?' We need lessons in school about risk assessment.
They definitely need to make something about crossing the road whilst using a mobile phone. And one for the electric scooter t***s. I'm so tired of having to dodge or watch out for them.
I totally agree with you. I've seen idiots driving with their cell phones in their faces, I report their license plate numbers and what they were doing, don't know if it helps. So many people of all ages have no business driving a car, or anything else.
The sad part of it is, pedestrians distracted by their smartphones assume that the drivers are paying attention at the critical moment and are not being distracted by their smartphones themselves. There is something selfish in it, too, as in, 'I can play with my smartphone but nobody else can'...
I was in a campaign ad for the radio in the 90's. It was the K*LL YOUR SPEED campaign. My son was in the TV ad because it was about children being k*lled by speeding drivers. It impacted people a lot because real children were used in the ad ❤
Kids are actually as tough as old boots, In the 1960's when I started work we were given a safety lecture where we passed around a two pound sweet jar full of formadehyde and eyeballs that had been blinded by various types of sharp objects, the objects still in place, and another with detached fingers complete with long tendons that had been pulled off due to wearing rings that had caught on nails etc. we thought little of it. I can remember someone having a finger cut off in the morning and coming straight back to work in the afternoon. I started toolsetting in which there was a high likelyhood of loosing fingers, it was normal for old toolsetters with several missing fingers to be moved to a store job while they still had enough fingers to lift a pint glass!
The used condom skit shows how comedy is situational and reliant on a shared cultural background. Or the reason why Seinfeld had a small audience in the UK and the rest of us thought it was unfunny crap. Like SNL. I remember the one about the boy being killed trying to get his kite from the pylon; it sent me home when the other children were daring each other to climb the fence into the small electricity substation at the back of the garages. I also remember one about kids dying in a house fire when left home alone - it sparked a conversation amongst the grown-ups when I was young. Back then, we knew a number of adults who would go out when the kids were in bed - they needed to be shocked into realising it wasn't safe.
I never felt traumatised by these- “trauma” is i think, very much an over used word these days. The adverts simply taught us how not to behave and how not to die! They were brilliant and made the point. We learned to take better care of ourselves independently, without the need of parents and the rest of society mollycoddling us. Remember- kids rarely take notice of signs, in fact i have seen young adults ignoring them too, but a visual depiction of a tragedy makes a much better impact on safety.
Aged 8 at junior school we were all warned about the dangers of playing in rivers, but that year one child we all knew drowned. The one i remember most was about not wearing seat belts and what happens when you went through a windscreen, but to re-inforce the point you were shown a sledgehammer crushing an egg. I am now 69 but every year still on the news there are kids who drown in quarries or lakes or rivers. Later on i drove trains for British Rail and we saw kids on the tracks just about every week and unlike USA, all railway tracks are fenced. (UK).
The safety videos were relevant back in my day as my schools cross country running route went alongside and over the East Coast Mainline at an unmanned level crossing then along the Barnsley Canal before turning around and retracing our steps.
The condom thing was a parody. You still don't get British comedy. These things traumatised us, but they also worked. They are the reason why British kids did fewer dangerous things than American ones.
@lizcollinson2692 early condoms were made from something like a sheeps bladder. And in that case, if I was really worried about accidentally impregnating someone, I feel it might be safer for both of us to consider buggery
Saw these mainly at home during normal viewing hours. I really remember one about not hiding in abandoned fridges while playing hide and seek. The road accident ones were commonplace & the nuclear warning ones.. we even had leaflets posted through the door telling us to paint our windows white & hide in the cellar
Early 1970s, we'd gather in the classroom, a TV would be wheeled in, and we'd be shown these films. They were also on Children's TV when we got home from school. Never did me any harm. 😉 As others have said, we played outdoors all day with no supervision from a very young age; in my case by a busy A-road, in woods full of WW2 rubble, corn fields and abandoned chalk quarries. I personally knew two kids I can remember who lost their lives in stupid accidents like those depicted in these films: one hit by a lorry and one drowned in a river. I expect the films saved many more.
As to the WW2 rubble, remember that unexploded German ordinance could also be found anywhere! Either just didn't go off as planned or dumped in the countryside on their way back to base after ground fire got too heavy.
@@madoldbatwoman all girls Grammar School in the Midlands! Our sex education was a very nervous old spinster simulating the act with a balloon and a toilet roll liner. She had taught us the reproductive system of rabbits, and briefly mumbled something about how it's roughly the same for humans. 20 mins of our very last biology lesson was handed-off to one of the very few married teachers to demonstrate putting a condom on a banana.
OMG - I recall being shown "The Finishing Line" at junior school, scared me witless, especially as I had to walk across a railway bridge to get into town - I used to sprint across it in case some freak accident happened.
These ad’s were pretty grim, but they were about very serious, usually potentially fatal consequences. They worked & served their purpose. We usually thought they were funny, but they stuck in your head & got you talking. I’ll never forget the “Charle says” adverts. The ad’s ran on TV not just in schools. You’ve got to remember we went out to play after school for hours by ourselves, often roaming pretty far from home without supervision. I think they were successful in so far as their purpose; they drew attention to dangerous & potentially life-threatening scenarios stuck in your mind so you didn’t forget, talked about them, & ultimately saved some lives for those reasons. When played in school they were usually always followed immediately by discussions by either teachers, community police, firemen, or other visitors that came specifically to talk to the kids about the subject of the advert.That one about the condom was one of the parody’s they were talking about btw. I think I’d rather keep the ad’s than see a child die at the end of the day.
I remember watching the railway film The Finishing Line on TV with my parents. It was filmed about 4 miles from where I lived. I later worked with a guy who was one of the many children that appeared in it.
I remember some of these I was born in 1977, so I was quite familiar with children drowning in quarries and electrocuting themselves with fishing poles. Charley says always tell an adult before you go off somewhere!
While I haven't seen all of these PSA's, I do remember a lot of them. They certainly gave me and my siblings food for thought and still makes me think about people I've known and lost to the accidents shown. Certainly memorable.
I grew up on these PSA's and was never traumatised by them. I knew not to go near water, play near electricity pylons, not to drink out of lemonade bottles filled with stuff from the garden shed. We also had Hammer House of Horrors on tv with the house thst bled to death, The Omen and Jaws.
Life wasn’t grim in the UK - even for a poor family like mine and despite the Winter of Discontent - because we had functional communities, back then, and we were all going through the same things. Besides, threats of strikes and not being able to feed the family were more relevant and these ads were a distraction.
Charlie says... don't be a dickhead! Those ads were great. Also the green cross code man (played by David Prowse) telling us how to cross the road. late 70s and early 80s were priceless for this sort of thing!
I remember seeing some of these as a kid. I lived on a farm for a while and seeing the kids die on the farm video taught me to not play around machinary or the grain silos. These kinds of short films are the most effective. Altgough, that railway one was pointless how far they went 😂.
When I was growing up I remember that one about the electricity substation where the lad kicks an orange ball over the fence and goes to reclaim it, I also remember the kite hitting power lines one. Educating people doesn't work, entertaining people doesn't work, shocking people does, love it!
You might be interested in the anti terrorist public information ads played during the troubles in the north of ireland. One in particular plays the song called "the cat in the cradle" it haunts me to this day 😪😢
Thise ad's saved countless lives. It looks bad now but at the time very few were traumatised compared to saved.. Kids now dont play outside as they did back then nor are they as hardy from playing in the crap those kids did..
Have you watched Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, or Blackadder? The English Establishment has always, treated children harshly, s terrorising them is entirely normal for them, and still would be, had not the public complained. This resulted in the schooling system being torment for children. My childhood.
Did the job. I didnt touch a firework or sparkler for 30yrs and as for electricity pylons, I cant go past them without shuddering. But then again frisbees make me feel uneasy 😂
We lived next to the railway line- so we were shown that horrible film ! I was around 6 years old and it terrified me ! To me at that age it was very real .
I distinctly remember watching The Finishing Line at school in the 80s, which is well after it was withdrawn in '79, but these things did still linger. Never played on a railway line.
I remember these... I'm in my forties now, and I distinctly remember: Don't fall in a slurry silo Don't play on a tractor's trailer Don't throw things at electrical cables I wasn't traumatised.... Honest! But the best ones were Charly - don't go off with strangers, or Charly will be sad!!
Put it this way im 38 born bread in UK in late 80s and have never seen any of these in my life! I'll show some friends and ask them but doubt it as we were all friends and always together back as kids n teens right up to today but will be interesting to ask lol
I grew up in a railway town and there were always a few kids taking short cuts across the railway line because it was quicker some did not survive. similar building sites never had security back then we had bits of swampland and brooks which equally injured kids playing there. Road safety and stranger danger were big ones too.
I started school in the mid 90’s but I still remember being shown the 70’s video of the kid dying in a slurry pit, which (as half my friends lived on farms) was a great thing to be shown to realise the dangers of farms at an early age. We were kids that felt indestructible and needed these kind of videos to shock us into knowing how dangerous things could be.
I remember The Finishing Line. I was about 6 or 7. It was a Sports Day with the teams of different colours doing things around railway lines. So terrifying I remember it well and it worked. I never played near a train line ever.
I was shown a few of these at school in the late 90's when I was 8 or 9 and vividly remember the Apaches. I spoke with my mum about it after school and she reaffirmed it saying a farm is a work place not a playground.
I got shown the train film at school. Aged 7 - 11. Others were tv ads. We 70s kids played outside, climbed trees & on to any roof we could, explored abandoned houses, some in very poor state. We ran over rail lines, played on building sites, farms & swinging or jumping ditches. Some of the stuff was dangerous but so much fun..
These “Public Service Announcements” were often shown in between the “For schools” programmes aimed at children of all ages from Primary School up. They also were shown on the BBC after school, between such programmes as Jackanory (a storybook would be read, usually over several days, in summary) and Blue Peter. I remember watching a “cigarettes are bad” programme showing lungs, black and diseased, which put me off smoking for life! I’d be about 7 years old.
i remember seeing so many of these, so does my wife- we were chatting about how we don't see the public safety ads like the the ones we did as kids anymore.
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Does anyone remember the "Charlie says......" ads?
"Charlie and I were in the park..." th-cam.com/video/XSSIn55f6ow/w-d-xo.html
And the squirrel ( brain fart) I had its name on the end of my tounge ? 😏
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@@greg5639 Tufty
@@greg5639 th-cam.com/video/-JgaId8o9Jo/w-d-xo.html
And people wonder why generation X are built different. This is why,
Why not just educate? Joel, have you seen modern education, it's pretty much non-existent, it prioritises the wrong subjects, so education about dangers will offend most. People need to be shocked. That's the only way it'll stick with them. Its the human condition
😂😂😂
😂😂😂true AF
As a German GenX who wasn‘t allowed outside for a good year after the Chernobyl catastrophe, all those fallout warning film ring very true…my dad used to go and check our balcony with the Geiger counter every time it rained and decided if we could walk to school that day!
GenX are a direct result of social media, people like Facebook was the start of a generation of children who live with violent content, and total lack of reality.
That's why, even today at the age of 70, I still remember these films as clearly as if it were yesterday. They made an impact, but no one I knew was ever traumatised by them.
No we were interested to see what the next one was. In my 60's I have never played in a fridge or gone on a paper chase through railway tunnels.
Everyone is so woke these days everyone would bé traumatised adults included
I was actually very worried about the Nuclear ones. I would have been around 10 years old at the time and even I had worked out, that hiding under a table, or behind some doors leaned up against the wall and covered in bin bags weren't going to help me survive a Nuclear attack. I seriously had sleepless nights over it....I think the Government should compensate me for the trauma they caused 😂
I remember them very well, but I was more traumatised by Danny Kendall dying in Grange Hill!
War babies and the next generation had plenty more to worry about !
Growing up in the 70s they were very effective: it was normal to play outside unsupervised for hours on end. I have never flown a kite near electricity pylons and am here to tell the tale! :)
We had a mostly abandoned train track on our way to elementary school and it was a daily dare to cross the tracks….
Only three kids dies in 10 years…yeah!
My parents made me promise to never attempt it, and at the time I went to secondary school, the track had been disassembled!
No warningsigns, though!
I’m a boomer so yep played outside unsupervised at age 3 in the mid 50s with the rest of our little gang ..near a railway track where I found a part of the fence where we could get in to get a better view of the trains going by … but even at that age we were not stupid and were well aware to be careful
@@Reba-123 we used to "melt" pennies on the tracks on the way to school
Bet you keep your fireworks in a biscuit tin too!
Born 1968 grew up throughout the 70s.!👍👍👍👍
They did the job though . Children played out mostly back then .
You could call it Darwin evolution, the smart ones survived, but some didn't and importantly before they could pass on their genes!
I think most of us were too busy playing outside as well as indoors to much bother watching clips about children and adult not using common sense.
I grew up in the 1960s and 70s (born 1962). It was a terrifying time when I was likely to get trapped in abandoned fridges, drown in puddles, sink in quick sand, be electrocuted if I went to retrieve a lost ball, die in a nuclear attack or maybe be attacked by aliens from outer space. Then moving into adulthood, in the 1980s there was AIDS.
What a time to be alive 🎉
How many people do you know who've died from AIDS.... Nah me neither
Don't forget rabies and quicksand. 😮
@@MattyEngland One. Intravenous drug use. But in any case, the AIDS ads were scary.
@@carltaylor6452 Yeah most of it was bullshite, just like mad cow disease.
The man who lost his had in a lathe gave me nightmares as a little kid ,a public service announcement about rolling you sleeves up & safety at work
They worked! I'm still terrified of electricity sub-stations. I grew up in the 80s and they still showed lots of the 70s information films on TV. It made me scared of crossing train tracks, saucepans of hot stuff, anything related to electricity and I always made sure to wear my seatbelt. There was one particularly horrifying one in the 90s where a boy kills his mother because he was sitting behind her in the car without his seatbelt on, and when she had to brake suddenly he slammed into her and smashed her skull in, blood everywhere and the daughter screaming with her mum's blood and brains splattered over her. Totally unnecessarily gory. Whoever made that one had a lot of fun.
Perfect British satire, make something that terrified us in 80s as kids, into comedy we now watch as adults.
If you want the ultimate government scare movie, watch Threads.
Back then, we children played outside 90 percent of the time, usually far from parental oversight. Warning signs, well they were for grown ups! Dares and peer pressure encouraged us to try things you'd consider suicidal today. These ads, though gruesome and horrifying, may have saved some lives. Once our "gang" of preteens or tweens were out in the fields, or hiking the fells, or even playing in the sites of bombed out buildings, rational thought was rapidly replaced by boyhood bravado.
certainly made me think when i was playing on the local farm, didn't play with matches when making tunnels through hay bails
When I was in Primary school, we where shown the ones about the dangers of Farms, Train lines, Quarries, Swimming Pools, Quicksand, flying kites near electric wires and climbing pylons.
Scared the hell out of me, but also did their purpose.
I remember being shown these to in the late 70s. They terrified me. Especially the farm one .
I was terrified of quick sand.... still am.... but I know what to do if I ever come across it. :D
My mum pointed to some bottles of photography chemicals at the top of a cupboard. She told me never to take them down or drink them because l would die. So I didn't 😅😅
It was great to be young and we were free. We were tomboys playing out all day. We didn't want to be inside, but it is useful to know the dangers out there. Someone l know had a best friend who reached over and touched an electric train cable or something and was electrocuted on the spot. Dead 😢
Don't forget the one with the little girl picking up the sparkler.
I lived in a rural village as a child, and we were shown "Apaches" at the age of 8. Scared the living shit out of me, as did "The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water". Mind you, farms are dangerous places, and kids have no place there. You should also check out a film called "Threads" - about a nuclear bomb dropping on Sheffield iirc. That one almost caused PTSD in half the population. No joke.
yes The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water scared the shit out of me too!
Both of those flash through my brain when near deep water or even just watching water or farm life on tv. The kid disappearing in the sludge pit gave me nightmares ( I grew up around farm life).
For us in Germany it was reading *the Cloud* in 7th grade, after having had to read Anne Frank and Friedrich….the peeling skin really got to me!
I‘ve always had a very vivid imagination…my father was a scientist/physicist and unfortunately delighted in giving me a lot of background knowledge
We even toured the site of a Uranium mine in the Black Forest with a Geiger counter….yep, it was buzzing like crazy and Daddy was all excited 😅🤯😤
I was 10 yrs old when l first started driving a tractor. By 12 yrs old l could reverse a full trailer full of hay bales and spike Harrow a hayfield. Farms were dangerous if not treated with respect
@@kathpengilley3925Is The Spirit of Dark Water the one with the kid playing near a pond and the feckin Grim Reaper (or something like it) is across from him? If so then yes, Jesus Christ that was beyond terrifying 😱
At school in the 50's/60's we used to joke that the best advice in the event of a nuclear attack was to dig a hole about 5 feet deep and hide, the theory being that it would either save you or leave the place tidy afterwards
The take your doors off to build a makeshift shelter was hilarious, so much so several comedians latched on to it as a routine.
Who could find a screwdriver, remove the doors, go dig the garden to put soil on top ALL IN 3 minutes, not forgetting 2 weeks supplies with a whole family, how many doors do they think we had?
Watch the film "Threads" It's a nuclear event and done the British way.
No. You have to hide under the stairs with some aluminium foil
That's hilarious, mate I grew up in the 70s and 80s and I remember the ones that said In the event of a nuclear attack hide in the cupboard under the stairs, like that's gonna save you.
@tonytutone2003 I can't remember that one. But it's definitely on par with the advice at the time...
Protect & Survice manual , Populous 49 million = Tories printed less than 500 K = all for posh people & left overs were given to schools
I grew up with these PSAs, didn't do me any harm and I'm still alive... So they must've worked. 🤔
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Just taking the railway tracks. Twice as many children per capita die in the US on railway tracks than in the UK. Think about how railways are a much bigger thing in the UK, and you realise that is a huge difference. Kids who were taught the danger of playing on railway tracks pass that knowledge on to their own kids and so on. Don’t forget the kids who grew up watching these videos wouldn’t have been traumatised like your generation and younger. Our parents grew up during the war, so watching a ‘scary’ video was nothing to us. They brought us up strong and self-sufficient, so we could make good decisions for ourselves.
As I understand it, US culture has more adverts but they're supposed to make people feel good or something. Now they eat too much sugar too.
I was more the Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety generation.
But then I now work for the railway and I do know that someone did die sticking thier head out of a train window, and that image from the book is still there.
Yes, but in the UK railway tracks are fenced off. Most in the USA are not.
@@ThomasTrue not all of them and there are still plenty of level crossings without gates.
I grew up with a father who was part of a team who rescued steam locomotives in the 1970s. I spent most of my weekends with Dad, clambering over locos and various railway tracks, and I knew the dangers. That said, I saw 'The Finishing Line' in school when I was 8 and it gave me nightmares for weeks. It was the only one of these films to ever make me react like that.
It didn't make us "Not want to do it" it just made us "Not want to die doing it" and as a child born in 1974 and who grew up with these in school and on tv, I am SOO Grateful. That's why our generation is the greatest produced by humanity, there were no limits, no 'heath and safety', no overbearing parents, just "This can kill you, so don't die" and then we were left to go out and do whatever we wanted. Most of us came home but the idiots chose to see if it's "Actually as dangerous they say" didn't, so the Darwin Awards started with us weeding out the weak and stupid.
Dark
Don't forget the if you break your leg or die Don't come running to me complaining if it was your fault
Well, and here you are, being very unkind and without gratitude. It strikes me you didn't witness or suffer friends who were affected. Otherwise you wouldn't refer to them as 'idiots'.
I've known a young person being horrifically burnt at the age of thirteen because an adult just didn't explain something that was obvious to his adult brain. The child didn't deserve 'the Darwin' award for not knowing but he bears the very visible scars for life.
Can I ask where you seen them too?
My dad was born in the 50's and myself the 80's. He's a typical defender of these films. He knew and lost several friends to such accidents.
He worked on the railway most of his adult life after being in the Navy. He was almost neurotic about my brother and I fully understanding safety around tracks, platforms, waterways and electric overhead wires. So yes these videos were for a very good reason.
Edit; and due to his experience in the Navy my dad was such an individual sent regularly to retrieve the bodies of those unfortunate to meet their end on the railway tracks and electric wires, and there were many of them. He got to defer his duty after the horrific crash at Paddington Station.
Oh my gosh Shirley. 🫶
Your Dad is an unsung hero. 👏👏👏👍
@@Galbereth Not 'unsung' thanks to us 🥰🥰🫶
Norman Fowler, Health Secretary 1981-87 during the AID's crisis and responsible for the over the top films and health campaign was once asked [paraphrased] "In hindsight, do you think you went over the top with the fear mongering advertising campaign?" His answer was "I'd rather go down in history as the person who overreacted than the person who didn't do enough." Regean could have done with taking a leaf out of his book. It's hard to know how many lives were saved because of it, but compared to the US, the UK faired considerably better.
He did exceptionally well considering he had to persuade Thatcher to sign off on it. The only change she insisted on was removing the WW2 air raid siren from the start. The public remember the TV adverts the most but it was a massive package of information through GPs and hospitals, schools, newspapers, billboards, and even guidance to funeral homes who were refusing to deal with the bodies at one point. Fowler also got the needle exchange off the ground after a large number of AIDS diagnosis in Edinburgh’s injecting drug users… I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when he told her the taxpayer should fund clean syringes for drug users.
so many things i like to say, but Norman Fowler, likes to take responsibility for his own kudos. there were a lot of un-named people working a lot harder than him to get the message across
@@ianroberts5745 not really - he usually acknowledges that he couldn’t have got it over the line without the likes of Willie Whitelaw, who had the PM’s ear.
It would be interesting to compare a timeline US vs UK. It was called GRID before 1984, wasn‘t it?
@lynnm6413 Briefly, when they thought it was caused by sniffing poppers but that originated in the US. Once they realised it was a medium term virus they introduced ARC (AIDS related complex) to describe people with some symptoms but not severe enough for an AIDS diagnosis. They (in the US) only seemed to do that so they could delay people qualifying for any form of support or care, which they would when they developed AIDS!
There’s a documentary on TH-cam called Killer In The Village which discusses the emergence and handling of AIDS in the US and UK. Really interesting to look at it retrospectively.
I had a friend die from AIDS defining illnesses in 2019… he had acquired more than one strain and one was treatment resistant. The side effects of a couple of drugs were making him seriously ill so they had to switch combinations to find something that worked that he could tolerate, but eventually they exhausted what we have available. Made me realise that we’re not out of the woods but I suppose the 13m AIDS orphans in Africa could have told us that too.
The people earing dinner are actually at a wake ( they're all wearing mourning clothing).
I grew up in the 1970s and remember many of these, the authorities seemed especially concerned that we didnt get trapped in abandoned refrigerators - and it worked because to this day ive never found myself inadvertently trapped in an old fridge
At least they encouraged adults to remove the door seals before dumping the fridge in the countryside!
We were shown those films simply because most children played outside the home with no adult supervision. Yes accidents happened, as well as other harmful events and we were shown these to instill a little common sense and critical thinking. Nowadays, the entire world is wrapped in cotton wool for fear of hurting their feelings, and the idea of a child under 14 being unsupervised seems unthinkable. But our generation was given the freedom to build our own interpersonal relationships, and taught how to take a calculated risk. Young people these days can't have verbal conversations, tie shoe laces or even cross the road, without either being offended, frustrated or responsible for themselves. These days it seems that accountability and punishment are dirty words, or worse yet, abuse. That is why this current generation at university don't understand the world they live in.
Way overstated.
@@nicolad8822 Yes it's wordy. It's also right. You cannot put the world in a nutshell.
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Best comment 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Older generations had a mix of approving of anything that toughened us up and an aversion to stopping us expressing ourselves. They might have been right, but so was fear mongering over real dangers during that milieu.
I'm 55yrs old and these public information films and as a child it made me stop and think , I was brought up with a train track 30 seconds from the back door all I'm saying is that it worked for me 👍
OMG I'm an American and that ad about having to drag a family members body into another room if a bomb dropped would have scared the living daylights out of me. I bet alot of British children who watched it back then would wake up at all hours of the night to check up on their family members because I know I would have. On the bright side even though those ad's may have been scary, they also helped their British Citizens become the lovely people that we all know today. Love the vid and just Subscribed. Thanks so much for sharing it with us all. ❤ ya UK.
Nope. None of us were traumatised that I recall.
That parody programme "Look around you" is absolutely hilarious! Unbelievably accurate to the old 70s BBC information shows... written and starring Peter Serofinowicz
It's amazing.
"Oh look! There's someone in the wo'ahh" 😂 As someone who grew up in the 70s I never step off the beaten path as I know quicksand awaits!
I have an unreasonable fear of quicksand living in suburbia 😅
@@nolaj114 you never know! Many grass verges waiting to trick you!
I'm in my 50s I grew up in the 1970s and all of these adverts were shown on tv and scared me, but they worked I didn't play on train tracks or by electric pylons, and I didn't swim in ponds etc
The 1980s one's about Aids made me always have a condom in my handbag.
And the protect and survive one about nuclear war, I asked my Dad why aren't you building a bunker his reply was "your better off dead your only building your own grave" which looking back was true because everything would be contaminated ( no water, no food, the air you would breathe) so better a quick death.
I survived 😂
We were not snowflakes. At least we were a lot more responsible as children than most teens of today. We were more able to cope with the realities of life.😅
When i was a kid in the 60s youd see kids playing everywhere and lots of stray dogs
We spent all day playing on the pit tips, swimming in the reservoir, ponds, and rivers . When was the last time we saw kids climbing trees, etc? I actually encouraged my daughter to play rough, climb trees, etc. When she was a little kid in the 2,000s .
Apparently that happened well into the 90s
Mate, I grew up in England in the 70s and these films made absolutely no effect on us,we still got up to all these things.
I remember being scared shitless about quicksand of all things from these ads. Where the hell was all this mythical quicksand? !!
That wasn't quicksand. It was a settling pond or slurry pit. Common around mines and on farms. Often they had a hard crust on top which you can fall through. Living in a mining area in the North these were the things we were warned about.
@@antonycharnock2993 I didn't mean that one specifically. It seemed like every film/tv show/warning ad had quick sand in and someone drowning. I was traumatised.
Never Ending Story has a lot to answer for.
@@jamesmeredith5551 I still remember by American host mum telling me the swamp had quick sand and snapping turtles, and me having never seen either, just nodded and told her I’d take one of the dogs to alert her if something happened…never understood the despair until 20 years later, when I watched an adult snapping turtle almost take the head off of a man on yt….lol
@lottie2525 There was a quicksand one. I think if you're from the north West, you should be pretty careful on Morecambe Sands they can be dangerous apparently.
One i remember in the 90's that was shocking, 'Julie Knew Her Killer', its here on TH-cam. Basically, a mum is taking her kids to school and the son isnt wearing a seatbelt in the backseat behind his mum, they have a crash and him being flown forward and headbutting her results in Julies blood all over the windscreen while the daughter screams in the front passenger seat. It ends with 'Always Wear A Seatbelt'.
I Think there was another similar involving some friends and a pizza topping dripping down the windscreen.
And the one with the children out exploring in the woods & a drunk driver flattens them all 😂 very disturbing
@@traceysmith7246 Oh yeah!! These adverts kinda made the 18 rated horror films seem PG
HI FROM UK HERE, i remember one of these safety adverts that featured a little girl wearing a nylon nightie, she stood too close to an electric fire and the nightie caught fire and went up in flames with the child screaming. moral was beware of synthetic fabrics being a fire hazard and dont stand to close to fire.
I don’t need to imagine anything… I was in the target audience (born 1970) and got to watch some of the earlier films at school, apaches about farm safety was truly the worst one and I still remember the horror of watching it, the child sinking into the silage container is indelibly marked into my memory. My friends and I have often commented on how traumatising it was… lest to say we never went and played on the farms or on the railway tracks, so I guess the message landed! 😅
Joel, The narrator did introduce the last few films as parody :-)
Hey Americans! If it's not obvious or slapstick. It's not like they have South Park to learn from.
@@antonycharnock2993 They need the canned laughter track added to tell them exactly when they're meant to laugh.
It still worked. I'm definitely not going to buy a used condom from another chap!🤣🤣🤣
I will always remember seeing the railways one when I was at primary school, when they picked dead children up off the lines with blood marks around their legs. I’m 58 now and railways still scare the crap out of me.
And the fact is if you got hit by a train it would be a lot worse than shown. It would be body parts they'd be collecting not complete bodies. Especially on high speed lines. Pity the train drivers who had to deal with the aftermath.
@@antonycharnock2993 I’ve once sat 3h in a train that was delayed due to human unalivement problems…and you aren‘t allowed to exit the train until they‘ve located all the parts….
Yep, don‘t do it, folks!
I grew up on the outskirts of a City in Devon. We had working farms on our doorsteps and used to play outside in all weathers. I can remember watching the British Safety film about the dangers on farms, for me, it wasn't too shocking as we knew the dangers already... 😆 I've never before seen or heard of the used Condom ad.🤮
I grew up in Cornwall in the 60s/70s & the couple of times a year we visited Plymouth I was terrified of escalators after the PSA featuring a girl and her doll. It did make getting up to see Father Christmas in Dingles a challenge.
Unfortunately, children are still killed or injured on farms and a few years ago, two children were not being kept an eye on by their parents and were killed on a railway line near where I live.
The films were as much aimed at adults as at children.
The condom advert was part of a comedy show . There's an old say "You can tell a child not to play with fire but until it burns it's self it never knows why ".
I remember growing up with those adds on tv, signs near railways warning about the dangers is not effective for kids playing near/on them but if you see something on tv with kids getting killed by a train that image flashes back when you go near railways as a kid, don't forget railways are everywhere in the uk, there are loads of crossings in rural areas where there is just a gate to walk through to cross the railway, there is one 5 min walk from my house. I remember the one about the kid getting electrocuted climbing to retrieve a Frisby
There are videos of adults, some with children, behaving very irresponsibly on such footpath railway crossings.
@@grahvis my elementary friends always wanted to be like Indians in the western movies and put an ear to the rail to listen if the iron horse was coming….omg
This was back in the days when children were credited with having a modicum of intelligence and not encouraged to be snowflakes that would have a meltdown , be traumatised or " triggered " by a gritty dose of reality . At the end of the day , the primary motive was to protect children , not disturb or scare them . There was no sinister malintent at work .
We need more safety films. That electricity information film scared the crap out of me and made sure I would NEVER climb a pylon 😱
To be fair, the one about the child in bed wasn't aimed at children, as the message was about not leaving children alone at home. That one was aimed directly at parents.
And yes, the condom ad was part of the parody section!
I'm still traumatised by the child's Wellington boot being sucked into a moving escalator 😮 I remember very well the Frisbee & the power station. Completely missed the used Condom ad 😂
That was hilarious and horrifying all at once . I'm English, born in 1948, really enjoyed it, thanks, Sue
Some of those New Zealand public safety ads are amazing too.
Im from Northern ireland and we have had many road safety adverts that really hit home .When you see them youll never forget them.
I grew up in the 80’s… these PSA’s were aired daily, there were some graphically brutal ones. But the point they were making always hit home
I remember the nuclear public information film. In the early 80's we were literally 5 minute's to midnight, as the saying goes. You lived with it, but it was there in the background. We now know that whatever precautions were offered, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. There is a docu drama called Threads, about a nuclear attack in Sheffield known for its steel industry and where my family come from. It's worth a watch.
I can remember us asking each other "What do you want to be when you blow up?" in the 80's. 😆
Threads was horrific. Iconic image of the traffic warden with a rifle and the bandaged face - one image related so much information.
Wow I watched the re make of the finishing line (the first railway clip) at school in the 90’s. I was about 8 years old when we were shown it. 😅
I wish people would be more aware of danger. Every day I see people driving or crossing roads with their noses buried in their mobile phones. And speeding drivers should ask 'What if I ploughed into a bus queue and killed a child?' We need lessons in school about risk assessment.
They definitely need to make something about crossing the road whilst using a mobile phone. And one for the electric scooter t***s. I'm so tired of having to dodge or watch out for them.
I totally agree with you. I've seen idiots driving with their cell phones in their faces, I report their license plate numbers and what they were doing, don't know if it helps. So many people of all ages have no business driving a car, or anything else.
The sad part of it is, pedestrians distracted by their smartphones assume that the drivers are paying attention at the critical moment and are not being distracted by their smartphones themselves. There is something selfish in it, too, as in, 'I can play with my smartphone but nobody else can'...
@@wbiro Yes, the presumption that drivers will do the right thing is unreasonable - and fatal.
I was in a campaign ad for the radio in the 90's. It was the K*LL YOUR SPEED campaign. My son was in the TV ad because it was about children being k*lled by speeding drivers. It impacted people a lot because real children were used in the ad ❤
Kids are actually as tough as old boots, In the 1960's when I started work we were given a safety lecture where we passed around a two pound sweet jar full of formadehyde and eyeballs that had been blinded by various types of sharp objects, the objects still in place, and another with detached fingers complete with long tendons that had been pulled off due to wearing rings that had caught on nails etc. we thought little of it. I can remember someone having a finger cut off in the morning and coming straight back to work in the afternoon. I started toolsetting in which there was a high likelyhood of loosing fingers, it was normal for old toolsetters with several missing fingers to be moved to a store job while they still had enough fingers to lift a pint glass!
The used condom skit shows how comedy is situational and reliant on a shared cultural background. Or the reason why Seinfeld had a small audience in the UK and the rest of us thought it was unfunny crap. Like SNL.
I remember the one about the boy being killed trying to get his kite from the pylon; it sent me home when the other children were daring each other to climb the fence into the small electricity substation at the back of the garages. I also remember one about kids dying in a house fire when left home alone - it sparked a conversation amongst the grown-ups when I was young. Back then, we knew a number of adults who would go out when the kids were in bed - they needed to be shocked into realising it wasn't safe.
I never felt traumatised by these- “trauma” is i think, very much an over used word these days. The adverts simply taught us how not to behave and how not to die! They were brilliant and made the point. We learned to take better care of ourselves independently, without the need of parents and the rest of society mollycoddling us. Remember- kids rarely take notice of signs, in fact i have seen young adults ignoring them too, but a visual depiction of a tragedy makes a much better impact on safety.
Teenage brains need blood spurting to get the message…this hasn‘t changed! Brain is mature at 24 for women and 25 for men!
Aged 8 at junior school we were all warned about the dangers of playing in rivers, but that year one child we all knew drowned. The one i remember most was about not wearing seat belts and what happens when you went through a windscreen, but to re-inforce the point you were shown a sledgehammer crushing an egg. I am now 69 but every year still on the news there are kids who drown in quarries or lakes or rivers. Later on i drove trains for British Rail and we saw kids on the tracks just about every week and unlike USA, all railway tracks are fenced. (UK).
Most of us still have nightmares from these in the 70s&80s!
No we don’t… 😂
@@ffotograffydd
exactly
The safety videos were relevant back in my day as my schools cross country running route went alongside and over the East Coast Mainline at an unmanned level crossing then along the Barnsley Canal before turning around and retracing our steps.
The condom thing was a parody. You still don't get British comedy.
These things traumatised us, but they also worked. They are the reason why British kids did fewer dangerous things than American ones.
Cartoon cat ( Charlie ) had more influence than any human or politician
Remember Rolf Harris ?? he did one about going off with strangers !!
I don't know... I did an awful lot of stupidly dangerous stuff as a kid :)
But also early condoms weren't actually single use, though they were thicker than the one shown.
@lizcollinson2692 early condoms were made from something like a sheeps bladder. And in that case, if I was really worried about accidentally impregnating someone, I feel it might be safer for both of us to consider buggery
Saw these mainly at home during normal viewing hours. I really remember one about not hiding in abandoned fridges while playing hide and seek. The road accident ones were commonplace & the nuclear warning ones.. we even had leaflets posted through the door telling us to paint our windows white & hide in the cellar
Early 1970s, we'd gather in the classroom, a TV would be wheeled in, and we'd be shown these films. They were also on Children's TV when we got home from school. Never did me any harm. 😉 As others have said, we played outdoors all day with no supervision from a very young age; in my case by a busy A-road, in woods full of WW2 rubble, corn fields and abandoned chalk quarries. I personally knew two kids I can remember who lost their lives in stupid accidents like those depicted in these films: one hit by a lorry and one drowned in a river. I expect the films saved many more.
As to the WW2 rubble, remember that unexploded German ordinance could also be found anywhere! Either just didn't go off as planned or dumped in the countryside on their way back to base after ground fire got too heavy.
Mid 70s, our school was still showing VD films that looked like they were made in the 1940s!
@@GlasPthalocyanine Hell's bells where were you?!
@@madoldbatwoman all girls Grammar School in the Midlands! Our sex education was a very nervous old spinster simulating the act with a balloon and a toilet roll liner. She had taught us the reproductive system of rabbits, and briefly mumbled something about how it's roughly the same for humans. 20 mins of our very last biology lesson was handed-off to one of the very few married teachers to demonstrate putting a condom on a banana.
@@GlasPthalocyanine Oh my days .... that's absolutely top stuff 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Please tell me the balloon squeaked....
OMG - I recall being shown "The Finishing Line" at junior school, scared me witless, especially as I had to walk across a railway bridge to get into town - I used to sprint across it in case some freak accident happened.
These ad’s were pretty grim, but they were about very serious, usually potentially fatal consequences. They worked & served their purpose. We usually thought they were funny, but they stuck in your head & got you talking. I’ll never forget the “Charle says” adverts. The ad’s ran on TV not just in schools. You’ve got to remember we went out to play after school for hours by ourselves, often roaming pretty far from home without supervision. I think they were successful in so far as their purpose; they drew attention to dangerous & potentially life-threatening scenarios stuck in your mind so you didn’t forget, talked about them, & ultimately saved some lives for those reasons. When played in school they were usually always followed immediately by discussions by either teachers, community police, firemen, or other visitors that came specifically to talk to the kids about the subject of the advert.That one about the condom was one of the parody’s they were talking about btw. I think I’d rather keep the ad’s than see a child die at the end of the day.
I remember watching the railway film The Finishing Line on TV with my parents. It was filmed about 4 miles from where I lived. I later worked with a guy who was one of the many children that appeared in it.
9:11 I've not played it myself yet but i'm pretty sure the jingle here (protect and servive) is used in the mod Fallout London.
Yes it is and the sign is used also, a number of American players don't understand it.
I remember some of these I was born in 1977, so I was quite familiar with children drowning in quarries and electrocuting themselves with fishing poles. Charley says always tell an adult before you go off somewhere!
I remember the advert with the little girl and rag doll on an escalator. Scared me and I still think about it every time I have to use an escalator
While I haven't seen all of these PSA's, I do remember a lot of them. They certainly gave me and my siblings food for thought and still makes me think about people I've known and lost to the accidents shown. Certainly memorable.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes. When you hear the air attack warning, you and your family must take cover
I grew up on these PSA's and was never traumatised by them. I knew not to go near water, play near electricity pylons, not to drink out of lemonade bottles filled with stuff from the garden shed. We also had Hammer House of Horrors on tv with the house thst bled to death, The Omen and Jaws.
Aye, there's a difference between 'scared' and 'traumatised'. One does not necessarily lead to the other.
Life wasn’t grim in the UK - even for a poor family like mine and despite the Winter of Discontent - because we had functional communities, back then, and we were all going through the same things. Besides, threats of strikes and not being able to feed the family were more relevant and these ads were a distraction.
Charlie says... don't be a dickhead! Those ads were great. Also the green cross code man (played by David Prowse) telling us how to cross the road. late 70s and early 80s were priceless for this sort of thing!
I remember seeing some of these as a kid. I lived on a farm for a while and seeing the kids die on the farm video taught me to not play around machinary or the grain silos.
These kinds of short films are the most effective.
Altgough, that railway one was pointless how far they went 😂.
PSA's were our inspiration for things to do outside whilst playing.
Never realised that the sample on ''Frankie goes to Hollywood' - Two Tribes go to war!! was taken from nuclear public information film!!!
if i recall correctly FGTH couldn't get the copyright so they paid the narrator to record those bits again
Need to bring these back, me and my wife were just talking about it the other day. I remember them from the 80's
The train film was recorded near where I lived and loads of my school friends from Watton at Stone took part in it
Yeah,but people DON'T read signs. That's why so many unnecessary deaths occur
You should add "Look Around You" to your viewing schedule. "Calcium" is my favourite.
When I was growing up I remember that one about the electricity substation where the lad kicks an orange ball over the fence and goes to reclaim it, I also remember the kite hitting power lines one.
Educating people doesn't work, entertaining people doesn't work, shocking people does, love it!
If you want tobsee how schoolkids were scared stiff in the 80s react to 'Threads'........
I posted a comment about that just now (not sure it's still there) I'd happily purchase for Joel to react to on his subscription channel service.
You might be interested in the anti terrorist public information ads played during the troubles in the north of ireland. One in particular plays the song called "the cat in the cradle" it haunts me to this day 😪😢
Thise ad's saved countless lives. It looks bad now but at the time very few were traumatised compared to saved.. Kids now dont play outside as they did back then nor are they as hardy from playing in the crap those kids did..
Have you watched Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, or Blackadder?
The English Establishment has always, treated children harshly, s terrorising them is entirely normal for them, and still would be, had not the public complained. This resulted in the schooling system being torment for children. My childhood.
As a child raised in the 80's, I can assure you, these Public Safety Ad's Worked. They Scared us and the Message sank in.
Did the job. I didnt touch a firework or sparkler for 30yrs and as for electricity pylons, I cant go past them without shuddering. But then again frisbees make me feel uneasy 😂
We lived next to the railway line- so we were shown that horrible film ! I was around 6 years old and it terrified me ! To me at that age it was very real .
I distinctly remember watching The Finishing Line at school in the 80s, which is well after it was withdrawn in '79, but these things did still linger. Never played on a railway line.
Genuinely traumatised as a child by these. I was scared of everything. Especially the threat of nuclear war in the 80s
I remember these... I'm in my forties now, and I distinctly remember:
Don't fall in a slurry silo
Don't play on a tractor's trailer
Don't throw things at electrical cables
I wasn't traumatised.... Honest! But the best ones were Charly - don't go off with strangers, or Charly will be sad!!
They were brilliant it taught me never to mess about near railways or swim in canals or reservoirs you have to scare kids to drive the message home
I feel slightly traumatised. I had forgotten a lot of this stuff. It's bringing it all back. 🤣🤣
Yep, the two most notorious ones I saw at school were the first two you presented: Apaches, farm safety. And The Finishing Line, rail safety.
I remember some of them on the TV in the 80's and in primary school.
Put it this way im 38 born bread in UK in late 80s and have never seen any of these in my life! I'll show some friends and ask them but doubt it as we were all friends and always together back as kids n teens right up to today but will be interesting to ask lol
I grew up in a railway town and there were always a few kids taking short cuts across the railway line because it was quicker some did not survive. similar building sites never had security back then we had bits of swampland and brooks which equally injured kids playing there. Road safety and stranger danger were big ones too.
I started school in the mid 90’s but I still remember being shown the 70’s video of the kid dying in a slurry pit, which (as half my friends lived on farms) was a great thing to be shown to realise the dangers of farms at an early age.
We were kids that felt indestructible and needed these kind of videos to shock us into knowing how dangerous things could be.
I remember The Finishing Line. I was about 6 or 7. It was a Sports Day with the teams of different colours doing things around railway lines. So terrifying I remember it well and it worked. I never played near a train line ever.
This was my childhood! I still remember watching Apaches at school and it being the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
I was shown a few of these at school in the late 90's when I was 8 or 9 and vividly remember the Apaches. I spoke with my mum about it after school and she reaffirmed it saying a farm is a work place not a playground.
I got shown the train film at school. Aged 7 - 11. Others were tv ads. We 70s kids played outside, climbed trees & on to any roof we could, explored abandoned houses, some in very poor state. We ran over rail lines, played on building sites, farms & swinging or jumping ditches. Some of the stuff was dangerous but so much fun..
These “Public Service Announcements” were often shown in between the “For schools” programmes aimed at children of all ages from Primary School up. They also were shown on the BBC after school, between such programmes as Jackanory (a storybook would be read, usually over several days, in summary) and Blue Peter. I remember watching a “cigarettes are bad” programme showing lungs, black and diseased, which put me off smoking for life! I’d be about 7 years old.
i remember seeing so many of these, so does my wife- we were chatting about how we don't see the public safety ads like the the ones we did as kids anymore.
I REMEMBER VERY WELL AS I WAS BORN IN 1955 AND WAS USED TO SEEING THESE ON TV