Inhaling Aerosols Is A Really Stupid Thing To Do
In the eighties it was heroin. In the mid-nineties it was ecstasy. But before that, for a brief period in 1994, it was glue, aerosols and other such household items that sat at the centre of the big drug scare. Being an impressionable and very stupid lad it unsettled me, not least the idea that smelly stuff like my dad’s Lynx was dangerous if you sniffed it! IT WAS MADE TO BE SMELLED PEOPLE YOU ARE WEARING DEATHTRAPS OH GOD WHAT IS THIS. Eventually I figured out that what people were apparently doing was actively inhaling it, which struck me then and now as a really stupid thing to do and why would you do it and how did someone even come up with the idea in the first place? Anyway, there was a big scare in 1994 or so about kids dying with half a Pritt-Stick dangling out of their nostrils and there were assemblies and posters and a particularly forbidding leaflet and here’s one of a handful of (probably very cheap to make) PIFs they made to go with it. Notice how it’s aimed not at the kids, but at their parents, because the kids are just GLUE CRAZY FIENDS who wouldn’t understand.
Video Rating: 5 / 5
Wake Forest’s Lilting Banshee Comedy Troupe present 2005′s ISOC XIV. A PSA on the dangers of the free crayons and glue from elementary school.
Applemask says:
@jr976evil You’re probably right. I distinctly remember it and the big scare from 1994, though, so presumably it was re-shown.
Glasscerberus says:
They’ll huff and probably blow the house down.
supermen37 says:
i usta do that i usta be smart it melts ur brain
jr976evil says:
think this was earlier, like about 89/90 or thereabouts
LittleLeeHere says:
I was going to reply to you when I saw the ad your reffering to, And it came on telly late last night and I agree with you, The new Think ad is terribly bad, They show no consequence and no reason for other people to not drug drive
jackdietrich says:
Absolutely, I reckon the worst thing a PIF can do is try to be clever. 30 seconds is *just barely* enough time to fulfil the basic, essential functions of a PIF – tell me what the issue is, make me care and tell me what to do about it. It’s like a mass-media haiku, the slightest bit of waste can scupper the whole thing. The best PIFs seem to me to have an identifiable dramatic arc from beginning to end; A looming, Hitchcockian sense of inevitable awfulness right from the first frame.
easportsbig899 says:
That is pretty scary.
LoafOfPint says:
It’s the execution. I’d say there are three categories of PIF – those like these that leave everything to the imagination, those that only show the results and maybe some of the build-up but not the events themselves (Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives campaign being the best example), and those that just go ahead and show it in all its gory detail (Irish DoE and Australian TAC). I think the key to any of these is to keep them simple and the message clear – not trying to win awards at Cannes.
jackdietrich says:
It’s not crazy – the imagination is the source of all fear. If they show something graphically horrible then you can just turn away from it, but you can’t hide from your imagination. It’s like that picture that turns from two faces into a candlestick, once you see it you can’t un-see it because it happened inside your own head.
That new drug-driving PIF gets it badly wrong for just this reason – it’s a horrible image, but it just doesn’t strike that dark place in your imagination.
LittleLeeHere says:
This one scared me when I first saw it, which is crazy cause there is nothing visual there, just words and sound, scared me more than drink drive ads at the time