What Have We Done to Gen X???
We ain't right!
My brother unearthed the below image and let me tell you I was shook to my very core. This sick bastard is why I’m afraid to pull a plug out of a socket.
The intention of this “ad” was good, but can we all agree the execution was horrific?
Imagine the pitch:
Ad Team: So we’ve been asked to prevent kids from messing around with plugs and sockets and boy did we come up with a great idea! Let’s create a mascot who looks a lot like Mr. Met and show him about to shank Timmy in the kidney because stupid Timmy tried practicing independence and self-care by plugging in his Glow Word nightlight by himself. That’ll teach that lil’ a dickhead!
The tagline? REMEMBER, KIDS! Electricity will kill you!
The Client: It’s perfect! Ship it!
Whoa, okay, everybody just calm down! This was an ad targeted to kids!
We’re 100% sure Electricity will kill them? No chance of negotiating or running away, or getting let off with a warning or boring lecture about how electric currents can flow through living tissue like water through sand?
And here I am worried about my son’s screen time.
Let’s dig deeper into the subtext of this unforgettable “ad”:
Timmy’s shoulders are rounded and his hands are in his pockets. I’m no body language expert, but it appears he is in a submissive, repentant pose. HE GETS IT, Electricity! Put the knife away!
Electricity is smiling while threatening little Timmy. This is bad, you guys! Gen X came of age in the era of missing children. Adam Walsh was taken from a Sears department store! If we couldn’t feel secure in a SEARS, the world was truly a hopeless place. Next you’ll tell me the popcorn at Ground Round contained rat poison and Buster Brown shoes caused neuropathy!
That is not a side hug, Electricity! Clearly someone didn’t watch the training video.
Maybe instead of designing ads for kids that will haunt them well into middle-age, we could have spent a few ad dollars teaching Boomer parents how to child-proof their homes!?
This ad didn’t just bring up my fear of electrical sockets, it’s allowing me to look back at some of the most impressionable marketing campaigns of my youth so I can be newly traumatized with fresh, progressive-lensed eyes.
Check in on your Gen X friends, people. We ain’t right!
Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
OKAY, BOOMER. What the hell was wrong with you? You needed an actual commercial broadcast on TELEVISION to remind you there were children in your care?! Losing a snow brush in your garage because you haven’t used it in 11 months is justified. Losing your kids because you flat out forgot you had them, is not.
This ad really happened! While our parents were watching Cagney and Lacey and shoving Jiffy Pop into their maws, they were rudely interrupted by a public service announcement serving up the startling news that they had children and should probably make sure they were accounted for. If I let my kid walk alone to the park .03 miles from our house, I risk a visit from CPS.
Have You Hugged Your Child Today?
Okay! I found my stupid kid! Now what do I do with it!? - Boomer Parents in the 70’s
So that child you found stuck in the neighbor’s magnolia tree or lying face down in the magazine aisle at CVS covered in Tiger Beat and Young Miss magazines could maybe benefit from a little affection. Yes, Boomer parents also needed a reminder to be nice to their kids. Don’t just sit there and bitch about the diapers and your shitty boss! Give them a little pat on the head before leaving them in the care of teen babysitter you met for the first time when they showed up on your porch and may or may not be qualified to care for kids. Gotta take that risk. It’s pinochle night at the Bushinsky’s!
There were TONS of PSAs about preventing child abuse and neglect, which again— noble. But first, parents had to understand what constituted abuse before they could try not doing it.
IS THIS CHILD ABUSE?
Telling your kid they’re stupid - YES, that is abuse
Telling your kid they’re pathetic and will never amount to anything - YES, that is abuse
Telling your kid you wish they were never born! - YES, that is abuse
Forgetting you had a kid until 10PM every night when a man on TV reminded you. -NO, this is not child abuse. This is very normal.
Discipling your kid with a wooden spoon? -Totes fine!
Crack-a-Doodle Don’t
And then there was this guy talking to us like a gym teacher who caught his class cheating during the Presidential Fitness test.
This did not make me afraid of drugs. Must have been a little too high-brow for me. But it did make me dislike fried eggs.
Also why is a brain on drugs a fried egg? Wouldn’t a scrambled egg be more fitting? Or even a poached egg— “normal” looking on the outside, but all loose and gooey on the inside?
Yeah, I still don’t get it.
Love’s Baby Soft…Porn?
Oh hells to the no’s! That is a sexy, innocent child! Presumably with a parent who was on set that day and was like, Stunning! Can we add a few more swipes of mascara to her bottom lashes? We have a kindergarten open house to attend after this.
I adored Love’s Baby Soft! That scent is still burned in my nasal cavity. But now I just feel dirty! I expect this kind of thing from Jean Naté, who in my mind was like the saucier and more advanced cousin who taped shirtless pictures of a young Clint Eastwood in her closet and told you her bong was a dehumidifier, but Love’s has the word baby right in the title! Did I see this ad when I was nine and think, Yes, I want to smell like a sexy baby too!
How about this pitch?
“Hey, we have the BEST idea! Imagine a sexy toddler with fake lashes, a big pouty mouth, bouncy, toussled curls with that just rolled out of bed look but she’s also holding a teddy bear and wearing a white nightie so we know she’s super innocent too. GET IT? Innocent AND sexy! Like our perfume for tween girls!”
Well, I think I just figured out why I’m paying people to glue fake eyelashes to my face every three weeks.
Go Sit in the Fridge!
In one of the most formative advertising campaigns geared toward teaching young women to be ashamed of their gross, little bodies, Massengill takes the Tasty Cake for “Douchiest Mother-Daughter Moment Ever.” In this ad, a young woman confesses to her wise, golden moonlight, country flowers-scented mom that she sometimes doesn’t feel so fresh.
You know…down there.
Her mother comforts her by saying, I am so glad you brought that up because I didn’t want to embarrass you, but P.U., sweetie! I was about to call the exterminator!
Thankfully Mom happened to have a delicate VINEGAR and WATER douche tucked behind a throw pillow and very lovingly presents to her putrid daughter saying, “Sounds like it’s time for Massengill.”
Now run along upstairs and shove this plastic bottle full of fermented potatoes up your hooha and come back downstairs to set the table for dinner!
A rite of passage for all young women1!
HONORABLE MENTIONS
You Hear These Pills Singing Too, Right?
Okay, kiddos! We know Mommy’s little benzos look delicious, but please don’t go popping these cuties down your gullet! You’ll get sick and probably need your stomach pumped.
Honestly these guys were so adorable I think it had the opposite effect on me. Where can I get my hands on some talking beans?
We know they weren’t locking up the medicine cabinets, so hopefully Boomer parents remembered to put this guy on the bottles. A sticker! Very effective!
V.D. is for Everyone???
I literally cannot believe the human race didn’t die out after Gen X considering how freakin’ scary and dark PSA2s like this made sex. From what I could ascertain, every time someone lit a match, 6 million people were getting busy and rotting off their private parts. It happened that often and that easy. So…don’t be easy?
GET THE FACTS, the VoiceOver says, which can be obtained by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope addressed to V.D. (I kid you not. Watch the end of the video.)
Ew, whose job was it to open those letters?
Thank you Ad Creatives of the 1970’s and 80’s
To give credit where credit is due— the copywriters of my youth sure knew their way around a catchy jingle. These songs (and so many more) are burned in my memory. I never ate pills thinking they were candy, my parents never left me wandering around a K-Mart parking lot until 10:07PM. My mom never made me douche. Gen X may have been trauma-taught important life lessons, but we are probably the last generation who knows how a bill gets passed thanks to Schoolhouse Rock. So maybe it wasn’t all bad.
It’s 10PM, Gen X kids. Have you called your therapist today?
XO,
Shelly
Please indulge a little humble brag, but some of you are new here and it’s been forever since I talked about my book! Disclosure: The link below is an affiliate link, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through that link, at no cost to you.
How to Dungeon Master Parenting is a Foreward INDIES finalist for Best Book of Year (Family & Relationships) and also received a starred review from Library Journal! If you are keeping track (I am), that’s now two starred reviews. (Starred reviews are really good, hence the ⭐️!)
If you are a geeky parent, know someone who is, or are looking for a new, “surprisingly profound,” approach to parenting, this book is calling your name! (Because an ancient wizard put a spell on it and only you can stop it!)
No. It is not! Stop douching!
Really disappointed I couldn’t find the absolute best V.D PSA. (Yes, there was a whole series of these.) It’s one my friend Dan and I still sing to each other.
Singer 1: I said no way! No how! If I had it, I’d know it!
Singer 2: That ain’t true, cuz some people don’t show it!
Thanks for the highly triggering walk down the memory lane of my precious youth, Shelly!
Like the adorable singing benzos, Mr Yuk was actually so inviting. A bright green beacon