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Classic and Not-So Classic PSAs from the past.....

M

mleach

Years ago I can remember watching a PSA about the evils of shoplifting with Carol Burnett opening up the PSA with "Shoplifting is DUMB !!!!" Then the next scene features two young girls in a store and yes they were shoplifting..stealing a shirt I believe. Of course they get caught and the last scene shows them crying in jail. Interesting footnote..years later I learned those two girls were Carol's own duaghters..Carrie & Jody Hamilton.

The Indian crying about trash and pollution..chances are you can remember that PSA.

"The can game"..Scott Baio and Mickey Gilley I can remember teamed up for a few PSAs back in the early to mid 80s telling kids to stay away from smokless tobacco.The "can game" was seeing how well you can throw away those cans of skoal or copenhagen into the trash.

"anti-internet boards".....saw this last year. Some guy after having a very bad day at work decides to go on his PC at home, logs into a bulletin board under an assumed name. Starts to bad mouth his boss on the boards..calling him every nasty name there is. Next day at work his boss calls him into the office..tells him about some "things" he had saw on online. Fires the guy on the spot. Moral of the story..be careful of what you say about someone online as they will find out and you will pay the price.

"naughty pics on the web"..some teenage girl decides to email a pic of herself in a bikini to a friend. The friend then takes the pic and sends them out to their friends. You can guess the rest..the whole world has a copy of this girl in her bikini. The next day at school someone puts up a pic in the hallway of the girl in the bikini. She gets upset and yanks it down only to appear and reappear..then she starts to cry. Last scene was of the school janitor ( the pervert ) with pic in hand saying into the camera ".....sweet !!".

"..don't be a draggin lady"..I actually liked this PSA !! To the tune of Johnny Taylor's "Disco Lady" some teenage girl walks into a soda shop with a cigarette in hand, blowing smoke into the faces of the other kids even flicking her ashes into one guy's pizza. Then she pauses to light up another cigarette ( did she even finish the last one? ) anyway all of the kids walked out on her.

OK I saw this one on You Tube...doubt this PSA aired anywhere though but still....shot in black & white a family from the 1950's gathered around to watch this new thing called..television. Father and his pipe, mother holding her pie, the two small kids sitting in front of the TV...looks like a scene from Leave It to Beaver !! That is until one of the kids turns on the TV set and what do they see...a commerical for TAMPAX TAMPONS !!! The V/O guy then says "..can you remember a time when the whole family can watch TV..together ??"

any other PSAs ( good or bad ) you can remember watching in the past?
 
Remember these anti-smoking ads?

"Like Father...Like Son...Think About it."

"Johnny Smoke"

And the auto safety ads with the Crash Test Dummies
 
desertv said:
Remember these anti-smoking ads?

"Like Father...Like Son...Think About it."
Click to expand...

Would any of the learned souls out there know what the instrumental track in the background is and who did it? I've been trying for years and years to figure that one out- truth be known, since it ran originally (circa 1967)...
 
biggguy said:
desertv said:
Remember these anti-smoking ads?

"Like Father...Like Son...Think About it."
Click to expand...

Would any of the learned souls out there know what the instrumental track in the background is and who did it? I've been trying for years and years to figure that one out- truth be known, since it ran originally (circa 1967)...
Click to expand...

This PSA for the Heart Association ran for several years, through the mid-1970s.

The actual PSA shown a father and son fishing on a rowboat, hence the term from the voiceover, "Like father, like son." Then dad lights up the cigarette, in which the voiceover says, "Like father, like son? Think about it."
 
mleach said:
Years ago I can remember watching a PSA about the evils of shoplifting with Carol Burnett opening up the PSA with "Shoplifting is DUMB !!!!" Then the next scene features two young girls in a store and yes they were shoplifting..stealing a shirt I believe. Of course they get caught and the last scene shows them crying in jail. Interesting footnote..years later I learned those two girls were Carol's own duaghters..Carrie & Jody Hamilton.

The Indian crying about trash and pollution..chances are you can remember that PSA.

"The can game"..Scott Baio and Mickey Gilley I can remember teamed up for a few PSAs back in the early to mid 80s telling kids to stay away from smokless tobacco.The "can game" was seeing how well you can throw away those cans of skoal or copenhagen into the trash.

"anti-internet boards".....saw this last year. Some guy after having a very bad day at work decides to go on his PC at home, logs into a bulletin board under an assumed name. Starts to bad mouth his boss on the boards..calling him every nasty name there is. Next day at work his boss calls him into the office..tells him about some "things" he had saw on online. Fires the guy on the spot. Moral of the story..be careful of what you say about someone online as they will find out and you will pay the price.

"naughty pics on the web"..some teenage girl decides to email a pic of herself in a bikini to a friend. The friend then takes the pic and sends them out to their friends. You can guess the rest..the whole world has a copy of this girl in her bikini. The next day at school someone puts up a pic in the hallway of the girl in the bikini. She gets upset and yanks it down only to appear and reappear..then she starts to cry. Last scene was of the school janitor ( the pervert ) with pic in hand saying into the camera ".....sweet !!".

"..don't be a draggin lady"..I actually liked this PSA !! To the tune of Johnny Taylor's "Disco Lady" some teenage girl walks into a soda shop with a cigarette in hand, blowing smoke into the faces of the other kids even flicking her ashes into one guy's pizza. Then she pauses to light up another cigarette ( did she even finish the last one? ) anyway all of the kids walked out on her.

OK I saw this one on You Tube...doubt this PSA aired anywhere though but still....shot in black & white a family from the 1950's gathered around to watch this new thing called..television. Father and his pipe, mother holding her pie, the two small kids sitting in front of the TV...looks like a scene from Leave It to Beaver !! That is until one of the kids turns on the TV set and what do they see...a commerical for TAMPAX TAMPONS !!! The V/O guy then says "..can you remember a time when the whole family can watch TV..together ??"

any other PSAs ( good or bad ) you can remember watching in the past?
Click to expand...

What about the 1970's one "VD is for Everybody"? :eek: ;D
 
Smittian said:
Best PSA ever BAR NONE!!!.............."VD is for Everybody"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK_jDA3qrUU
Click to expand...

I actually have that one on tape.

Last night I was going through my tapes and found another classic from the early 90s....Holding a lit candle..."My name is Jim..and I am an Alcoholic !!" "My name is Susan..and I am an Alcoholic". And so forth and so forth and so forth......

Back in 1993 we actually had a murder trial in my hometown where this PSA made local headlines when a group of local teens were hanging out and decided to act like the alcoholics in that PSA..holding the candle and such..of course things got interesting when one of the kids said "..my name is Robbie..and I just killed my little brother".

Ah..Robbie really did kill his 8 year old little brother.

and yes they did show a video of this psa at the trial.
 
One hit wonder artist Regina with her anti-drug ad "Users are losers, and users are losers" along with McGruff, the crime dog.
 
My favorite's the Safety Belt PSA with Jack Webb narrating, while ordinary citizens give excuses for not buckling up:
"They're too confining."
BOOM-WOP!
"I don't like wearing seat belts, they wrinkle my dress!"
BOOOM-WOP!
"I drove over a million miles and never an accident!"
BOOOOM-WOP!
I love it, they appear seated or laying down in regular clothes, after the BOOM-WOP, you see them in bandages or body casts!
Scared me when I was a kid. :'(

Also one for the Red Cross, where a hurricane is brewing, a tree comes crashing thru the window and the wind destroys the contents of the whole house! The scene of the china closet crashing down gave me nightmares for years!! :eek:
 
I'd forgotten about the RFE PSA's. More recent annoying one, the kid singing "the bear comes over the mountain", as Smokey makes his appearance. Then there's the Global warming PSA with the kids saying "Tic Tic Tic" (how come we have to keep kids in a bubble but we're still allowed to scare them to death with dire predictions of doom over global warming (which I'm one of those 'deniers").
 
the one that comes to mind is the one the NAB used to run patting themselves on the back and crowing about their Television Code of Good Conduct. I think the background music was "This Old Man", and a young boy (who I seem to recall may have been Ron Howard?) was wandering through the woods and fields, stopping to toss a rock in the lake, etc. Meanwhile a very somber voiceover announcer brags about how the Television Industry will look out for his morals and only show him good examples, that crime does not pay, and in general do a better job of raising him than his parents ever could. ....give me a break!

Then there was the very brief voiceover spot they used to run before the local news. Just a picture of a clock just before 11......"The time is now 11PM.....do you know where YOUR children are?"
 
The PSA that never was...

Years ago, I dreamed about watching one, that I'm not sure actually aired on TV:
What I saw in the dream was some sort of swimming safety ad, where some girl had gone swimming at the beach, after separating from two friends. The girl started to drown, while, on the other side of some sand dune, her two friends were walking in the wrong direction looking for her. There was some large arrow over the spot where the girl was drowning...and then some sort of voice-over about 'swimming with a buddy' or something.
Was there ever really a PSA with anything close to this scenario?
 
FreddyE1977 said:
the one that comes to mind is the one the NAB used to run patting themselves on the back and crowing about their Television Code of Good Conduct. I think the background music was "This Old Man", and a young boy (who I seem to recall may have been Ron Howard?) was wandering through the woods and fields, stopping to toss a rock in the lake, etc. Meanwhile a very somber voiceover announcer brags about how the Television Industry will look out for his morals and only show him good examples, that crime does not pay, and in general do a better job of raising him than his parents ever could. ....give me a break!
Click to expand...

Sounds like a radio PSA I can remember hearing some 10 years ago on a local station in my hometown. About how the role of the local radio station is to provide "live and local" entertainment and information to the public 24/7 and to provide good morals to the community. Ah..even back then that very same radio was already voice-tracking several airshifts as well as cutting back on the news and weather. And the part of "good morals"..as soon as the psa had ended, here comes a promo for the morning show talking about an upcoming interview with x-rated porn actor Ron Jeremy.
 
Out of a clear blue sky, in the middle of dinner no less, my feeble mind suddenly recalled one of the campier classic anti-drug PSAs:

Urban youth: "Sure, I smoke a few joints now and then...get high...groove..."

Announcer: "What if your baby sister smoked pot?"

Urban youth: "I'D BREAK HER HEAD!!!"

(Freeze-frame on youth making a fist with a menacing expression on his face...)

Never figured out what the message was here...sure, it shows hypocrisy on his part, but is pointing out a hypocritical attitude going to prevent youth from smoking pot? Either that, or they're indirectly advocating using violence to keep kids off drugs. ::)
 
mleach said:
...a radio PSA......about how the role of the local radio station is to provide "live and local" entertainment and information to the public 24/7...
Click to expand...

I guess you don't hear those anymore on Cheap Channel stations,
especially in Minot and Grand Rapids. ::)
 
FreddyE1977 said:
the one that comes to mind is the one the NAB used to run patting themselves on the back and crowing about their Television Code of Good Conduct. I think the background music was "This Old Man",
Click to expand...

It might have been "This Old Man", but to my memory (this was around 1969) the song was "Bingo" (about the dog, not the Banana Split [that one was the gorilla] :)).

ixnay
 
I still remember the most shocking PSA I ever saw-

It was a voiceover by a woman describing the death of her husband from smoking in bed....how she warned him, but he didn't listen...the inevitable fire happens (photos are being shown over the voiceover)...and how he died...

It then cuts to a shot of a horribly disfigured woman saying "and HE was the lucky one"....

I only saw this one a couple of times, usually late at night, in the early 80s.

Talk about "pushing the envelope"- this one set it on fire!
 
I still remember an anti-smoking PSA with famed director John Huston, filmed shortly before his death in the mid-1980s. Scary!

Also, why has nobody mentioned the anti-drug spot with Rachel Leigh Cook (what a babe!)? Shows an egg with a frying pan, which she then uses, smashing everything with it in sight? Any questions? (Man I love that end shot!)

Here's the spot in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7ukc7MV-k
 
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