Thursday, October 12, 2006

It was hard to love kids in the '70s

There's been much talk about how we kids of the 70s were considered kind of a burden, definitely not catered to as the Baby Boomer kidlets of today.

In the 70s, homes were pretty ugly (avocado appliances) and kids' clothes and hair was, too (watch any episode of "The Brady Bunch"). We had maybe five TV channels, sat unbelted in the way-back of Country Squire station wagons, and sure as heck didn't have DVD players in the car...it was either the license-plate game or listen to your parents endlessly discussing Nixon.

That's why the poison-control centers who came up with Mr. Yuk had no problem terrifying us with the creepy music and background images of this public-service announcement. Man, it practically still gives me nightmares today. Two of our cats were in the room when it came on, and the music alone freaked them the heck out.

"Mr. Yuk is MEAN...Mr. Yuk....IS....GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!"

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

that was creepy. I would think that kids would be afraid of everything in their homes after seeing that!

Kim said...

Eeeyikes--the commercial is kind of a psychedelic nightmare, no?

However! I grew up knowing one of the inventors of Mr. Yuk, who brought it west from Pittsburgh. He's an old family friend, who still lives out in Lake Forest Park outside Seattle, and as far as I know still drives a car with custom MR YUK plates (which drove his late wife to distraction). Hee hee...

Dimestore Lipstick said...

Another memorable Saturday morning voice. I was just reading about the death of Christopher Glenn, voice of "In The News", and thinking about those voices of Saturday morning. Frank Welker, Timer, Chris Glenn, and now here is another; Mr. Yuk.

Anonymous said...

Now I realize why I used to have nightmares about Mr. Yuk.

Anonymous said...

Ahh, Mr. Yuk! I scored a super-cool Mr. Yuk t-shirt from somewhere a few years ago, in appropriate Mr. Yuk Poison Green. Sam keeps stealing it from me, though...