User blog:Hypnagogia/90s PSA

Once some time ago, in the early to mid-nineties, there was a creepy little PSA that I recall playing in between cartoons and shows like Sesamea Street. Other PSAs of the sort were noodly-legged cartoon animals singing a song about "be cool about fire safety". Pretty sure it was on PBS. The local channel is called Alaska One. I can't find info on this PSA at all.

This PSA I'm trying to recall was about gun safety, and I recall seeing it more than once. It begins with wiggly-lined drawings resembling childish crayon doodles. The images would be static, but the lines were animated. The first image was of a smiley-faced little girl, and a sad boy's voice narrated. He began with "This is my sister."

"She liked pink, dresses, and dolls" With images of the little girl playing with toys and being smiley.

"One day I found a gun in a drawer" (Actually, I can't remember. It was something like that.) With a drawing, representing a little boy, finding a gun in a drawer. I think there was a close-up of the gun at one point.

"And I did something terrible" (Something like that) The boy is making a :o face while the gun goes off while he just so happens to have it pointing at the girl. There's a black explosion drawn on her, and she has a sad face.

"I hate me" (That's the part that really sticks in my head.) Image of the sad boy with black scribbles all over him.

This isn't one of those "oh dudes once I saw a really creepy lost episode in Portland, Oregon where there were photos of dead bodies in the cartoons" things, I actually saw this more than once, and to this day I still remember it and go "why on Earth would anyone put something like that in between cartoons??" You'd think I'd have found traces of anyone else seeing it, that's not really something you forget.

Anyone else see this? Was it a national TV thing or just local (And that would explain why only I would remember it, pretty much.)

While I'm at it, dead bodies in cartoons or hyperrealistic gore in 32-bit VGs is just overdone and crappy and dumb. Now, THIS is how to be creepy! Take a note from real life, less is more.