Ben Cooper costumes, McBoo Halloween buckets, and those disgusting wax fangs that had us pooping out waxy turds the next two days are all essential Halloween goodness for any kid that grew up in the ‘80s. Ahh yes, growing up in a time where “Garfield’s Halloween Special” actually scared the crap out of us and every house in the neighborhood participated in contributing to our sugar rush from Pixie Sticks and countless packages of that glorious Mr. Bones candy. It was a special time indeed.
It was also a time where these really weird and sometimes horrifying educational videos were everywhere. Whether between Saturday morning cartoons, or mandatorily shown in school classrooms, these “educational videos” offer awareness and guidance to real dangers around us. Many are fun. Take this creepy 1985 Halloween Safety video from Coronet for example…
Like, Mr. Shady as Hell Jack-o-Lantern over here who just has to let you know how much it tickles him when you clean out his innards…
While most of the video’s lessons are fairly common sense to any free-thinking kid, I wanted to see how a modern day child would respond to the message here. I showed it to my eight-year-old to get his feedback and got reprimanded for “Wasting his precious ‘Minecrafting’ time” because, according to him, he “Already knew if you happen to trip on a sidewalk, it’s gonna hurt.”
Fair enough, kid!
The nearly fifteen-minute video begins with glorious Ben Cooper masks dancing across the screen to some serious disco music. It tackles such pressing issues as the importance of safe pumpkin carving, costume do’s and don’ts, and the all-important candy inspection before digging into your sugar haul for the night. Oh yes, we’re diving into razor blades in chocolate territory here, folks. However, the scariest thing I see here is these hideous legwarmers clashing with this sweet homemade robot costume. Oh, the horror of it all!
Check out the video in all its ‘80s nostalgic sorcery uploaded via Youtube channel Throwback and bask in the magical era of very special PSA’s and public safety videos!