When I was a young child my family took a road trip to a small town in Central North Dakota to help clean out the house of a deceased relative that I had never known. It was a fun occasion for my brothers and I as we did not know the relative and we got to dig around in a bunch of old buildings looking for treasures.
When we entered a garage that was all but caved in we were disappointed to only find an old set of gym lockers in the corner. We finally managed to work the rusted handle there were several containers of old chemicals. Almost everyone of these chemicals had a ridiculously scary little green face sticker marking them. I had never seen this little green face before but I knew that he was warning me against something. My oldest brother stood guard over the ominous containers when our middle sibling and I ran for our parents.
When they entered the garage and saw what had caused our concern they laughed at the little green face and explained that it was Mr. Yuk. A public service campaign started by a hospital to warn children of the dangers of poisonous chemicals and cleaning products. Even decades after the popularity of the campaign had died down, Mr. Yuk still did his job.
Years later I stumbled across the youtube video of one of the first commercials featuring Mr. Yuk. Anyone that watches will agree to the creepiness of the campaign.
When we entered a garage that was all but caved in we were disappointed to only find an old set of gym lockers in the corner. We finally managed to work the rusted handle there were several containers of old chemicals. Almost everyone of these chemicals had a ridiculously scary little green face sticker marking them. I had never seen this little green face before but I knew that he was warning me against something. My oldest brother stood guard over the ominous containers when our middle sibling and I ran for our parents.
When they entered the garage and saw what had caused our concern they laughed at the little green face and explained that it was Mr. Yuk. A public service campaign started by a hospital to warn children of the dangers of poisonous chemicals and cleaning products. Even decades after the popularity of the campaign had died down, Mr. Yuk still did his job.
Years later I stumbled across the youtube video of one of the first commercials featuring Mr. Yuk. Anyone that watches will agree to the creepiness of the campaign.
My first memories of Mr. Yuk were actually when I was little. There was a tag in one of our household plants that had Mr. Yuk's face on it. After that, I admired the plant from, well, not quite afar. I steered clear though. I didn't touch the plant, and I knew well enough ANYWAY not to eat the leaves (but this really made it scary.) It's funny the power we attached to an emoticon even before emoticons had a term.
ReplyDelete-Danielle
I miss the ad mascots of old. Interestingly enough, they all seemed to be tied to toiletries (Mr. Whipple, Mr. Clean, Scrubbing Bubbles, Brawny Man). I feel that they lost their effectiveness. Mascots seem to have been relegated to insurance companies. It would be an interesting study to learn the trends of mascots in advertising.
ReplyDeleteHaha! Hilarious! I know that we used to have Mr. Yuk stickers all over everything when I was a kid, but I had no idea there were actually TV commercials for it.
ReplyDeleteNow I kind of wonder if the stickers would make the "yucky" products more enticing to the kids? I don't have Mr. Yuk stickers for my kids and they still seem to get the idea that certain things are not okay to play with. I feel like putting a sticker on it would make it more attractive, at least to MY kids.
Overall, I question the effectiveness of such stickers. It would be interesting to know statistics about whether or not Mr. Yuk actually worked as a preventive measure for kids and household products.
Bethany S