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Play & Learn Drowning Game (late 1970s)

February 2, 2017, 1:08 pm
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This is part 2 of our feature on water-based toys (see last week's Action Man waterboarding accessories).

In the late 1970s, the government predicted that by the time the decade's children were grown up, suicides would be commonplace, perhaps even fashionable. This would be due to the "inevitable effects of living in a declining society in which the government has abandoned the welfare of its citizens in favour of fun hobbies it finds less boring", but mostly because "it will make suicide a compulsory part of national cutbacks".


The minister for welfare proposed that "suicide clubs" be established (they even launched a slogan: "Let's all say Felo-de-se!"), and that suicide methods be taught in schools and job centres by alternative-career advisors.

The government also funded several toy manufacturers who created products which cast suicide in a positive light. One such toy was the Play & Learn Drowning Game, which was also adapted into a console game in 1978.



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"Fun Fag Facts" (1974)

February 10, 2017, 3:44 am
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This info-tisement appeared in children's weekly magazines and on the walls of schools as part of the 1974 "Cigaretiquette campaign". It was funded in part by the SCRG (Scarfolk Cancer Research Group) who, having accidentally hired too many employees and purchased expensive premises, desperately needed a sharp increase in the numbers of cancer patients to attract the funding they required to maintain their organisation.

See also: confectionery-branded cigarettes of the 1970s.
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1970s Valentine's Day Greetings Card

February 14, 2017, 1:09 am
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Love is the air like doves and butterflies and pulmonary tuberculosis. Happy Valentine's Day from Scarfolk.
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The Campaign for Real British Crime (CRBC)

February 23, 2017, 2:57 am
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When immigrants began moving to Scarfolk in the mid-1970s, many local criminals worried that foreign offenders would threaten their livelihoods. They formed an organisation called the Campaign for Real British Crime (CRBC), which fought for the rights of UK born criminals. The CRBC demanded that the police prioritise investigations in favour of offences committed by British lawbreakers, for whom they also tried to ensure more convictions and longer prison terms.

Campaigners for Real British Crime also attempted to reintroduce and encourage traditional, archaic crimes, some of which had not been committed in Britain for many years; for example, conspiring with a neighbour's goose while intoxicated, handling rhubarb and voles in suspicious circumstances, invoking demons while wearing a toupee, and committing crimes abroad when they can be carried out just as successfully at home.
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"Life is Easier With Guilt" Public Information Campaign

March 6, 2017, 7:02 am
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This is part 2 of our look at crime in Scarfolk (see last week’s post about 'Real British Crime').

In 1972, Scarfolk Council decided that the "presumption of innocence before being proven guilty" was a bit too presumptuous.



A council spokesperson said that "such legal bureaucracy completely ignores the rights of guilty people who want to be legally recognised as guilty but have either committed a crime that has unfortunately gone undetected, or are, through no fault of their own, awaiting trials which could take many months, even years to rightfully establish their guilt.



The spokesman also pointed out that people may be guilty of actions that are not yet considered crimes and underlined the importance of recognising these people’s culpability to ensure peace of mind.

In the spring of 1973, the government's propaganda department launched a campaign that promoted guilt as a desirable attribute. It was so successful that many people feared they might not be guilty enough and committed horrific crimes to nurture in themselves feelings of self-worth and wellbeing.

The campaign featured a policeman whose nickname was "PC Fang". Allegedly, he had the ability to instil a deep sense of guilt in even the most innocent citizens. Some say he achieved this by using supernatural powers; others say he used a hammer.

 
A frame from a lost public information film that played at cinemas during the advertisements. 
 
 
A T-shirt compulsorily worn by children.


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Identified Flying Objects (& Esoteric Truth)

March 21, 2017, 7:21 am
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In the 1970s, the distinction between fact and fiction completely broke down as a result of years of government fabrications, corporate deceit, media falsehoods and systematic educational disinformation.

Objective truth gained an esoteric, almost occult status along with subjects such as ghosts, bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, pagan paediatrics and other unexplained phenomena. Many didn't believe that objective truth even existed.


The dwindling numbers of people who insisted that real facts were 'out there' were pushed to the fringes of society and labelled conspiracy theorists. They saw it as their duty to promote even the most rudimentary facts and reintroduce them into the public arena.



One area of so-called "arcane knowledge" concerned IFOs (Identified Flying Objects), which eventually caught the public imagination, or rather the lack of it. Sensationalised books and magazines about the topic flooded newsagents and bookshops (see pages above and below from The IFO Phenomenon (Corgi, 1977) and a pull-poster from IFO Monthly magazine). By the end of the decade, many people claimed to have had a "close encounter" with an IFO. Some even reported that they had been taken aboard such craft.



 
(click to enlarge)

For more information about the suppression of facts in public discourse, see the Truth Reform Act of 1976 and mandatory de-education classes.
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Scarfolk Mail Rub-On-Transfer News

March 31, 2017, 1:53 am
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In the early 1970s, local newspapers changed their publishing strategies. They stopped thinking of readers as interested parties keen to learn the latest news from objective sources. Instead, they thought of them as clients who consumed news to suit their lifestyles and, consequently, their unwavering ideologies.

Censoring and slanting facts soon degraded into outright fabrication and readers became conditioned to see only information that pandered to and confirmed their negative biases, so much so that newspapers such as the Scarfolk Mail realised that they no longer needed to provide actual content: Readers only saw what they wanted to see and comprehended what they wanted to comprehend.

Consequently, in 1972, the Scarfolk Mail started publishing editions with little or no content. Instead, it provided sheets of rub-on-transfers should the reader want to fill in the columns with their own jaundiced content. The Scarfolk Mail went on to win a prize for best reportage of the year, as voted by readers.
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"Diseases are cool!"

April 6, 2017, 6:20 am
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In the 1970s, the Notional Health Service envied those public sectors that received more funding from the government. The NHS was particularly resentful of the Department of Education & Indoctrination and in 1977 it set out to entice children away from schools and state-run brainwashing covens into hospitals so that it could justify larger budget requests.

The NHS initially launched a major campaign aimed at children and teens, which promoted the health benefits of serious medical diseases and conditions, especially those which required substantial financial resources. In addition to adverts in magazines such as Look-In (see above), it also produced collectable bubble-gum cards (see below), badges, T-shirts and cuddly toys that resembled bacterial cells and viruses.

While the idea of being dangerously sick did become very popular among the nation's school children (indeed, the Staphylococcus aureus flesh-eating disease playset was the biggest seller of Christmas 1978), it still wasn't enough to attract the desired funding to the health sector and in 1978 the NHS took the inevitable step of directly infecting its merchandise with actual diseases to ensure success.


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Real Easter Egg (1971)

April 13, 2017, 4:21 am
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Back in the 1970s, many people complained that the word “Easter” had been dropped from the packaging of chocolate eggs. They also claimed it was only a matter of time before other Christian Easter imagery, such as anthropomorphised cartoon chicks playing with bashful ducks or dungaree-wearing bunny rabbits, received the same treatment.

The Scarfolk Confectionery Company was only too happy to remind consumers of the true biblical events surrounding Easter: Gruesome acts of mutilation and torture, filicide/suicide, crude carpentry and auto-exhumation were all necessary to atone for the original sin that most people agree is historically unfounded, though still blame on one woman’s innocent desire for a healthy snack.

The Scarfolk Confectionery Company ensured that the word “Easter” was not omitted from its products (see above, from a 1971 brochure), in fact it was printed on the packaging over 100 times with corrosive ink that burned the word into the skin of the consumer. Anyone not bearing the burn scars was deemed by the government to be "unBritish".

Happy Easter from Scarfolk!
For more Easter-related artefacts, see also Rabies Easter Eggs, Jellied Babies and Confectionery Branded Cigarettes.
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Election Campaign Poster (1974)

April 21, 2017, 6:04 am
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Gerry Mander (see above) was the Scarfolk Party candidate in the 1974 election. Though much of his nationalistic campaign consisted of subliminal brainwashing techniques, complicated satanic invocations, and simply lying and punching liberals in the face, he did also proffer tangible promises.

For example, he wanted Britain to be the first western nation to construct an underground sewage system designed specifically to transport its disabled and sick to landfill sites. He also insisted that women finally be recognised as the most valuable resource in their husband's or father's livestock.

Most of all, he strongly promoted British exports such as conker wine and badger cheese and demanded that the UK be acknowledged as the clear trade leader out of all the world’s authoritarian third world nations.
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The Annual Maypylon Dance

May 1, 2017, 1:03 am
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Only children whose parents had lost either their jobs or their lives were selected to take part in the annual Scarfolk Maypylon Dance. On the face of it, the tradition welcomed in Spring, but it was really just an exercise in cutting unnecessary welfare expenditure. Funds were rerouted to more important undertakings such as supporting the arms industry, which sold weapons to volatile nations that regularly threatened Britain with war.

Super-conductive copper ribbons were used during the dance because it was believed that their combination with 400,000 volts and expendable children opened a vortex to an alternate dimension where household items were always on sale and could be purchased for a fraction of the price. Items that were brought back through the vortex, however, risked corruption by dark forces, as witnessed on May 1st 1971 when Scarfolk was overrun by a vast horde of malevolent, sentient food blenders.

For more May Day celebrations, see the Scarfolk Wicker Man.
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Benefits Assessment Bouncers (1972)

May 10, 2017, 2:01 am
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In 1972 the council outsourced its sick and disability benefits assessment service to a team of nightclub bouncers. The bouncers broke into the homes of claimants in the dead of night, shone lights in their faces and screamed threats at them.

Claimants who were identified as frauds were thrown down their own stairs, often repeatedly, to ensure that their physical and mental conditions matched their claims.

Genuine claimants were offered a menu of euthanasia options of varying price and bullied into choosing the most expensive, the so-called 'Kill Pill', which also contained a mild explosive (see poster above). However, claimants did have the choice to nominate another family member who could commit suicide in their place.

People who refused to take their own lives were officially recategorised as "potentially hazardous biological litter"; they were consequently charged with self-fly-tipping and taken away in vast fleets of skips on the first Monday of every month.
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"Children: The Cause of All Crime"

May 18, 2017, 7:50 am
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In 1970 the Scarfolk Crime Commission embarked on the largest study into crime to date. After two years of intense investigation it found a startling correlation between the types of people who commit crime and their early life experiences.

The findings were unequivocal: 100% of criminals had also once been children.

The council immediately put into effect acts intended to reduce, if not entirely eradicate this insidious cause of crime. Thousands of children were rounded up in camps. Toys were burnt in massive pyres. Adults were sterilised. Anyone who had been in regular contact with children, or had ever been a child, was quarantined in vast bunkers specially built several storeys below the council building.

Though Scarfolk was reduced to a ghost town, the scheme proved a success. During the first month that these stringent measures had been implemented not one crime had been committed. Consequently, at the 1972 Conference of Sham Utopias, a local conservative MP predicted that the most successful towns, and even countries, of the future will be those that eradicate all citizens who have any connection to, or dealings with, children or the adults they grow into.

For more about bad children, see: Brood parasites, Serious Infant Dental Assault, the Never Go with Strange Children campaign and the Infant Liberation Front terror group.
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Police Interrogation Safewords

May 31, 2017, 6:48 am
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Almost everybody endured police interrogations at some point during the 1970s. They were so frequent that most families had a packed bag by the front door (people were expected to bring a spare change of underwear and their own first-aid supplies).

If by chance all members of a family were summoned together, they might make a day of it, have a picnic in the prison facility's Garden of Incorruptibility and watch the interrogation of their loved ones on big monitors. Laugh tracks were included to minimise distress.

While the security services were openly proud of their slogans such as "we promise to raise a glass to those who don't confess", if a detainee did suffer irreversible psychological or physical damage as a result of their interrogation, the family was awarded a £5 book token and a potted cactus as compensation.

More about Scarfolk Security Services.
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"Wardrobe Men"

June 15, 2017, 7:49 am
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In 1973 there was an increase in complaints about odd, mumbling men appearing spontaneously in people's wardrobes. The council allocated funds to have them removed, but their efforts were in vain. No sooner had they expelled a 'wardrobe man' than another would appear in his place. Inexplicably, the men somehow found their way into residents' wardrobes regardless of how well doors and windows had been secured.

When the council realised that the wardrobe men's whispered mumbles were detailed (albeit slowed down, backward) accounts of what they saw and heard from their closeted vantage points, it quickly registered the mysterious men as state employees. Once a week, local council workers recorded the wardrobe men's accounts onto wax reels, processed the audio in vast laboratories and prosecuted residents who contravened any of the local laws, which changed almost daily.



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Sing-a-Long-a-Savagery (1970s Toy)

June 22, 2017, 7:51 am
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In order to prepare children for adulthood, parents in Scarfolk wanted to familiarise their toddlers with life's cruelties as soon as possible. Toy and game manufacturers were only happy to oblige.

ScarToys'Sing-a-long-a-Savagery Music Box TV (see above) contained gruesome images of decapitation, dismemberment and disembowelment by artists such as Goya, Caravaggio and Hieronymus Bosch. The images were accompanied by nursery rhymes such as Girls & Boys Come Out To Maim, Mary Had a Little Laceration, and Wrinkle, Wrinkle, Little Scar (See Discovering Scarfolk p. 159 for more details).

Additionally, children were forced to endure a variety of traumas they might typically face as adults. These included peer-group rejection, physical and mental degeneration (achieved with regular bleach injections and a cricket bat), and being hunted by the official Women's Institute sniper.

For more toys and games see: The Drowning Game, Mr Liver Head, Pollute, Mr Smug, Landmine, Action Man Waterboarding Playset and Lung Puppy.
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Confirmation Bias Goggles (1970)

June 29, 2017, 8:03 am
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Confirmation Bias Goggles were the first wearable technology to be wired directly into the brain. In addition to the pinhead-sized speaker which perpetually broadcast the statement 'Of course you're right!' into the auditory cortex, the goggles' sensors could also switch off those parts of the brain that deal with troublesome emotions and feelings such as empathy, decency and healthy scepticism.

By tapping into the wearer's biases, the goggles literally deleted undesirable objects from the wearer's field of vision. Sights that were too dominant to be erased completely were visually falsified to validate the wearer's preconceptions.

By 1971, the state had adapted the goggles for use in schools. Children were told precisely what to think and what their personal opinions as adults would be.  Unsurprisingly, everybody who tried the goggles, without exception, thought that they were a great idea.


See also: De-education classes, Rub-on transfer newspapers, Mindborstal drug, The Fact Ban, and Children & Hallucinogens: The Future of Discipline.

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Vegetable Politicians

July 6, 2017, 7:25 am
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Many publications in the 1970s attempted to predict how we might live in the future. The above excerpt from the Children's Journal of Political Science & Catering showed that the state’s official soothsayers often came uncannily close to reality.

Scarfolk, which was among the most progressive towns in the UK, actually trialled a vegetable-based political system in the mid-1970s. Citizens could elect the vegetable that they believed would best lead the town. However, despite the wide range of vegetables and legumes available, the system was quickly reduced to a binary one when extremist pro-legume groups clashed with pro-tuber factions in political allotments and nurseries across the region.

Additionally, any vegetables considered to be of foreign origin were interned in farm camps, later to be deported.

Further reading. For information about the conversion of children into kitchen appliances, see 'Discovering Scarfolk'p. 121-123.

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The 2ndth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1973)

July 21, 2017, 2:00 am
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[click to enlarge]

While many of Pan's horror collections dealt with typical horror fare – the supernatural, the black arts, and murder – The 2ndth Pan Book of Horror Stories, published in Scarfolk in 1973, collected stories about the most fearful abomination in all of creation: mankind.

Mankind was the only organism to top both the government's list of greatest threats and its list of most endangered species and it's very likely there was a correlation.

Scarfolk Council was particularly keen to emphasise the potential rarity, thus value, of humans. It had bred thousands of useless people in a secret eugenics experiment, which had run out of funds, and needed to sell off the surplus to recoup some of its losses.

Unfortunately, the council flooded the market. By 1975, a small group of nondescript humans could be picked up for as little as £25 and as the decade drew to a close charity shops were full of them. Eventually, a landfill site was opened and the council gave all the unwanted people the bus fare that would take them to their final resting place.
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Lip Sewing Kit (1970- )

July 28, 2017, 2:42 am
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In 1970s Scarfolk, women over the age of 18 were legally required to be a certain weight and shape. If those who didn't conform to official regulations dared to go outside during daylight hours (assuming they had the appropriate free-movement paperwork), they were stopped on the street by police armed with tape measures, weight scales and portable plastic surgery instruments.

Because kerbside operations were frequently botched, many women went to drastic lengths to meet the government's slender ideal. An example of this was the Lip Sewing Kit (see above) which thousands of women received as Christmas and birthday gifts. It was also sometimes prescribed by doctors.

The kits had originally served a different purpose. They were the brainchild of a government welfare minister (and cotton thread magnate) whose department had previously used them to silence political prisoners and other enemies of the state. When the supply of all such people was exhausted, a commercial application for the product had been sought.

For more about women's rights, see unwed mothers and 'Bastard Lanes', the 'Spread -Em Campaign', romance novels, 'Seducing Students & Secretaries' (BBC 1, 1977) and the 'Women Outside' I-Spy book.
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