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Nightmarish 1987 PSA: Grim Reaper goes bowling

Mark Frauenfelder at 10:42 am Mon, Jul 16, 2007

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Picture 1-78 Mark says: "Back in 1987, there was an ad on Australian TV warning people about AIDS. This ad featured a scary-as-hell Grim Reaper bowling for AIDS victims. He'd knock you down and you'd be dead from AIDS. This ad scared the absolute crap out of me, being 6 at the time. I'd lie awake in bed at night scared that the grim reaper was going to come into my bedroom and give me AIDS. Or that he'd be waiting with his bowling ball at the end of our hallway when I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet." Link

Reader comment:

Sam says:

I remember a news story I saw on TV sometime in the early 90's. It was about a man who went on a business trip and mysteriously came home infected with HIV. Neither he or his wife could explain how he had gotten the disease. The reporter and experts could not come to a conclusion either. At the conclusion of the story the reporter explained how people can randomly get HIV and AIDS and to watch out because it could happen to anybody.

The Grim Reaper commercial seems to teach the same thing: you can randomly get AIDS at any time for no apparent reason. Education at it's finest.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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