Things that used to (and still) freak me out...part 1

The 1970s was a difficult time to grow up. Sure, the intense racial antagonism in the United States had ebbed considerably. The Vietnam War was in its final days. Women's liberation made for the genesis of "girl power." The flower power movement had been replaced by increasingly plastic and disposable culture. And the creators of youth-targeted products must have been burning through their remaining mountains of mind-altering chemicals, because they produced several things that still can evoke moments of shear terror in me even today.

For example:

I was never, ever, ever tempted to drink drain cleaner because of this tripped out take on poison ingestion. Apparently, the makers of this commercial had experienced a horrible acid trip where the cleaning product bottles spoke to them and urged them to drink their contents. I hated this commercial and as a result I will not, to this day, drink Mr. Clean.

Similarly, this documentary on milk production from Sesame Street drove me f-ing insane then and now:

I guess the sense of urgency that all the people showed getting the little girl her milk struck me as being overly dramatic - looks like they're scrambling for a freaking national civil defense emergency. Not that I would claim that I was an early advocate for the return to breast feeding, but I suppose that I hated this because I knew there were alternate (and more healthy) sources of milk that might have been explored to quiet the little girl's despair. Likewise, the pseudo-prog rock inspired theme music with the annoying female singer seems to be the pinnacle of bloated rock excess that caused the angry reaction of punk music later in the decade. I guess that everything in the 1970s was exacerbated in our national consciousness due to Watergate - blame it on Nixon!