I can put my arm back on, but you can’t stop crying hysterically

I’m not ashamed to admit that when I was a kid, this PSA for the War Amps used to scare the unbridled Jesus out of me. And looking at the comments following the video, I can see that I wasn’t nearly alone.

I mean, look at it! A disturbingly lifelike robot child flipping and somersaulting through whirling blades and gears? Mechanical arms getting severed at the shoulder blade? Ambient sounds horrific enough to put Skinny Puppy on notice? What’s not to cry and wet your pants about?

Even watching it now, as a thirty year old man, I have a hard time denying that this ad was bound to scare children all over the country.

I mean, children are scared of all sorts of ridiculous things, despite the fact that a lot of those things aren’t especially scary. Grimace, for example, seems like the sort of fellow who would have scared all kinds of children. But to describe such a friendly dude as “scary,” when all he’s after is a good time, is inaccurate to the point of unjust.

But this PSA? Yeah, it’s totally a hundred percent scary. If you’re like me, and this commercial frightened the blinding shit out of you when you were a kid, then you were right on the money. Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise. And yeah, to the extent that none of my limbs have ever been severed, I guess I’ve got to hand it to the War Amps for a thoroughly successful campaign.

For the record, I want to stress that this ad doesn’t scare me anymore. I mean, I just watched it five or six times in a row, and I’m fine. But I wouldn’t have watched it if any children had been around, that’s for sure.

To be fair, I should note a couple of bright sides to this campaign. The first is that the conversation that I had as a young child with my father, who assured me that the PSA was nothing to be scared of, ranks among one of my better childhood memories. I mean, he was blatantly lying, because this ad is objectively terrifying. But it’s still one of those otherwise nondescript moments that gave me a really positive sense of what it might mean to be a father.

The second is the fact that a band from Toronto drew their name from this ad. And frankly, the only reason I’m mentioning that is to prevent some indie jerk from pointing it out in the comments as if I didn’t already know it. What, you think I’ve never been to Wavelength?

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