Argh!

These fucking ads, man. I'm still slightly traumatized by these public service television advertisements that aired on New Zealand television in the early 2000s, and I think everybody else who saw them on telly back then is as well.

They were designed to warn you of the dangers of accidents around the house, and they sure fucking did that. They would start off like all the other ads, with some shining spokesperson extoling the virtues of snack bars or bath heaters or paint, and then everything would suddenly go horribly wrong and they'd be lying on the ground, bleeding and broken, because the real dangers are always in the home.

The most infamous featured a perky mum who trips over some kids' toys and goes face first into a glass table, lying bleeding and whimpering on the lounge floor as her children continue to play happily outside, but there also needs to be special mention of the broken leg of another victim who tumbles down the stairs, which pokes at at an especially nauseating angle.

The actual events were horrific enough, but the lasting effect was that they made you a little bit scared of all the other ads as well, because no matter how innocuous they were, you were still just waiting for something horrible and unexpected to happen. Every single ad was tainted by these warnings, for years afterwards.

They worked, though, I can't climb a ladder without thinking of the guy who crashes to the ground (in one glorious unbroken shot). The horrific PSAs the UK produced in the 1970s - like the incredible Apaches - had a generation of kids terrified of farms and powerlines, and that sort of shock tactic was still going strong, well into the 21st century.