You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Public service announcement

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
Do not take any of the drugs that we took in making this cartoon.

Ah, the 1970’s. When even cartoons warning us about the evils of drugs still had a good dose of psychedelia in their veins.

Granted, that dichotomy may have been the point. You could read this ad as being a depiction of a drug trip that goes bad. Oh, sure, at first it’s all “groovy” colors and “far out” movements, but next thing you know, you’re trapped in a coffin with those creepy twins the Ghost of Christmas Present kept hidden under their robes* as they suck the youth out of you.

*(For anyone who hasn’t read the original A Christmas Carol novel or seen the 1984 film version with George C. Scott, that’s probably a very confusing reference.)

And I’ll admit, I’m tickled by how, a decade before the term “gateway drug” was popularized, we see the drugs leading our hero down the path to a literal gateway.

But more than anything, what blows my mind is, according to the YouTube description, this was a Hanna-Barbera production. For anyone familiar with Hanna-Barbera cartoons from the 1970s, with their often static framing, jerky movements, and plethora of cost-cutting tricks … well, seeing what they could do when allowed to cut loose is really something.