Top table

In the 1970s and early 80s there were a series of public information films aimed at children.  These were cartoons with a cat, Charley, who would regularly warn children about the dangers of playing with matches, going off with strangers and playing by the river.  The tone suggests they were aimed at very young children, who perhaps were given more freedom to play outside than the 6 year-olds today.

So far, so good.

And I think we can all agree that today's young children would never be allowed to play in the street unsupervised, because of Evil Paedophiles (despite the fact that abduction / incident rates haven't gone up at all since the 1950s - it's just a hot topic for the media so it gets more publicity).  We don't need to give children these messages as they're so rarely without a teacher or parent to supervise them.  So in some ways today's children are more over-protected.

Until you see this:

The title of this video is "Charley says 'Tables are Dangerous'".

Let's just recap on that one.  Tables.  Tables are dangerous.  Tables.  How big a problem was this that the government decided to make a public information film about it?  Was it the leading cause of injury amongst 5 year-olds in 1976?  Was the NHS overstretched because of hospital admissions owing to table-related frivolity?

Whilst the children of the 70s were allowed to play outdoors by themselves, at least the noughties' children aren't stupid enough to be injured by flatpack furniture.

Honestly, Charley, if you genuinely manage to get hurt by a table, I think we can all agree that's natural selection taking place right there.  Please don't pass your rubbish hurt-by-a-table genes along.

With a bit of luck Charlie's had his bollocks lopped off anyway.  You can see that one in "Charley says 'Neutering hurts!'"