A Look at G.I.Joe 80’s PSA’s:#1

When I was growing up and growing out of cartoons, the last cartoon I watched daily was G.I.Joe. I loved that show and never missed it at 4:30.

One of the more memorable parts were the tags. It was a stupid rule that all children’s shows had to have some educational element (god forbid kids just be entertained). He-Man has Psa’s but they were usually lame attempts to connect the episode to a world lesson. Sometimes they worked but usually they were forced. 

G.I.Joe offered basic health and safety tips. Kids would be in a situation and a Joe would appear to talk them out of it safely. There were 35 produced of course some better than others. At first I wasn’t sure which to cover. Then I thought, why not all of them? 

So that’s what I’ll do, run thru one a day and give my opinion if the psa was good or not. Of course this is all in good fun, these are 40 years old almost! Let’s start with…

#1.Dont run away 

Featuring Shipwreck 

Here we have Shipwreck in the woods to warn this kid it’s not a good idea to run away. Ok let’s just say it, these have been mocked by how the characters would just “show up” out of the blue. Sometimes it would be fine, and other…eh. This one isn’t the worst. 

So the message is running away is bad. The advice to talk to his parents is fine but I would have leaned into the danger the kid was putting himself into more. I mean where was he going? How was he supposed to take care of himself? But the lesson is fine. 

By the way I loved shipwreck! He was the best badass! 

Rating-B