video: anti-smoking psa’s involving a joe camel puppet. they’re not as bad as you assume they are.

i can remember going down route 80 on a sunny afternoon as a child, being bombarded with billboards for cigarettes. among those ads was tall joe camel, telling the world to smoke up.

the big deal in the news at the time was the idea that because joe camel was a cartoon, he was designed to draw kids into smoking. as a kid, i never bought that crap for a minute. wake up america: kids don’t like camels. no one likes camels. even camels probably hate themselves.

kids love dogs, plain and simple. joe camel is another classic example of tobacco companies over-thinking things. if joe was a dog, i would have started smoking immediately.

dogs, like mcgruff, are smart. camels are stupid. they make unwise choices, like living in the desert and being ugly. kids hate being hot, and their ugly classmates. poor show, cigarette ads. you used the wrong animal.

-rob asaro

p.s. hey, national fire saftey council: why the hell’d you choose a bear? when smokey the bear came to my school, i was scared out of my mind! i would have run towards a fire to get away from a bear! smokey sent the wrong message to children: trust bears!

people at home, remember: don’t trust bears. black bears, grizzly bears, chicago bears, gummi bears, any one of them could kill you.