The Infamous Class 3 School Illustration (1976-1979)

On 10 September, 1976, dozens of children, including every single pupil from class 3, Scarfolk High School, vanished on their way to school. A police operation was launched but no clues were ever found. The children were pronounced dead the following Monday, a mere three days later.

Every year thereafter, the police commissioned their sketch artist to draw, in the style of a school photograph, how the missing children might have looked (albeit with their faces removed) had they not disappeared in mysterious circumstances. This was sent to the bereaved parents of class 3 at an exorbitant cost of £31.25.

In the 1979 class sketch, one parent noticed a small label on one of the faceless figure's clothes that contained a code word only their child could have known. 

Under mounting pressure from parents, the police eventually raided their artist's studio and found 347 children in his cellar where many had been held captive for several years. The police immediately seized and confined the children as evidence in a crime investigation, which, after much dithering, ultimately never went to court leaving the families no choice but to pursue a private prosecution against the kidnapper. 

As the children had already been pronounced dead and the cost of amending the relevant paperwork was high, they were given away as prizes in the Scarfolk police raffle, which helped pay the legal fees of their sketch artist, who, it turns out, was the son of Scarfolk's police commissioner.

Let's Think About... Booklet (1971- )

The Let's Think About... booklet was published by Scarfolk Council Schools & Child Welfare Services department in 1971. It was designed for use in the classroom and encouraged children between the ages of five and nine to focus on a series of highly traumatic images and events.

Parents and teachers assumed that the booklet was based on psychological research but it had no scientific basis whatsoever. The booklet's medically untrained author was one of the dinner ladies from the council canteen before she was fired for attempting to slip strychnine into bowls of blancmange.

Despite the scandal, the booklet remained on the school curriculum for many years and the author was invited by the council to pen an updated edition from her prison cell in 1979.

'Little Lady' Breath Mirror Corpse Detection Set (mid-70s)

Apocalyptic toys were all the rage in the late 1970s, not that they were thought of as apocalyptic at the time. Citizens didn't fear their annihilation; they quite looked forward to demonstrating their 'Dunkirk spirit' with the misguided belief that it would somehow bring the country together. It didn't occur to them that their dogmatic nationalism might instead bring about the demise of the nation.

As the country moved toward collapse, social unrest and inevitable casualties increased. The paranoid state began anonymously exterminating citizens who so much as hinted at insurrection. Average (and the vast numbers of below-average) people were killed in street clashes between opposing factions and there were spates of frightened suicides.

Scar Toys exploited this expanding market opportunity and created a range of toys aimed at the many children in the process of being orphaned. One such toy, the Breath Mirror Set, aimed at young girls, was designed to accompany their more traditional beauty/vanity toys. The deluxe set (see picture above) included one mirror for each parent, colour-coded as per gender convention: pink for girls, blue for boys.

The wording on the back of the packaging encouraged children to use the mirrors beyond the death of their own parents. Included was a little booklet into which little pink stars could be affixed for every corpse that was identified using the mirrors. Highly sought-after prizes were awarded to the girls with the most stars and council archival documents reveal that the police turned a blind eye when gangs of little girls began slaughtering adults in frenzied attempts to accumulate more stars.

Under 7s Fire Service

The Under-7s Fire Service was one of several children's emergency services in Scarfolk. There was also a mountain/volcano* rescue team and an SAS-style toddler regiment. The children received little training but they did get a lolly if they were good and/or survived their first week of active duty.

Enrolment in such organisations became mandatory when a government study revealed that parents were only putting forward their least favourite children. This was a serious issue for the government because it diverted workloads away from, and reduced target quotas of, state child recycling facilities, which had been set up at great cost to deal specifically with processing unwanted, less-valuable offspring.


* Many children were sent to work at Lavaland.

See also: child terror groups and children's homicide forensics teams.

Christmas Meat Orders

Scarfolk's Dr Hushson, who surgically adapted children into kitchen utensils for the catering industry, also genetically modified children to grow a variety of foods on, and in, their bodies (see Discovering Scarfolk p. 120-123).

Taking sausage DNA, Hushson created the 'sausage orphan', which genetically substituted a child's face - something Hushson had long considered redundant - with a sausage or luncheon meat.

By the end of the 1970s, sausage orphans or 'kids in blankets' had become a traditional part of a Scarfolk Christmas lunch. Orders were taken weeks in advance and in the days leading up to the festivities, frightened sausage orphans would huddle together in meat curing/smoking rooms to await their fate.

See also: Scarbrand pie filling; minor meat cuts; Mr Liver Head; recycling surgical waste; the Eating Children book.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year from all the staff at Scarfolk Council!

Corporal (& Capital) Punishment

The Scarfolk Education Board was very keen on administering corporal punishment from the moment an infant entered the school system. Punishment was meted out for a wide range of misdemeanours including: 'being less than 5ft tall', 'not being able to clearly elucidate the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein via the medium of mime' and 'poor attendance due to injuries sustained as a result of corporal punishment'.

The reason for the early introduction of corporal discipline was to familiarise children with the idea of capital, or 'grown up', punishment and the fact that it was very expensive. Convicts were expected to meet the exorbitant costs personally, so children likely to commit capital offences were advised to start saving their pocket money from a young age. 'Execution gift tokens' were given at birthdays and Christmas by well-meaning grandparents, as well as given as prizes by schools for spying and reporting on classmates.

The 'Fingers On Lips' Campaign (1978)

Crime in Scarfolk did not rise substantially between 1976 and 1977, largely due to the latest in thought detection techniques* and random public executions. The government, however, did announce that there had been a significant increase in naughtiness.

Many citizens criticised the state for treating them like children. The council denied this but in January 1979, thousands received orders to put 'fingers on lips' while in public. Scarfolk fell silent.

Specially trained police officers patrolled streets, public and private buildings, and handed out on-the-spot fines for various misdemeanours such as not standing up straight, running in corridors and not paying attention. At the officer's discretion, the fines could be substituted for corporal punishment with a slipper, belt, cane or rabid Alsatian.

By the summer of 1979, the scheme was in chaos: So many people had been sent to 'stand in the corner' that a new, much larger corner had to be built - at a cost of £2 million - to accommodate the cramped detainees. In August alone, 94 people died after they raised their hands to go to the toilet but were not given permission. They had simply been forgotten.

At the end of the decade, the council decided that because of a small handful of troublemakers, the whole town would have to be punished: Everyone would have to resit the 1970s.

* See thought-detector vans and thought policy leaflets.

The Ritual & Decorative Arson Newsletter (1972)

The Ritual & Decorative Arson Newsletter was published between 1970 and 1976. Its editor was Trevor Vestige who also managed the petrol station where Joe and Oliver Bush disappeared in 1970 (see Discovering Scarfolk for more details).

This copy was banned by the council after marauding children wearing ceremonial masks torched and laid waste to half of Scarfolk on Halloween, 1972. Despite the ban, the council torched the other half of the town the following spring because it "looked uneven".

Because the public information office had burned down citizens weren't warned and many perished in the flames. Grieving family members, however, were compensated with splendid, top-of-the-range trowel and funerary urn sets.

Happy Halloween from everyone at Scarfolk Council.

Little Head (from Clay Stool)

Clay Stool was a daytime children's TV programme which we introduced a while back (you can listen to the theme tune here).

Many readers will remember the programme's cast of toys (see above), some of which became stars in their own right: Big Ted, Hamble, Humpty and Jemima.

Many, however, have forgotten 'Little Head', who only became a regular due to a typo on the programme's props list, which was supposed to have requested 'Little Ted'. Production staff were still frantically looking for an appropriately-sized head literally minutes before the programme went out live. A quick-thinking studio manager (who some believe was telekinetically controlled by Hamble) ended the panic by decapitating one of the cameramen, who had been scheduled for ritual recycling anyway.

Producers hoped that children wouldn't notice that Little Ted had replaced Little Head in the following week's episode, but they did. Thousands wrote in demanding that Little Head be reinstated.

Little Head eventually received his own line of merchandising (including a very popular biscuit barrel). He went on to host a Saturday evening primetime show, which involved an electric current being passed through his cranium and him yelping out the names and addresses of people who, in his opinion, did not deserve welfare payments.

Laissez–faire Childcare (1978)

In 1978, Scarfolk Health Council launched a campaign which exploited people's fear of children (especially those with uncontrolled supernatural powers), to normalise the idea of letting kids do whatever they want without censure.

It was no accident that the infants in the campaign's various posters were depicted smoking, drinking and licking chocolate-covered asbestos.

A 1979 magazine interview revealed that the campaign had been privately funded by Mrs Bottomlip, a pensioner who worked in the local cancer charity shop on Scarfolk High Street. Her reasons were largely personal. Apart from the fact that she enjoyed her part-time job and "wouldn't ever want it to end because one meets such lovely people and it gets me out of the house", her son worked for a cancer research institute. Mrs Bottomlip was concerned that he, along with a whole generation of scientists and support staff, could find themselves out of work unless the number of people developing cancer was maintained, or preferably raised.

For her support of cancer research, the institute presented her with an award, which, unbeknownst to science at the time, was made from highly carcinogenic materials. 

Play Safe Public Information Campaign (1979)

 

While the state frequently warned children about the dangers of playing on icy ponds, near electrical substations and in open-air, biological weapons laboratories, it failed to take into consideration the decade's plethora of science fiction films and TV programmes, which inspired space-themed games up and down the country.

Scarfolk children, who were known to take greater risks during play, initiated an unfortunate trend that started claiming lives. In 1977, two schoolboys from Scarfolk’s Junior Indoctrination Facility dared each other to endure the harsh extremities of space. Their corpses were eventually located drifting a few hundred miles from earth by tracking the surveillance devices that had been implanted in their frontal lobes at birth.

Concerned parents demanded that the state act immediately. Two years later, (and only after the government realised its child labour factories were losing a steady flow of under-10s), a public information campaign was launched which warned minors about leaving the earth's atmosphere (see poster above). Scarfolk Council also laid many miles of high-altitude, electrified fencing to repel innocent children who might unwittingly stray into outer space.

Confirmation Bias Goggles (1970)

Confirmation Bias Goggles were the first wearable technology to be wired directly into the brain. In addition to the pinhead-sized speaker which perpetually broadcast the statement 'Of course you're right!' into the auditory cortex, the goggles' sensors could also switch off those parts of the brain that deal with troublesome emotions and feelings such as empathy, decency and healthy scepticism.

By tapping into the wearer's biases, the goggles literally deleted undesirable objects from the wearer's field of vision. Sights that were too dominant to be erased completely were visually falsified to validate the wearer's preconceptions.

By 1971, the state had adapted the goggles for use in schools. Children were told precisely what to think and what their personal opinions as adults would be.  Unsurprisingly, everybody who tried the goggles, without exception, thought that they were a great idea.


See also: De-education classes, Rub-on transfer newspapers, Mindborstal drug, The Fact Ban, and Children & Hallucinogens: The Future of Discipline.

Sing-a-Long-a-Savagery (1970s Toy)

In order to prepare children for adulthood, parents in Scarfolk wanted to familiarise their toddlers with life's cruelties as soon as possible. Toy and game manufacturers were only happy to oblige.

ScarToys' Sing-a-long-a-Savagery Music Box TV (see above) contained gruesome images of decapitation, dismemberment and disembowelment by artists such as Goya, Caravaggio and Hieronymus Bosch. The images were accompanied by nursery rhymes such as Girls & Boys Come Out To Maim, Mary Had a Little Laceration, and Wrinkle, Wrinkle, Little Scar (See Discovering Scarfolk p. 159 for more details).

Additionally, children were forced to endure a variety of traumas they might typically face as adults. These included peer-group rejection, physical and mental degeneration (achieved with regular bleach injections and a cricket bat), and being hunted by the official Women's Institute sniper.

For more toys and games see: The Drowning Game, Mr Liver Head, Pollute, Mr Smug, Landmine, Action Man Waterboarding Playset and Lung Puppy.

"Children: The Cause of All Crime"

In 1970 the Scarfolk Crime Commission embarked on the largest study into crime to date. After two years of intense investigation it found a startling correlation between the types of people who commit crime and their early life experiences.

The findings were unequivocal: 100% of criminals had also once been children.

The council immediately put into effect acts intended to reduce, if not entirely eradicate this insidious cause of crime. Thousands of children were rounded up in camps. Toys were burnt in massive pyres. Adults were sterilised. Anyone who had been in regular contact with children, or had ever been a child, was quarantined in vast bunkers specially built several storeys below the council building.

Though Scarfolk was reduced to a ghost town, the scheme proved a success. During the first month that these stringent measures had been implemented not one crime had been committed. Consequently, at the 1972 Conference of Sham Utopias, a local conservative MP predicted that the most successful towns, and even countries, of the future will be those that eradicate all citizens who have any connection to, or dealings with, children or the adults they grow into.

For more about bad children, see: Brood parasites, Serious Infant Dental Assault, the Never Go with Strange Children campaign and the Infant Liberation Front terror group.

The Annual Maypylon Dance

Only children whose parents had lost either their jobs or their lives were selected to take part in the annual Scarfolk Maypylon Dance. On the face of it, the tradition welcomed in Spring, but it was really just an exercise in cutting unnecessary welfare expenditure. Funds were rerouted to more important undertakings such as supporting the arms industry, which sold weapons to volatile nations that regularly threatened Britain with war.

Super-conductive copper ribbons were used during the dance because it was believed that their combination with 400,000 volts and expendable children opened a vortex to an alternate dimension where household items were always on sale and could be purchased for a fraction of the price. Items that were brought back through the vortex, however, risked corruption by dark forces, as witnessed on May 1st 1971 when Scarfolk was overrun by a vast horde of malevolent, sentient food blenders.

For more May Day celebrations, see the Scarfolk Wicker Man.

"Fun Fag Facts" (1974)

 

This info-tisement appeared in children's weekly magazines and on the walls of schools as part of the 1974 "Cigaretiquette campaign". It was funded in part by the SCRG (Scarfolk Cancer Research Group) who, having accidentally hired too many employees and purchased expensive premises, desperately needed a sharp increase in the numbers of cancer patients to attract the funding they required to maintain their organisation.

See also: confectionery-branded cigarettes of the 1970s.

Play & Learn Drowning Game (late 1970s)

This is part 2 of our feature on water-based toys (see last week's Action Man waterboarding accessories).

In the late 1970s, the government predicted that by the time the decade's children were grown up, suicides would be commonplace, perhaps even fashionable. This would be due to the "inevitable effects of living in a declining society in which the government has abandoned the welfare of its citizens in favour of fun hobbies it finds less boring", but mostly because "it will make suicide a compulsory part of national cutbacks".

The minister for welfare proposed that "suicide clubs" be established (they even launched a slogan: "Let's all say Felo-de-se!"), and that suicide methods be taught in schools and job centres by alternative-career advisors.

The government also funded several toy manufacturers who created products which cast suicide in a positive light. One such toy was the Play & Learn Drowning Game, which was also adapted into a console game in 1978.

Action Man Waterboarding Accessories (early 1970s)

The image below shows the instruction booklet that came with an Action Man accessory kit. Like many boys' toys, such as tractors, diggers and trains, the Action Man waterboarding kit was designed to help young boys develop a sense of what they might like to be when they grow up.

A survey conducted in 1978 found that the jobs boys most wanted when they were older included astronaut, engine driver and chief torturer for a totalitarian regime which uses its cover as a civilised democracy to commit national and international atrocities with impunity.

(click to enlarge)

For more posts about toys see: 'Deformed Anonymous Infant Demon', 'Mr Liver Head', 'Junior Will & Testament',  'Ethnic Cleansing Playset', 'Lung Puppy' and  'Surgical Toy Insertions Catalogue 1973-1974'.

Minor Meat Cuts Poster (1973)

An excerpt from a 1973 speech by Scarfolk's Minister for Family Welfare and Catering:

"In times of economic crisis, cuts are inevitable. We feel, however, that the citizens of Scarfolk should be directly involved in the process of how these cuts are implemented and that is why every household will soon receive a booklet describing all the cuts we currently recommend..."

Two weeks after the speech, thousands of poor families received Charcuterie for Beginners, which contained several pull-out posters, one of which is presented above.

More food-related austerity solutions from 1973 see HERE and HERE.

Disposable Children Bags

Discarded children were a serious problem in 1970s Scarfolk. Adults who had decided against parenthood, whether for reasons of finance or boredom, would dump their offspring in sacks by roadsides or in laybys.

Hungry children who had not been given the required sedative dosages often chewed their way out of the sacks and wandered into speeding traffic. Not only did these unwanted children cause hours of unnecessary delays to motorists, but a study showed that discarded children were responsible for close to a million pounds worth of damage to car bonnets, bumpers and windscreens in 1974 alone.

From January 1975, any 'Bag Baby' (as they came to be known) involved in a road accident that incurred costs to motorists, risked a fine of up to £125.