'Junior Will & Testament' (1977)

'Junior Will & Testament' (see newspaper advertisement below) was produced by Scarfolk Legal Games & Documents Ltd. While it familiarised children with the inevitability of their demises in a fun way, it also introduced them to their civic obligations. For example, many children were not aware that, like adults, they were subject to death duty.

Any child who owned more than 20 toys at the time of its passing was expected to part with 26.5% of them; 50% for more than 40 toys. After several years of the 'grave game tax', as it become known colloquially, the council noticed that many of the toys it was receiving in payment were clearly not the children's favourite toys.

From then on council workers would audit children every year to make sure that they weren't hiding away their most treasured toys. Particularly untrustworthy were very poorly children. Upon admission into a hospital, the council would confiscate children's possessions until their passing - the council couldn't take the risk that a frightened child may be tempted to withhold a favoured toy during its time of need.

In 1979, the millions of collected toys were melted down and made into an enormous, inflatable bouncy castle for politicians to play in on their many days off work.

1970s greetings cards

On the subject on stationers (see previous post), here's a greetings card sold during the mid-70s. This one was recently found behind a radiator in the Scarfolk police department of homicide and light entertainment.

Back in 1976 James Sprout was found dead in a Scarfolk canal. He was in a sack weighed down by his favourite toys (Action Man 'plague doctor', Fisher-Price 'death row' and concrete Play-doh)

A murder investigation was soon underway but the police ultimately found no evidence of foul play. They concluded that James had somehow inflicted upon himself a severe head injury from behind then, delirious, climbed into the sack. A forensics expert postulated that while James snoozed, the sack was then dragged four miles by either a vast litter of feral kittens, or the ghosts of unvaccinated foreigners, to the canal bridge where James fell to his watery grave.

When James' grief-stricken parents learned of their son's tragic fate they entered a lengthy period of mourning, consoling themselves by opening a beach-front bar in Barbados where they moved the day after James' funeral.