Thursday 18 June 2015

Possessed Birthday Cards (1978)

Bubbles, the clown who appeared in the BBC TV testcard, was very popular in the 1970s. He even had his own animated public information series and range of merchandising including toys, T-shirts, mugs, greetings cards and surgical instruments.

However, in 1978, parents became alarmed when they discovered that many of the products were possessed by the spirit of an embittered ex-TV presenter, Simon Gomorrah, who had hosted a daytime programme called 'Housewife versus Anaconda!', before it was suddenly cancelled without warning. It wasn't until several months after Gomorrah's suicide that Bubbles merchandising began displaying supernatural activity.


For example, the Bubbles birthday greetings card, as pictured above, appeared to be perfectly normal when it was sold in the shops. But, once it had been given to a child, Bubbles would transform during the night into a demonic, vulgar entity that shouted out vulgar profanities and urinated at anyone who came within shot.


Gomorrah's body was eventually exhumed and his feet were fitted with oversized, concrete-filled clown shoes so that his spirit could no longer wander the earthly plane.

4 comments:

  1. Burberry Withership20 June 2015 at 08:50

    My sister was given one of these cards in 1978, she used to pray to it in the early hours is the morning and offer up sacrificial hamsters...

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  2. At last a website/Blog I can truly believe in.
    Excellent imagery, very creative, and peverse nostalgia.
    Slightly reminds me of b3ta.org and Anxiety culture.

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  3. I've bought ransom cards wich finally showed smiling dolphins and nice congrats in rainbow letters to confused parents.
    Clowns always frightened me, but I think that it might come from the stuff used by the printer.
    The colors smells like turpentine or irish ink, and I found that the wood used for the paper came from a forest where many witches were burned then hanged, not nesserarily in that order.
    No way. Now I'm back with the ol' information posters letters, cissors, glue and gloves.

    Mouldysauerkraut

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  4. The "now your 5 card" was incendiary, a complete riot,dozens of properties were razed in the '70s , it was tremendous high jinx...

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