As you may be aware, I have been the globe’s leading authority on vehicular anthropomorphization ever since the University of Me at The Inside of My Skull gave me a honorary Associate’s Degree in Vehicular Anthropomorphization, the highest honor in that field recorded to date. When it comes to giving car human traits like eyes and mouths and expressions and souls, I have declared myself the foremost authority. That’s why I feel I’m qualified to issue this important and timely warning: the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department’s child safety-teaching police car, Blinky, is one of the worst examples of vehicular anthropomorphization known to humankind. It’s a terrifying nightmare, and everyone needs to be made aware of it, for their own safety.
Our own Thomas Hundal, a Toronto resident and alleged Canadian himself, spotted Blinky at the Honda Indy Toronto race and took some photos of the 1982-ish Dodge Gran Fury in all of its strangely sort-of-humanized non-glory. Blinky is awkward, misguided, and freakish. There are many good ways to give an inanimate car a recognizable, relatable face that can convey emotion and communicate complex ideas; Blinky accomplishes none of these things, and can only truly communicate a sense of deep-seated, unsettling fear. Let’s examine why!
First, and I feel like I should apologize to you here, but you really do need to see what Blinky looks like. You may want to be sure you’re sitting, and if you’re pregnant, let’s not take any chances. Why not step away from the computer? All good? Okay, here we go:
Oh jeez. As much as one may prepare, I don’t think anyone is truly ready for Blinky.
Before we start to really analyze Blinky, let’s go into a bit of history about the car and its role with the Toronto Metropolitan Police. The goal of teaching kids about traffic safety has long been a concern for police departments, and the idea of conveying this information via a car that is sentient and able to communicate in some way has been around a while. In 1957, British Petroleum created a character named Mr. Beep, an anthropomorphized car that taught kids about traffic safety.
Mr. Beep – which was built out of a highly modified Ford Zephyr – had a much more effective anthropomorphizing scheme. You can see what Mr.Beep was like in this old film:
Mr.Beep’s face was remarkably simple, and replaced all visual elements on the front of the car entirely. Headlight-like large eyes, a small nose/badge triangle, and a grille/bumper mouth were the only elements, and while perhaps a bit oversimplified, they worked. Mr.Beep was cute and approachable. Sure, the essence of “car” was a bit lost on the front end, but here the simplicity worked in the mascot’s favor.
While Mr.Beep was helping Canadian children avoid being smacked around by cars, the Toronto Metropolitan Police in the mid-1960s decided they needed a talking safety car of their own; why should BP have all the talking safety car glory? Metro Toronto Police Sergeant Roy Wilson reached out to a local radio station to help sponsor his vision, and with their assistance was able to convert one of the department’s Plymouth Furies into a strange fever dream of an anthropomorphized car.
Here’s the first version of Blinky, based on what I believe is a 1978 Plymouth Fury:
Here’s what a ’78 Fury looked like, just to confirm:
Even though the Fury has a fairly bold “face” with lights that could become eyes and a grille that could become a mouth, Wilson’s design ignored all that and effectively just piled eyes, eyebrows, and a large nose atop the windshield and hood of the car. It’s inelegant and completely disregards the design of the car itself.
Here’s another early Blinky:
The strange design rendered the car undrivable, too, hence the tow.
When the design was updated in the early 1980s, moving to a 1982-ish Plymouth Gran Fury Toronto police car, now in white, the same principles applied: just slap a bunch of oversized facial features onto the car.
The result, I think you’ll agree, is hideous. I cannot fathom why some of these decisions were made. Why was it so important that Blinky have that massive nose, with those two huge, strangely prominent nostrils being one of the dominant features of the front end? It was the 80s, perhaps the goal was to make it easy to really hoover up some nose candy from the evidence lockers, but somehow I suspect that wasn’t the plan.
And what’s with those weird eyes? To house the blinking, creepily rolling eyes, a huge mass of material had to be installed atop the windshield, rendering the car, as I mentioned, impossible to drive, hence the need to tow it everywhere. It’s so deeply clunky and thoughtless, I can’t believe it ever got built like this. Here, look at the profile of this thing:
Why was this considered okay? Look how much mass is between the A-pillar and those strange, long-lashed eyes, sleepily watching you from underneath the twin leeches of those eyebrows? Look at the length of that nose, and the bulbous, cartilaginous mass of nostril and nose tip at the end? What sort of beast does this suggest? A llama? A hippo? Some kind of ibex thing? It has nothing to do with the look of the car, of course, and renders the whole vehicle useless.
I mean, look at this:
Can you imagine any kid finding this appealing? It’s terrifying! It’s some kind of massive beast, and those huge dead eyes with their heavy lids and long lashes just suggest some sort of casual amorality that would let this thing roll its eyes while it crushes you to blood!
I’m not even entirely kidding; there’s references to how, for older student (think 8th graders) demonstrations, Blinky’s operators would have
“Blinky slowly backing over a doll filled with red paint, graphically illustrating the end result of what happens to children who don’t properly observe their surroundings – red asphalt.”
They had it roll over a doll filled with fake blood? Did the guy who did the Saw movies come up with this idea? Was everyone involved with this project some manner of maple sap-drunk sicko?
Even other variants of the Blinky character seemed to understand how misguided this anthropomorphizing attempt was; in 1975, a Blinky animation was commissioned, and as you can see, it takes a wildly different approach:
Headlights become eyes, grille becomes mouth, and all is right in the world once again. Granted, this is just a cartoon, and you can get away with anything, but, significantly, it’s still a simpler arrangement than the overdone huge nose/eyes/eyebrows setup of the physical Blinky.
Normally, I’d be worried about crushing some Canadian child’s precious memories of interacting with Blinky with my cold, hard criticism, but in this case I’m all but positive no human child could look at the monstrosity that is Blinky and feel anything but abject terror. There’s no need to be nostalgic about the disaster that is Blinky; I think the Toronto Police should commission a new, more appealing, less nightmarish Blinky, then through a parade where the old Blinky is crushed, in full view of the children, so that they know it can no longer hurt them.
I’m all for idiosyncratic anthropomorphizations and character, but that’s not what Blinky is. Blinky is a series of odious missteps in along the path of vehicle anthropomorphizing, and only has value as a warning to future generations to never make these mistakes again.
Is that harsh? Good. It needs to be. Get away from me, Blinky.
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