Bicycle safety videos have come a long way in the past 40 years. Did I really have to sit through stuff like this? Fortunately, I've repressed the memory.
I stumbled across the 15-minute film while checking around for other examples of online bicycle safety videos before posting “Illinois bicycle safety video online.” The vintage 1963 film is called, “One Got Fat,” and it details how a group of monkeys (no, not children) fall victim to grisly accidents — one by one — for not following the rules of the road and not using common sense.
The monkeys are riding their bicycles to a picnic, but the one who had a bike basket to carry all the sack lunches is the only one to survive. He gets to eat all the lunches, hence, “One Got Fat.”
You'll note in the 15-minute film that none of the children (monkeys) are wearing helmets. That's OK; helmets probably aren't much help when being run over by a steamroller or an 18-wheeler or when tumbling into a bottomless manhole.
Do you recognize the narrator's voice? That's character actor Edward Everett Horton, who also served as the narrator for “Fractured Fairy Tales” on “Rocky and his Friends” aka “The Bullwinkle Show” in the late '50s and early 60s.
Quite a few people at the Internet Archive remember watching this movie at school.
Reflecting on the film and ignoring all the weird stuff, I realized the safety message holds up today. Use hand signals, obey traffic signs, don't ride against traffic or on the sidewalk, use lights and reflectors at night, keep your bike tuned up, and don't ride with a fat monkey on the handlebars.
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