Canada Made Really Weird PSAs...

these PSAs are so cute i wish canada was real

No longer a girl, but as an autistic child I read about girls “chasing boys” during recess, and I took that literally. Wanting to be a Normal Girl, I chose a boy pretty much at random and chased him down every day at recess. No one stopped me, and I have no idea what I planned to do if I ever caught him. I kind of knew that would never happen

the “little lungs in a great big world” for anti smoking was so terrifying. it was so realistic and it was so creepy and like meaty

Whenever Kurtis explains a joke, it's actually a joke itself. The punchline is that explaining jokes usually ruin them, so as a professional comedian, he's constantly ruining his jokes in an ironic way. Because it's ironic, the joke is not actually ruined, but instead trumped by the joke of explaining it.

They showed us the house hippo psa in school during a lesson on media literacy. I remember being so bummed out that house hippos don’t exist. In my heart, I still believe.

The moral: Every character in a Kurtis sketch is allergic to peanuts until proven otherwise.

Fun thing about Goosebumps! I read somewhere that R.L. Stine avoided anything bad in his stories that was real - stuff like broken homes or abuse - because he wanted to make sure that the kids knew it was all fake and that they were safe from the stuff in his books. Plus he kept humor very prevalent in his books so that it wasn't too scary! Take this with a grain of salt, I remember reading it but honestly it could have been a load of house hippos, lol.

I SCREAMED with laughter when you said you thought house hippos were real, despite the PSA explicitly saying they aren't.

I have been searching for people who know the movie “Thirteen Ghosts” for literal years. I also watched that movie as a kid because, ya know, my mom decided age 8 was a good age for me to watch it. Ever since, that bloody bathtub woman has haunted my bath times. Never has she not popped into my head when turning on the bath water, or sometimes randomly in the shower shell invade my thoughts. So, expectedly, Ive brought her up to friends and partners alike, trying to find someone to relate to, and no one has ever had answers for me. It was to the point where I started to believe the movie was never actually a real movie, and I had imagined the whole thing as a kid. So Kurtis... I thank you for this experience and letting me know Im not insane for have bloody bathtub woman be a common thought in my life, and that I’ve actually been repeatedly gaslit about my completely rational fear.

When I was a kid I thought I wasn't Native "because I have hair and not feathers!" lmao. Like thanks to media I thought "real" Native people actually grew feathers out of their heads, because the ones in media are never seen without feathers in their hair. My dad still brings it up lol.

My wife was so enamored with the concept of little house hippos that I bought a few dozen little plastic hippos at a toy shop and hid them around the house. Peeking from behind books, on top of shelves, from under the dresser. For about two weeks I got to hear a little shriek of delight every time she found one.

I have vivid memories of this one that was about a girl trying various drugs and spiralling all along to: 1, 2, skipped some school. 3, 4, snort some more. 5, 6, need my fix. 7, 8, feels too late. And that one fucked me up, it started so chill and ended with her overdosing in a bathroom or some shit iirc? Fucked me up, man, truly did its job.

Watching the show Friends when I was little convinced me that every house had cameras in it that broadcast our lives to a different house, and we just happened to get to watch that one. I also thought that being bald meant you had the spots from Wonderbread bags on your head. No explanation there, I have no idea why I would ever have thought that.

Dude I thought during commercials animators drew the next part of the show really fast and that's why they needed ads, so the animators could take a break. I thought that for reruns too and I was always like "I wonder if the animators get tired of drawing the same episode again."

I remember those anti-smoking commercials of someone with a throat port talking and they sound horrifying and you can literally see them breathing through the port and it scarred me

danny is going to be so mad when he finds out you weren’t thinking critically

The thought of startling random children on the street had me in tears. Also I was at a rave last night and there was a girl with a Fushigi, I thought she was a witch

holy shit that “media monkey” one actually hit, was at the beginning of an ED when these came out and immediately filtered messages like that into a “do not listen” category. I know all of the other CCA PSAs, some of them embarrassingly by heart, but even though I watched that one just as much when it came out, I completely forgot it existed until now
I’m sorry to young me for being so mean to them

A PSA that always bummed me out as a kid- was that smoke PSA where this person is like "smoking makes you sexy and mysterious" but at the end you hear the heart monitor and see a patient in a wheelchair like "but also gives you cancer" and I was like.
" o k...."

I used to HATE brushing my teeth, putting sunscreen on and wearing a seatbelt when I was younger and remember my Latino dad would show me these terrifying photos and a video of these people getting into this TERRIBLE CAR CRASH. It scarred me, it still haunts me but now I understand why he did that… he also threatened to put lemon and pepper on my nails so when I bite them I would regret it

i genuinely remember being a child and watching hannah montana being like “yknow if she wanted to keep such a big secret you’d think she wouldn’t make a tv show about it”

As soon as he said "worked really well", I had a feeling they had worked really well to traumatize him

I used to think when I turned the volume up on my CD player that the band/artist had to get louder and I felt so bad for them I would never adjust it

I remember most of these. that last one actually got pulled because kids were having nightmares about the drug dealers bloodshot eyes. the re-edit just has the dealer turn towards the camera and act kind of spaced out. not very nightmare inducing, but it misses the point it was trying to make, which is... wait, what is the point of that PSA? don't take drugs or it'll fuck up your eyes?

Trying to workout whilst listening to the whole house hippo bit is literally impossible. I immediately buckled laughing lol

Kurtis thinking he got a private michael jackson concert everyday is the funniest shit

11:30 I had something similar, (as a not native English speaker). I though every actor learnt our language, so we could understand what they were saying in the movies and TV shows. In my defence they often used the same VAs for the same actors.

19:43 I put my 2 year old brother in front of the screen and he literally just laughed. My man ain't going nowhere if he keeps that up 😭

the only psa i can remember from my childhood was one of this little girl getting kidnapped while riding her bike and just crying in this big empty room, then got returned back to her mom from the same dude that kidnapped her. i don’t think it was very effective on me cause it made me wanna ride my bike after seeing that

I remember seeing the monkey one with the girl when I was younger. I had no idea it was fake, and thought some girls legit had monkeys constantly turning off their stuff, ripping their stuff, and following them around everywhere like a stalker. I was so dumb lol

honestly getting jumpscared by: “guy gets buttcrack surgically removed because he’s scared of any kind of crack now” is funnier than any sketch that could’ve been made from that lol

This brings back a memory I have of an old PSA here in the UK. I think it was about drink-driving. It was a little girl slumped against a tree with blood running down her face because she had supposedly been hit by a car. It felt pretty intense, especially since it would be shown in amongst a bunch of light-hearted adverts.

They showed us the house hippo psa in school during a lesson on media literacy. I remember being so bummed out that house hippos don’t exist. In my heart, I still believe.

I got a fushigi ball from my parents when I was little and after about 10 minutes of holding it and trying to replicate the commercials I never touched it again from being furious that it wouldn't just magically float around my hands

He finally did it. With the beanie he’s completed his stereotypical stoner cosplay

Not Canadian, but I remember a PSA in an assembly where a girl named Crystal went to every kid in the neighborhood and asked if they wanted to play and every kid slammed the door in her face and I remember feeling SO BAD for her. Then the video revealed that her full name was crystal meth and you should never play with crystal meth.
I don’t. I don’t why they thought getting a bunch of 9 year olds to sympathize with crystal meth was a good idea.

I remember looking in mine and my Nan's closet for evidence of house hippos, ended up finding a mouse nest and leaving chips and then a few days later the mouse was on our bedroom floor and my sibling freaked and I was disappointed it wasn't a house hippo

I owned a Fushigi (my brother bought it on clearance and gave it to me when he got bored) and I actually rly liked it. Kind of a good stim toy bc it was heavy and had a good feel. But nothing magical unfortunately

I had PSAs that warned about the dangers of playing around abandoned oil equipment. At no point did I ever know where I would find abandoned oil equipment to play on...

The house hippo one was weird because while I don't think I ever believed it, I had no idea what it was actually going for. I didn't even remember it being a PSA until about a year or two ago when I sat there wondering "wtf was that commercial trying to sell" and looked it up.
I'm also surprised you didn't mention the anti drug one where the lady smashes a whole kitchen, that one was... very effective.

kurtis saying “cosplaying” a british person instead of “impersonating” is so funny to me. how do you even cosplay as a british person lol

11:32
This is too relatable for me. When I was younger, I used to think that Everytime I saw a movie or a video, they were actually redoing it Everytime.
I felt so stupid when I finally figured it out.

im so glad the puppet PSA was included,, i really thought that was just a fever nightmare

gotta say, as a teen (not the target for these psas but the target for anti-vape ones) theres a psa where a guy just says that vaping can put metal in ur lungs and then reiterates "thats metal. in your lungs." and i think about it sometimes when i see some of my friends. I never felt the want for cigarettes or anything cus my parents health isnt good after smoking those, but vapes are a whole new monster. to a teen they look completely different, its kinda like how a teen would see a subway as something different from the hyperloop despite them doing very similar things. So teaching me vapings bad is like trying to get someone to ride the hyperloop. Now i wouldnt cus its fuckin stupid, but before i was educated about it i probably wouldve just through bs with school kids. psas still exist, and they do work (at least they have for me lol). the war on drugs is shit tho, i only appreciate the psas saying not to start.

Moved to Canada in 2007 and I remember seeing the house hippos, the monkey, and the one with the girls kissing the boy. The other ones I very fortunately missed out on but the ones I did see never struck me as weird for some reason. As for the house hippos, I always knew they weren't real, but I didn't have any idea what the lesson of that commercial was, or that it was even supposed to have one.

the fear anti-smoking PSAs instilled in me as a child was so strong that every time i walked past someone smoking on the street (or my grandparents' house) i would hold my breath and then fucking pray

I used to think the same thing about pre-recorded stuff! I remember feeling so bad for the actors in Zack and Cody because I thought they had to act the same thing everyday 😂

Love it. To add to your doctor sketch:
DOCTOR: I’m allergic to peanuts!
KURTIS: Here, inject this into you.
(KURTIS holds out disorganized handful of medicines)

That anti drug PSA is truly one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen. Like i would watch any horror movie over that absolutely terrifying PSA. Any time I think of going to buy drugs I’m just gonna think of that and I’ll be sober for the rest of my life

this is such a throwback for me, I only really remember the weight loss and house hippo PSA’s but they did stick with me. I use to look for a house hippo in my closet but I never found one…

The non-smoking PSAs were the creepiest. I distinctly remember one where somebody was smoking in the living room and laughing at TV and the smoke went down the hall into the baby's room and suffocated them

5:33 honestly when i was 10 and i saw that psa i was like damn poor kid. even 10 year old me knew about consent

Oh god I remember seeing that monkey and hippo ones in french. This reminds me of a funny story my grandfather told me. He used to work as a lumberjack in the woods of northern Quebec and would often have to stay out there in an igloo for a couple days when the weather was bad. One day, he parked his moose outside his temporary igloo and started getting ready to spend the night there, and when he did he heard some weird shit. Turns out a igloo hippo had made its nest in it while he was away and had layed eggs there! My grandpa made a sick omelette with the eggs and apparently it was the best eggs he ever had. Too bad the newer house hippos don't lay eggs anymore, but anyway. Sick video Kurtis!!!!

i KNEW the house hippo would make an appearance!! i used to collect little toy hippos for my grandmother because she loved that commercial, one still sits in the cup holder of her car like 11 years later

I too received a Fushigi ball for either a birthday or Christmas. I remember opening it, thinking it was cool, and then thinking "Now what?"
Also, the "robot on the scary planet danger" PSA was for the War Amps of Canada, which I am a part of. I know the guy who did the voice for the robot, and I think there was an entire series of videos involving that character.

I understand most youtubers don't actually use the sponsors they advertise and they just read out the ad copy for the sponsorship, but its honestly really funny to me to have Kurtis be advertising Current, an online banking service only available in the USA he can't even use, on a video about such a painfully Canadian topic.

I can’t remember exactly how it went, but I remember being terrified of a psa with some lady’s face in a drawer of clothes or something. I was then very hesitant to open any drawers.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KURTISSSS! I love watching your videos so much. You make me so happy and I find your videos as an escape from my life and everything that’s happening. Have an amazing day you deserve it!

If i had a nickel for every time kurtis did a sketch involving a guy having an allergic reaction to peanuts, I'd have two nickels
It's not a lot but it's strange that it happened twice

I am pretty new in your community but I am so happy I found your channel! You entertained while also making me feel safe and respected! I hope you get all the happiness you deserve and more! You make wonderful content and I just wanted to let you know❤️ if this gets to you, you should be proud of what you have created, it’s awesome😍

I think KurtisTown needs its own PSA.
I vote for Barbie saying “Balls”
Other options are;
Bratz doll saying “ew”
The weasel moaning

As a Canadian who’s been living in the states for almost 10 years, this made me weirdly homesick thank u 😭

Please make Canadian nostalgia forever. You're doing a public service to the internet. My memories are slowly being replaced by American nostalgia.

whenever I watch things that used to seem so real to me as a kid I get so confused cause they don't feel the same anymore

18:40 If I had a nickel for every time a Kurtis Conner sketch ended with one character eating peanut products and the twist being he's allergic, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

“I can’t watch anything on Netflix these days, there’s just no commercials.”
Don’t worry Kurtis, Netflix heard you.

Growing up in western Canada, French wasn’t mandatory but I can recite the entire first PSA by heart.

Thank god he’s making a video about fushigi, I had one cause I bugged my mom enough about it and I used it for like a day and then lost it forever. I feel like a Kurtis video about it would be healing for me😂

I’m Canadian and this opened a part of my brain I didn’t know i had. I remember so many of theses.

Thank you. I have a little sister that looks up to me and relies on me to set a good example for her. I'll make sure to scare the shit out of her as soon as I get home today ❤️

Kurtis saying he wasn’t “cosplaying” a British person as if we don’t actually exist outside of movies/tv shows 💀
Edit: Kurtis was totally right. My arms have started disintegrating, I think I’m returning back into the digital realm. I guess British people really don’t exist.

I grew up in Montana and we had the Montana Meth Project and it was geared to scare kids enough not to do it since their commercials played on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, and they had their ads on plenty of billboards along the interstate. I remember there being this one commercial that scared me so bad, it made my 10yo self cry to my mom. I can't even remember what it was, but it fucking freaked me out and even gave me nightmares.
Long story short: Pretty much everyone in Montana has tried meth or uses it regularly. Their slogan had been "Meth: not even once" and it was advertised as if it were impossible to do it once because it was just too damn addicting. Except you can do meth once and never do it again. People tend to not continuing doing things they don't like. So, the project did the exact opposite of what it tried to do and the ads were subsequently pulled from tv and billboards. It was exactly like the aftermath of the D.A.R.E. program where drug usage, especially in adolescents, skyrocketed as a direct result.
But I still love me a good PSA because there's always a good fallout story that follows.

3:21 as a former Canadian little girl, I can confirm this is 100% accurate

psas are one of my big interests, super cool to see you make a video on them kurtis! concerned children's advertisers has always been hit or miss for me, and i'm not a big fan of hip choice, but they have some good stuff!

In my marketing class we actually met the guy who helped make the house hippo and these other ads, so hilarious

this one psa i watched about peanut allergies scarred me for life lol, i will always be afraid to kill someone accidentally bc of an allergy

2:00 unlocked the deepest memory, that ball was so heavy and i would drop it all the time so i had to just admire it from a distance. i literally asked my parents for that type of stuff all the time😭

Remember the psa show that had the cat that fell off the tractor. That show? traumatized me.. I left the family farm to search for house hippos and never looked back.
The show had a cat and a bunch of other anthropomorphic puppet animals that gave safety tips to kids.

I watched this with my baby and you only made her laugh 😂

Honestly the anti-smoking PSAs in Australia were so effective on me that the first time I met a smoker, they were a friend of my grandmother and they started to smoke, I ran away crying an hid in the bathroom until she left. I will never smoke a cigarette to this day.

The scarier PSA's really reminded me of "Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids" that I used to watch so much as a kid. Basically every episode is just a kid misbehaving and then getting some horrific karma. The one that always stuck with me was a kid refusing to go to sleep so he gets his eyelids stolen by a guy with a tin key so he can never sleep again. Peak CITV era 😂

there’s an old psa about mosquitoes (early 2000’s) that still plays on local television late at night, watching this reminded me of how it use to scare me😭
the psa if anyone wants to see it:
plclip.com/video/uo1Mul5KZUY/wideo.html

When my friend was a kid they didn't like brushing their teeth and would refuse to do it. Then one day their mom finally sat them down and turned on The Little Shop of Horror's movie, but specifically the Dentist scene (if you haven't seen it, look up that scene and you'll understand). Afterwards their mom turned to them and said "if you don't start brushing your teeth that's where I'm going to take you."
To this day my friend brushes their teeth and is still terrified of the dentist.

i begged my family for a fushigi for my birthday when i was a kid. when it came we watched the instructional video about 10 times and the we realized it was just a heavy ball and they’ve never let me live it down.

Canada really was ahead of its time with their 21st century humour.

That first PSA unlocked memories I didn’t know I had

I vividly remember where I was when I saw the house hippo PSA. Then I cried because I got attached to the hippo and wanted it to be real.

I find it so telling that whenever I watch television from countries outside the U.S. (especially Canadian television) the announcer or whoever’s talking will like include other countries when they talk about statistics. Like in this video there are facts about smoking that are statistics for people in both Canada and the US. But on U.S. television we forget every other country exists to the point that the history channel just assumes everyone watching knows America is the best country on the planet earth.

As a Canadian born and raised in ON this has just reopened so many memories

Okay but the monkey “you don’t have to lose weight” one genuinely helped me as a little girl lmao😭

this was my. exact. experience. down to the house hippos. i searched for them and left chips in my furry crocs so they would have a little bed and food

ahhh as a canadian i remember all of these, ohh the nostalgia!! i loved house hippos

0:38 “Personally I can’t watch anything on Netflix these days, THERES NO COMMERCIALS.”
This aged well

God I remember those fushigi ball commercials, man did I want one when I was little.
Also I was a weird 5 year old who chased a single boy, and or his twin brother, I think I could tell them apart, idk why I did this so much, but I just remember chasing and then body slamming the kid to the ground and then assaulting them with kisses on their face. Idk if it was because I didn't have siblings and hadn't prior interacted with kids my age before kindergarten. It's still bizarre thinking about that memory of me violating a boy's right to not be basically slobbered upon by a girl nearly every recess. I am glad it never happened further than my first year of elementary. I also had somehow planned along with a different boy, whom also had a twin brother, to kiss at some point, and we at the end of the school day, went underneath a desk and kissed once, then we went home and to me as a 5-6 year old it was like I found my true love, it is really funny how kids think as I swear some of the stuff they thought of is absolutely insane. I do still regret it even though I absolutely didn't know any better. Anyway yeah kids are weird- and also fushigi ball video is highly anticipated-

I had a fushigi ball as a kid-extremely disappointed that it wasn’t ACTUALLY magic

To this day I am haunted by vivid memories of the 2002 Carling Beer commercial that included a plane crash survivor befriending a crab. I don't even know if Carling is a company anymore, I don't know anything about the company honestly, but that commercial comes to me in my darkest times

transported through time while watching it, and it had a genuinely positive message too

I can honestly say in my 30's watching children programing now makes me sad. It is SO BAD.
There was a show came out a few years ago, forgot the name, a half hour show, 23 min with commercials.
EVERY SECOND that the show was running there was screaming, explosions or both. There was not a moment of down time in the episode at ALL.
Now it may have been a crazy episode not sure but I have to wonder, are they trying to give kids attention problems with programming like this.
If there is no plot, no story, nothing to follow, and the only thing is action 100% of the time then I wonder. Is it made with the intent purpose of mentally traumatizing children?

I remember always wanting a fushigi ball, and it wasn't until years later when the commercials weren't even on air anymore that I finally was able to get one and I was severely disappointed lmao

Thank you Kurtis, we know how tiring it is being in this little box performing videos for us every day 😔🙏🏻