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in the uk we had hedgehogs and a crippled kid that got hit by a car bc they didn’t look both ways
Only one I can think of right now is “Simi Sicherli” which was a mascot in early primary school that taught you basic road rules and how to cross roads safely.
I mean, we have dumb stuff in school like Sam the traffic snake, about 1000 mascots for brushing your teeth, [and that freaking octopus in front of schools](https://www.verkeeropschool.be/storage/minisites/sized/school-6-600.jpg?1584476868)
When Germany switched to five-digit postal codes, there was a lot of resentment among the population. The German postal service therefore introduced the postal code mascot [Rolf](https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/neue-postleitzahlen-1993-fuenf-ist-truempf-rolf-die-gelbe-nervensaege-der-post-a-1215263-amp.html), who advertised as a cartoon character, stuffed animal and also as a life-size mascot.
We had [Helmi](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmi) teach us about traffic safety.
Nope. We are simply told not to and why. With the littering in forests example, they might appeal to all the cute animals we could hurt, but there are no mascots. Mascots just aren’t a big thing in Denmark
I don’t remember anything like that. We just learned it the normal way from a teacher.
I mean the most important “forest” lesson we learned was how to act when we found a WW2 grenade or unexploded bomb in the woods. Can’t imagine what “mascot” they could have used for that. Stumpy the one armed kid who picked up a grenade?
We had [Goochem het gordeldier](https://static.autoblog.nl/images/goochem_gordels_om.jpg) when I was a kid to promote seat belt usage among children. Gordeldier is Dutch for armadillo and the first part of the word, gordel, is the same word as for seat belt (and dier means animal). So it could also translate to seat belt animal as well.
I’m not sure that they count as mascots (the characters are part of the logo of a children’s tv show) but there’s [this chilling reminder](https://youtu.be/4GhC6qKdQ8o) to beware of thin ice.
No, they just taught us not to make a fire in the forest
We have the ladybug as a symbol against ‘senseless violence’.
Kind of ironic, since they are quite the voracious little predators.
We had a big red elephant called Welephant who taught us fire safety…his motto was “matches matches never touch, they can hurt you very much”. This was the 90s, I don’t know if Welephant is still a thing.
We have [this octopus ](https://youtu.be/HObahFi00DQ)
Yes! The emergency services has a mascot whom I have been acquainted with. His name is Flammy and is a monkey. Every Easter he would hand out batteries and candy to kids and remember them to make sure their fire alarm works.
Edit: if I remember correctly they sent out comic books with Flammy and his escapades. I never read them but I think I have some of the old comic books here at home.
The only thing I can think of is we have an ad with a canary that sings warning people about carbon monoxide. It’s genuinely terrifying https://youtu.be/zSGXRRldj5U
We had the [Struwwelpeter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter) book, which taught us, through vivid examples, different ways to die a painful death when we wouldn’t listen to random authorities. Nothing would beat that afterwards.
Tufty the red squirrel and his friends taught small children about road safety in the 1970s.
For slightly older kids, we had the Green Cross Code Man – a super hero played by the man inside the Darth Vader suit – teaching us how to cross the road.
Then there was an incomprehensible cartoon cat called Charlie, who’s owner translated his words of wisdom on all sorts of safety matters.
And then we get into the extraordinary world of the Public Information Film, in which child actors drowned, were electrocuted, or maimed by farm machinery.
In Australia (we’re in Eurovision so we count, right?) we have a huge skin cancer problem due to the sun and our position on the planet or something.
In the 90s we had a seagull teach us to ‘[Slip Slop and Slap](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b7nocIenCYg) – Slip on a shirt, Slop on some sunscreen and Slap on a hat’. There was a very catchy song that I can still remember 30 years later.
Now it’s been updated to ‘[Slip Slop Slap Seek Slide](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy6_csWyYL4)’ with the addition of Seek some shade and Slide on some sunnies.
In the UK there was this weird-ass cartoon series about behaving yourself called Stoppit and Tidyup:
https://youtu.be/9pbIriBC60U
Paris Métro has Serge le Lapin warning kids not to put their hands on the door so as not to get pinched.
[They even started making merchandising](https://www.ratp.fr/groupe-ratp/newsroom/services/cest-nouveau-la-boutique-ratp-la-ligne-propose-desormais-des).
I don’t really remember anything like that and frankly I don’t think it’d go over that well. We’ve often made fun of american mascots and how absurd and overused they are 😀
There’s a seagull that tells us not to throw garbage and plastic in the sea and on the beach. It’s also kind of a meme
Any kind of mascot that existed was very short-lived and none were iconic.
I remember when I was in 3rd grade there was a contest to draw a mascot for a water-saving campaign.
I’m pretty sure it ended up just being a sentient water droplet.
But that’s it, no actual costumes, just some water droplet telling kids to save water in a pamphlet.
We did have the police come to school and tell us what to do if we found a syringe lying about. There was a huge heroin crisis in the country.
Don’t worry, it boiled down to DON’T TOUCH IT, CALL AN ADULT. if you accidentally got pricked REALLY TELL AN ADULT.
For several decades, *Skogsmulle* was a troll-like character (originating in the 1950’s) that visited pre-schools and kindergartens and taught children how to both survive of roots and edible plants in an emergency, and also how to act and behave in nature, including not to leaving trash, nor causing lasting damage to trees, moss, etc… and also how to make fire in a safe manner.
—
There’s a quite long Swedish Wikipedia-page, but none in English, so here’s the Swedish one through Google Translate (with expected bad grammar and translation mistakes)
https://sv-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Skogsmulle?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Lol, we had Cūkmens aka Pigman — basically man dressed in superhero costume that is… Pig.
https://youtu.be/lNkPsl5WbCs