A poster from Scarfolk, the English horror-town that loops through the decade 1970-1980, over and over, warns of the Infant Catcherbots that roam the town’s roads, looking for children whose parents unwisely hid them from the civic trials of the 1970s.
Parents in the 1970s were required to submit their children to civic trials, the details of which are not fully clear to us now. We do know, however, that the few children who survived them developed debilitating paranormal powers such as retrospective-clairvoyance – the ability to see the future of people who lived in the past.
Perhaps understandably, many children went unregistered for “The Trials” and the council was forced to track them down by ever devious means. By 1975 the council had developed Catcherbots which, in various guises, lured and apprehended unregistered children. In addition to the Clown Catcherbot (see the council’s Halloween poster campaign above) there were also the Jesus, ‘lovely Nana’, pony-demon and Noel Edmonds Catcherbot models.
“Infant Catcherbots” Public Information Poster (1975)
[Scarfolk]