Thursday, February 9, 2012

''BABY IN WOMB'' -- car bumper stick and rear window display decal


Remember those old "Baby on Board" signs placed on car windows and
bumper stickers? Sometimes they said "Baby in Car" and their message,
which went worldwide in over
35 languages, was to drive carefully and pay attention to the cars
around you, especially this car with a baby infant seated inside. Now
comes the "Baby in Womb" bumper
sticker, as an environmental and climate action protest targetting the
ridiculous and deadly amount of carbon dioxide emissions our car and
factory culture belch out each day, 24/7, day and night.
Rewind to 1984: The "Baby in Car" messages were usually placed on
square decals or horizontal bumper stickers and were intended, of
course, be placed either in the back window of an automobile or on the
rear fender to encourage safe driving. First marketed in September of
1984 by Safety 1st Corporation, the signs became popular, flourishing
worldwide
throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In some nations, the signs read
"Princess on board" or "Little Person on board."

The signs have entered the American lexicon. In 1993, an episode of
the Simpsons TV show titled "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" featured a
barbershop quartet tune called "Baby On Board". The song was written
by Homer Simpson in a flashback to 1985 when Marge bought a sign,
hoping it would stop people "intentionally ramming our car."

There's an urban legend which claims that the actual death of a baby
led to the creation of the signs. The founder of Safety 1st, Michael
Lerner, claimed to have heard about similar signs in Europe, when in
fact, he entered into a partnership with Patricia and Helen Bradley of
Medford, Massachusetts, to market the signs. The Bradleys had been
trying to market the signs since Patricia brought them back from
Germany, where her husband was stationed. Lerner eventually bought
PHOB, the company set up by the Bradleys, for approximately
US$150,000, and changed the name to Safety 1st.

Someone else created a warning decal similar to the "Baby on board"
signs. The purpose of the sticker is to let people know that there is
a ''child with autism'' in the car who may not respond to emergency
personnel.

Now fast forward to 2012 and meet the two artists who created the "Baby in
Womb" sign as a car decal targetting co2 emissions worldwide, which
may very well be putting
the future of the human species, let alone new-born babies, in great
peril. An artist in southern Taiwan, a woman named Huang Pei-chi, made
the sign as a window
and bumper sticker attention-getter and climate activist organizing tool. A Canadian
expat in Taipei, NAME HERE, married to a Taiwanese woman and the father of a young son here,
revised the drawing as well, adding to its graphic power to its message

"I just wanted to create something that might be useful for climate
activists and climate protest groups around the world," Huang, 35 and
the mother of three, said. "If
this sign can help people in the world focus better on what our carbon
dioxide emissions are doing to the future of this planet, and
humanity, then I will feel
I accomplished something. The decal is for sale and there is a
copyright, but all the money is being plowed back into climate protest
groups around the world. I
didn't make the sign to make money. I don't intend to sell the rights
to it for $150,000. It's free and available for anyone to copy and use
and distribute. It's my little
gift from Taiwan to the world."

Go little sign and find your world, before it is too late.

For a free email version of the "BABY IN WOMB" sign seen here, just
send a request to bikolang@gmail.com and a free online image will be
sent to you, in yellow and black.
Get one today: free!

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