Decoder Ring - McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Crime Pt. 1
Decoder Ring
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2022
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
McGruff the Crime Dog arrived on the scene at the dawn of the 1980s, just as a firehose of anti-drug PSAs was inundating the youth of America. These messages didn’t always work as intended—but they did work their way into the long term memories of the kids who heard them.
In the first of two episodes, we take a look at PSAs and their strange afterlife through the lens of a trench-coat wearing bloodhound and his bizarre, yet catchy anti-drug songs. We’ll talk to Dan Danger, Sherry Nemmers, Joseph Cappella, David Farber, Mike Hawes and Robin Nelson to discover how the McGruff Smart Kids Album came to exist in the first place.
This podcast was written by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. We had production help from Sam Kim.
Editing by Jamie York and Derek John, Slate’s Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.
Thank you to Wendy Melillo, Dan McQuade, Dale Mantley, Larissa Zargeris, Daisy Rosario, Drew Bledsoe, Larre Johnson, Duane Poole, Ari Merkin, Charles and Karen Rosen and Eric Greenberg.
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com
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Transcript
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| 0:41.6 | When Daniel Danger was growing up in the early 1990s he had a number of run-ins |
| 0:46.8 | with this one particular dog. It was just this weird presence you know this |
| 0:51.3 | weird grumpy old cartoon dog. I'm a gruff the crime dog. |
| 0:55.5 | Mugruff was a trench coat wearing bloodhound with a hang dog demeanor who |
| 1:00.2 | dispensed advice about crime prevention, personal safety, guns and drugs. |
| 1:05.3 | Oh you don't own me see it's my job to teach you to protect yourselves. Make it |
| 1:10.8 | your job to learn. He also had a catchphrase. He was a regular presence |
| 1:18.0 | at Daniel's Massachusetts Elementary School. He was on the outside of it. |
| 1:21.7 | There was like an event where you brought your bike to school and then they |
| 1:26.5 | would put a big flag on it and I remember Mugruff being there in person. And he |
| 1:31.0 | was on the inside too. Would they you know wheel in the TV on a cart and and put |
| 1:35.6 | in a little VHS of Mugruff telling you to avoid strangers and not get like |
| 1:41.4 | touched by people or get into cars. That's Jenny but that's not Jenny's dad. |
| 1:46.8 | Basically telling you you're you're gonna get kidnapped which is a dark thing to |
... |
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