When R2-D2 and C-3PO made a childhood vaccination PSA
By Dan Selcke
A few decades ago in a galaxy very very near…Star Wars Childhood Vaccination PSA, starring C-3PO and R2-D2. Learn now this odd relic came to be!
It’s been over a year since the coronavirus took over the news cycle and cloistered millions of people in their homes, and now, all anyone is talking about is getting a vaccine. I don’t think we’re going to get this, but if Disney wanted to, it could lend out a couple of characters from the Star Wars universe to shoot a PSA encouraging vaccination, because something like that happened before.
Yep, in the late 1970s, the Jimmy Carter administration teamed with Lucasfilm to produce a PSA featuring none other than R2-D2 and C-3PO (with original actors Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels, the latter of whom played C-3PO as recently as 2019 in The Rise of Skywalker), bantering and encouraging parents to vaccinate their children against preventable diseases. Have a watch:
Is that the right way to say “whooping cough”? I can’t get over the way C-3PO is saying “whooping cough.”
The PSA was made as part of a campaign the initially started as a response to a 1977 outbreak of measles. Mel Magazine has a really fascinating oral history on the spot (which included a nifty poster) that features quotes with director Peter Shillingford, who also helmed a documentary about the making of A New Hope; former director of the U.S. National Immunization Program Walter Orenstein; and Daniels.
“Immunize your children, please, and may the Force by with you.”
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