This Swedish Kid’s-Show Has The Most Terrifying Anthropomorphized Vehicles I’ve Ever Seen

As far as anyone knows, I’m the Internet’s Leading Expert on Vehicular Anthropomorphization; it must be true, because it says so, right there, 20 words or so to the left. I take this position very seriously, because I know that many, many people look to me for guidance when they encounter an anthropomorphized vehicle. They know that I have preferences, say, about how eyes are portrayed on automotive faces, or how faces should be applied and adapted to trains. They also know that I like – no, need – to know about developments, innovations, and atrocities in the vehicular anthropomorphization space, which is why this tweet proved to be so important: it revealed to me the unspeakable horror of Bilakuten, a Swedish children’s show whose name translates to “Car Emergency.” In that aspect, I suppose it’s kind of right. In every other aspect of how it makes vehicles appear to be living beings, it is very, very, possibly dangerously wrong. I suggest laying down a dropcloth before continuing, because there will be many terror-induced spit-takes and unplanned emissions of urine.

Bilakuten is described like this on SIMKL, which I think is some Swedish video site:

Fantastic vehicles get vital assignments. Fires must be extinguished, cats must be rescued, houses must be built, thieves must be caught, trees must be harvested. To their aid, the fantastic vehicles have the equally fantastic children. Together they create a slightly better world.

Now, I don’t hate this description; a show about vehicles, fantastic ones, even, helping to rescue cats and build houses is great. I also like that expectations are kept nice and low, ad the machine/children partnerships are described as resulting in a “slightly better” world. No need to get any kid’s hopes up too high – it’s just going to end up slightly better.

My problem is with the bizarre and alarming way the vehicles are granted life. Just look at this lineup:

Dear god why? This is what they’re showing Swedish children? Has any Swedish child managed to sleep through a whole night without waking up and screaming bork bork bork or whatever sweet little Swedes scream in terror? Let’s look at one of these up close:

Gaaahh! Shit, I even knew I was going to put this here and it still made me spit Yoo-Hoo-and-gin all over my screen. Who decided to use this method of making a face on a vehicle? The headlights and grille are right there  to use to make a face, like this, which took me 91 seconds to make:

But no, someone decided it was a better idea to split the head open at the windshield and make that a colossal gaping maw filled with denture-like human teeth the size of fire hydrants and a vast, pulpy tongue, and then let a pair of massive, glistening eyes erupt from a painful-looking swell of oddly flexible metal. This fucking truck looks like all it has ever wanted to do is find you and eat you, delighting in the feeling of your bones grinding to paste between those massive molars.

Hey! Maybe I’m not being fair; maybe it all makes sense when you see it animated? Okay, that’s reasonable. Let’s look at a clip from an episode:

(Violent spray of  liquid) Aaaaaaaaauuughhh! What the hell! Why didn’t I warn me? Why are they so freakishly flexible? Why do they dart about like insects or lizards or some unholy hybrid of both? And is that a weird variant of Axel F they’re playing for the song? Should I be concerned for that little Fiat 500-beast? And why the hell does this have to exist?:

Why? Why have you forsaken us, oh lord? Why does a gelatinous garbage truck with what feels like a hungry, toothed anus with eyes exist? Why are its teeth like that? Why does it have teeth? Or eyes? Is it another being inside the truck, or is it just another head and mouth on the other end of the truck? Make it go away! Now! Please!

Hey! Who put that here? No, no no no god no nope nope nope.

It’s simultaneously lazy anthropomorphization and terrifying. They’re just slapping eyeballs onto windshields and then making the whole front end of the car open into some kind of mutant crocodile mouth with massive human teeth? Why was this path chosen? Do they not love their children in Sweden?

Are these Ariel Atom-like race cars supposed to look like dragons? Maybe? I suppose that could be cool if they, you know, weren’t so fucking slithery and serpentine and disturbing?

This is sort of an achievement, I suppose. They’ve managed to make boats and planes and excavators and cars and trucks and buses all new previously-unconsidered nightmares, which I suppose is an achievement? Maybe the Swedes are training a generation of super-children, unable to be scared or even phased by any sort of nightmarish semi-mechanical beasts. Is this a warning? A harbinger of a world dominated by Swedish lizard-big-rig cyborgs, built by Scania and with an unquenchable thirst for human blood?

Maybe? And maybe this is a warning.

God help us all.

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