Joe & Petunia – Acceptance of the Country Code

Duration 60sec
Release Date 1971
Sponsor Central Office of Information for National Parks Commission and the Countryside Commission
Text version of this film

Cartoon couple Joe and Petunia appeared in a number of films starting in the late 1960s. The animations covered subjects such as the Coastguard, the dangers of worn tyres and saving water.

Behaving in a way that is common to characters in many early public information films, they are utterly unaware of the dangers caused by, or around them, which are obvious to any onlooker.

This particular, film from 1971, aims to bring about awareness of the Countryside Code. Originally drafted in 1950, the code has used other animated characters, which have been used to illustrate it through the years.

Norman Thelwell first created popular characters in the 1950s, and most recently the Countryside Agency have run a campaign featuring the famous Aardman ‘Creature Comforts’ animated characters, which helped to launch an updated version of the code in 2004.

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