It may be called "Safetyville," but the little stick figures who live there are anything but safe.
The new ad campaign by Metro Los Angeles, the city's commuter rail service, shows stick figures engaging in unsafe behavior around trains -- and the consequences are immediate, severe, detailed and accompanied by sardonic narration.
Meet a little stick person named Jack, who was late for the train because he stopped for coffee and ended up losing his head in a clip titled "Heads-up or headless?"
"Uh-oh, it looks like Jack took quite a spill," the narrator said, in the kind of crack you'd expect from the Cryptkeeper.
Then there's Joan, who was happily looking at cat pictures on social media when she was horrifically dismembered by a passing train:
"Uh-oh," said the narrator. "Joan's friends aren't going to like this picture."
John Gordon, director of social media for Metro, told KABC that the videos were intentionally provocative.
"We didn't want to tell people about rail safety," Gordon said. "We wanted to show real consequences. In the modern world, we're competing with the public's attention on Facebook and so we have to be intentionally provocative. We have to break through."
And they're definitely breaking through -- just look at what happens to poor Jose:
Despite the "Itchy and Scratchy" nature of the ads, Metro said people were responding to them.
"I think people get it,” Dave Sotero, communications manager for Metro, told the Los Angeles Times. "We hit the right mix of gruesome and levity."
The Metro blog said the ads were inspired by Melbourne Metro's "Dumb Ways to Die" campaign of 2012.
“Safety is our highest priority for Metro riders. These videos are edgy by design because we want these messages to stick,” Metro board chair and Los Angeles county supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said in a statement on the blog. “A lapse of attention at a rail crossing or unsafe behavior at a station can have dire if not deadly consequences.”
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