Union Carbide Car Seat - It's not like we're running out of babies.

Here's a partially safe car seat from 1963, brought to you in vivid halftone and no color, to de-emphasize the blood stains. Union Carbide, the company that pretty much invented the petrochemical industry, is now part of Dow chemical, who brought you Styrofoam and agent orange. Here's what happens when they first tried their hand at designing something to keep small humans safe.

Surprisingly, the Ever Soft car seat is mostly constructed from steel tubing and not so much from plastic, which would have been at least a little less "stabby-pinchy".

The following is excerpted from the Ever Soft information manual (Copyright 1962 Union Carbide, Inc.)

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You'll notice the exposed hinges, where the Infant Restraint Barrier (IRB) pivots down against the Primary Seating Module (PSM) in a delightful scissoring action. Fortunately, babies aren't known for their curiosity and searching fingers or this would be a hazard.

Next, notice that the whole device hangs over the back of the car's seat. You may think that this doesn't provide much security in the event that you drive over a medium sized bump, but let's remember that this is the greatest country in the universe, and American roads are paved with cast iron that is leveled with a laser T-square, and they never ever degrade or form potholes. Don't say they do. What are you, a communist?

Moving on, you can see that the Infant Restraint Barrier (IRB, remember) is conveniently held in the upright position by a hook, during the critical Infant Insertion and Immobilization Procedure (IIIP). During transport, the hook remains up and out of the way, several inches above the child's skull, or Brain Containment and Command Module (BCCM). This could, in a less perfect universe, theorhetically be considered dangerous, except for the fact that American drivers are the most courteous, conscientious, and resposible drivers in the totality of the multiverse, and road accidents haven't been a reality since the Great Chariot Collision of 612 B.C. Also, let's recall that the Ever Soft is securely draped over the back of the seat, and can't possibly come loose, stupid.

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Sadly, the Ever Soft car seat failed to sell well. In an attempt to recover some of their production investment, the Union Carbide corporation shipped the entire stock of Ever Soft car seats to Viet Nam in 1965, dropping them over Hanoi as part of the de-population effort. The casualties were hailed as "apocalyptic and glorious" by the Ever Soft development team.