Synopsis

Three young men move through a stylized urban landscape, dancing with jerky, deliberately awkward precision before joining forces with Devo. Equipped with plastic pompadours, Action Vests, and ray-gun-like "spudguns," they target smug, conventional-looking adults. Those struck by the beams appear to regress into blank, twitching figures, turning the song's anti-conformist message into a playful science-fiction assault on social conformity. Devo's own appearances are limited, keeping the focus on the young outsiders and their gleefully absurd campaign against the status quo.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made for Devo's 1981 album *New Traditionalists*, during the band's early MTV period, when its tightly controlled visual identity helped distinguish it from conventional rock acts.

• Devo appears in a supporting role rather than as the video's central subject. The narrative is carried mainly by the young "new traditionalists," whose costumes and weapons turn the band's anti-conformist ideas into a mock recruitment film.

• The "Action Vests," black plastic pompadours, and spudguns were part of the broader Club Devo merchandise and character world associated with the *New Traditionalists* era.

• The song was written partly as a response to the audience Devo gained after "Whip It." The band felt that some new listeners had embraced the surface novelty while missing its critique of conformity, and the video dramatizes that conflict.

• The video's comic ray-gun attacks helped it receive substantial MTV exposure, even though the single did not become a major Top 40 hit.

• A young street dancer, Paul Guzman-Sanchez, appears among the performers. His popping and breaking sequences are frequently cited as an early example of those dance styles in a music video.

• The song later appeared in the 1981 animated film *Heavy Metal*, extending the video's futuristic and satirical visual association beyond MTV.