The Affari Blog

Just in time for Christmas, we’re going to go waaaaaay back… back in the day when cigarette companies could actually advertise on TV. From some time in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, our friends at Camel cigarettes have the answer to our last-minute Christmas gift needs!

Is it any wonder why cigarette manufacturers were banned from advertising on TV after 1972? Up until then though, the tobacco industry took advantage of the new advertising medium, getting millions of people to start smoking (or keep smoking) with ploys like having doctors claim a certain brand was better than another, or by having some sort of hokey song and dance done to make smoking seem fun and glamorous.

This commercial though goes right to the spot. Our mild-mannered host lets us know having a long list of things to buy for Christmas means you have lots of friends. So how do you reward your buddies Mr. Popular? By giving them a date with cancer! Nothing says, “I appreciate your friendship and all you do for me.” than a bundle of nicotine! If you look past the health issue, giving the “gift” of tar sticks to your friends is just plain cheap and lazy. But Camel makes the convenience of giving cigarettes seem like the key reason why you should invest.

Why the carton of cigarettes is colorful! Red and gold and, most importantly, shiny! That makes the gift more valuable! You don’t even have to wrap it, or tape a label to it you lucky lazy bastard! You can also save a ton of dough by buying these things. Keep in mind this is way before cigarettes were taxed to death, so you only had to spend a couple of bucks on the carton. And that leads me to the biggest crime of all, you have to buy the carton.

We’ve already figured out you’re heartless, lazy, and cheap for buying your friends cigarettes for Christmas. Now we see you’re delusional too! Somehow buying 10 packs makes your purchase a worthy one? Just because something is “cheaper by the dozen” doesn’t make you less of a cheapskate! And by buying the carton, you’re just getting under the cigarette manufacturers’ thumbs you moron! Buy them by the carton so we can make more! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

But maybe you want to buy them by the carton, since these appear to be magic cigarettes. When our spokesman tells us about the “choice, quality tobacco” about 46 seconds into the commercial, you’ll notice the cigarette is sucking in the smoke and not blowing it out! It’s a cigarette smoking itself! How freaky is that?

So remember this Christmas, make it “Camel time”… and not “Hammer time”. Can’t touch this, yo.

In 1981, Kmart was still the leader in sales to lower-middle class Americans nearly 20 years after the company was founded. But the mighty Kmart would soon fall to the even mightier Wal-Mart, and once you see this commercial you’ll understand why.

First we see dad all excited because he has quite a table full of gifts from the family. How nice! Apparently dad is so excited to get all of these cool gifts, he has failed to realize his kids were too damn lazy to wrap the presents. And where is breakfast, and the newspaper, or an ice cold beer? I work hard to dress you kids in the clothes you wear and you think just leaving this stuff out on the patio table is enough to win me over?

But dad is very excited, and why shouldn’t he be? He just got the greatest boom box around for a mere $78! That has to be top of the line stuff! Oh wait, it’s a MacDonald AM/FM cassette recorder system. Not exactly Sony, and I have a hunch MacDonald went under when the cassette tape did about 15 years ago. And really now, when is dad going to use this? Is he going to become the punk in the back of the city bus jamming out to his new Run DMC cassette on the way to work? Nope… chalk this one up to his kids again. First they don’t even wrap his present, now they’re giving him something he’s probably not going to use but they will!

But dad keeps rifling through the gifts to find something with a name brand on it and by God he’s found it! He’s got the Black & Decker mini-vac, and he just happens to have a pile of cigarette ashes on the table to clean up. Dad doesn’t really clean up the mess with the vacuum, in fact it seems like he just pushes it out of the way with the vacuum. Hey, at least he can plug it in if he really needs to use it some rainy day.

The third gift tries to be an emotional buy, but it comes out as being very awkward. Yes I want to protect my dad with a smoke alarm, but why is he living in a building without smoke alarms? And if he is living in a building with smoke alarms, why do I need to buy another one? Is he occasionally setting fires in his house? Maybe he’s tried to vacuum stray fires up with his Black & Decker vacuum only to find out he’s pushing them into a room without a smoke alarm because he failed to turn on the vacuum. Dad’s a strange fellow, and he will get stranger with his last gift.

Here was the “emergency” CB radio kit for just $73! A good 20 years before everyone had a cell phone I guess this was the best option in case of emergency, but you had better hoped an 18-wheel trucker was in the neighborhood to call AAA when you’re transmission exploded. And how many dads who received this nifty little toy treated it as a toy, singing “Convoy” to weary truckers instead of using it like he should have?

After the ultra-cool 1980’s computer graphics, we’re reminded Kmart “is the saving place”. Yeah, save your dad some grief by not buying him this garbage and get him something special. Happy father’s day dad, here’s that smoke alarm you always wanted. You can use it as you cook your own damn breakfast!

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), 17% of American children are considered obese. Did you ever wonder why? Well perhaps this commercial from the 1980’s will give us a good reason why:

There’s just so much wrong with this commercial, I can hardly stand it. First, let’s address the obesity issue. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your kids eating a hot dog or two, as long as it stops there. But having five kids parade around with a 12-foot long, three-foot high, hot dog while singing show tunes is just bad for their health and their social lives. Can you imagine what would happen if they actually ate that thing? For one, they wouldn’t “poop a plumper” in about three years thanks to the constipation. Second, they’d weigh about 426 pounds at the tender age of eight. That’s not obese, that’s just plain sick. And speaking of sick, how many tons of ground up horse lips and chicken beaks does it take to fill up the mother of all hot dogs? And where do you get enough spicy brown mustard to cover that thing?

The other big issue has to deal with the name of the product itself. On its face, I’m just not sure I could ever stick a “plumper” in my mouth knowing it was called a plumper. Hot dogs are already known and wieners and we know what that’s slang for. They might as well just call them “schlong daddies” or “meat logs” while they’re at it. Then there’s the even bigger issue of the name, and how it has evolved over the last 20 years.

Unknown by the product maker, and hopefully to the kids, the term “plumper” would evolve into a phrase representing really fat women. Well, I wish I could leave it at that. It means really fat women starring in porn. Just one quick Google search of “Plumpers” should give you the icky feeling you deserve to feel when you hear little kids singing about plumpers having “more to love”. Yes little Johnny and little Jenny, plumpers do have more to love. That’s why these websites charge $24.95 a month to have you look at them. Some people get their kicks from flop-sweat sex, and seeing the young Asian girl handle the Ron Jeremy-esque hot dog in this commercial probably sparked the idea that fat people having sex should be called plumpers.

And as if I didn’t feel bad enough for these kids who now have to live with the memory of doing a Broadway musical for a hot dog, I feel really bad for the kid at the end. I’m sure he hasn’t eaten a hot dog in 20 years because it took 20 takes to get that shot right. That comes out to about four or five plumpers in one day and God knows even Peter North couldn’t have handled that.

If there are two things you should learn from this commercial they should be: 1. Don’t name your product after something that could mean something different in the mind of a teenage boy (ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, PRODUCERS OF “NADS”?!?), and 2. knowing now wieners were once called plumpers should keep your kids far away from hot dogs. Feed them a hamburger instead… but only one so we can cut down on obesity in this country.

“Zestfully” clean to be exact!

In light of the recent Mitchell Report, I’m sure Roger Clemens now regrets getting stuck in the rear with steroid needles. But after watching this commercial from 1987 I’m sure “The Rocket” regrets this performance even more.

The idea behind the “Zestfully Clean” campaign of the 1980’s was actually a very good one. A catchy jingle with “ordinary people” singing along made for a memorable campaign. Apparently by ‘87 the campaign was running a little stale, so the folks at Proctor & Gamble decided to spice things up with a celebrity hawking the soap. And who better to sell soap than a sweaty baseball player? Especially one like Clemens who was coming off a spectacular 1986 season in which his Boston Red Sox finished just one strike away from winning the World Series? But what could have been an effective ad campaign becomes just comical when you first realize Clemens is lip-syncing to some opera singer.

After the Clemens opener, we see the ordinary people, followed by a Clemens cameo as he flips his bar of Zest like it was an American Express Platinum card. The move just hollers, “Hey! I better get the best table in the house not because I’m Roger Clemens but because I use Zest dammit!” Then we see some beautiful women showering and singing together, which is just a beautiful sight made even sweeter by the fact you’re not paying $9.95 for it on SpectraVision. But before your soap bar hormones can get all lathered up, the “scientific” experiment on why you should buy Zest goes on.

The less-sexy yet somewhat reassuring older woman draws her figure in the window of a dirty shower door, suggesting all other soaps leave some kind of film behind that Zest doesn’t. Compelling, but do you know how much soap it takes to get that nasty residue on your shower door? I’d say at least a whole bar or two, which leads me to think if you’re using a couple of bars of soap every time you shower you have much more pressing issues than not being “Zestfully clean”.

We then switch back to our lovely dancing girls who get us all steamy in the shower again before the ultimate libido kill comes sauntering in as the fourth tenor. Yeah, ol’ Clemens not only sings the outcue of the jingle, he rather excitedly zips his “Zestfully clean” towel out, nearly showing off his puncture wound area, if you know what I mean. With Clemens gleefully stretching his towel out (and giving us the ultra-80’s nod when he’s done singing) we can clearly see that in 21 years he’s managed to put a few pounds on… naturally… of course.

Perhaps I should stop making fun of his Broadway performance here… he may beat me into submission. I think they call it “roid rage”.

Let’s travel back to 1983 as we visit a simpler time in America, a time where romance could get started with a simple plate of crescent rolls. We now present a commercial from Pillsbury that is so loaded with awfulness, you can sop it up with a biscuit!

Now a nice, hot tray of crescent rolls makes any dinner taste better. But I have to admit I’ve never had my “dough rise” because of them, if you know what I mean. As for our awkward 80’s couple, obviously they’ve dated a few times before because no woman in her right mind would just show up at a guy’s apartment on the first date. Then again, any woman in her right mind probably wouldn’t succumb to her sexual fantasies because of an 89-cent can of dough. The woman, who we shall call “Vicky” because she looks like a chunky version of former “Saturday Night Live” actress Victoria Jackson, arrives at her boyfriend’s apartment just in time for dinner (which she refers to as “foreplay” for some reason). Her boyfriend, who we shall call “Cousin Larry” because he looks too much like Mark-Linn Baker, is a bit overdressed for the occasion. Dude… you’re in your own home! Lose the coat! If that was only the biggest problem these two have.

After we watch the rolls plump up, we watch Vicky salivating in the kitchen as Cousin Larry starts making the salad. Cousin Larry is wearing a “Kiss the Cook” apron, tossing salad, and she’s getting all hot and bothered for the hot and buttered crescent rolls. If late night movies on Cinemax would only be so quick in getting to the love scenes like this commercial I might actually spring the $9.95 for the network. But back to our cuddly cuties, and it’s quite obvious Cousin Larry hasn’t been with a woman that often. Larry barely spits out the phrase, “Pillsbury crescent rolls” and you can clearly see he’s getting week in the knees. He’s probably in shock because he won’t be able to use his smooth lines or that bottle of Absolut to woo her. He’s probably thinking, “I got her with the crescent rolls! Cha-ching!”

Even though Cousin Larry is a virgin, he’s no dummy. The next shot of the lovebirds features them at the dining room table… with nothing but crescent rolls and butter! BUTTER! Damn this guy knows how to lay on the charm! Then comes the very odd, googley-eyed, and somewhat phallic munching of the crescent rolls. Vicky is laying into each bight so heavy, Cousin Larry nearly spills his batter. Then in a nicotine and bourbon tone only Suzanne Pleshette could love, Vicky comes on to Cousin Larry by demanding for more crescent rolls! More crescent rolls?!? Please… I am not from Havana! We close with the Pillsbury Dough Boy chuckling, not because he was poked in the belly but because he is being a voyeur and watching our two appetizer lovers having really nasty sex. And before you say there’s no such thing as really nasty sex, just remember these two got riled up by crescent rolls so there’s not a whole lot of human interaction prior to this date. Whatever you do, don’t eat the pie in Cousin Larry’s fridge… it may have a hole in the crust.

Crescent rolls are now little pockets of carbohydrates, those sweet little somewhat dirty treats next to your grilled chicken breast and green beans. But 25 years ago, they were much dirtier and much sexier. And God knows how many kids were born all because of that damn dough boy’s delightfully devilish pastries.

When blogging about bad Burger King commercials, I have PLENTY of options to choose from. Just troll through the internet and you’ll find plenty of bizarre commercials from BK. So after much debate, I’ve decided to focus this critique on a 1980 ad featuring THE Burger King. He was just as creepy then as he is now, only 27 years ago he was creepy AND magical!

Hmmm… so where do I begin with this train wreck? For those too young to remember, by 1980 the fast food mascot wars between Ronald McDonald and Burger King were in high gear. By the 80’s, Ronald had formed his posse with Mayor McCheese, Grimace, and the Hamburglar. Not to be outnumbered in a dark alley, or if he didn’t want to do a West Side Story number by himself, the Burger King needed his own crew featuring the incredibly irritating (see for yourself) Duke of Doubt and the epileptic Sir Shake-a-Lot.

Part of Sir Shake-a-Lot’s problems is his wardrobe. I am no fashion expert, but will somebody get this man to a thrift store for a shirt and pants that didn’t just come out of a dusty exhaust pipe? The other big problem for old “Shaky” is the fact (as the King sings it) that when he’s thirsty he likes a good shake. Well that’s probably why he’s shaking so much. It appears the King is handing out medium-sized shakes (chocolate we presume), which according to calorie-count.com contain 1/3 of the daily allowance of total fat, 3/5 the daily allowance of saturated fat, 1/4 of your daily cholesterol intake, and almost 2/5 of your daily carbohydrate count. Sir Shake-a-Lot has the shakes because of the constant sugar rush he receives… or perhaps he’s experiencing his first bout of diabetic shock.

After you feel queasy listening to Shake-a-Lot’s annoying voice (Grrrrrrrrreeeeeaaaaaat Shhhhhhhaaaaaakkkkkeeees!), the King puts on a magic show. Maybe I have a dirty mind, but having two creepy men start off a magic show for kids with a phallic table just bothers me. After the table cloth erection, we see some awful magic, some terrible singing, and Shake-a-Lot jonesing for another shake like a crack whore looking for another rock. Then the King pulls out his baton, and thanks to the magic of horrendous video editing we see the “magical” shake “disappear” before our very eyes! Just wait until he starts bending spoons!

After goosing Shake-a-Lot (”That really shook me up Burger King!”) we wrap things up with a tower of chocolate-flavored fat bombs and Shake-a-Lot’s orgasmic whining. I find it far from coincidence that McDonald’s recently announced they had their best financial performance since 1980… when this commercial first aired.

So the next time you’re sitting in a Burger King drive-thru waiting for your shake, just think of Sir Shake-a-Lot and his seizures every time the King turned his magical ring for a stack of shakes. Then pull out of the drive-thru, go home, and cry in your bath tub.

Think of the people you know in your life. How many of them drink coffee every day? How many drink coffee at least three or four times a week? Do you really see a need for a commercial encouraging people to drink more coffee? Apparently in 1982, there was a shortage of people main-lining coffee so the National Coffee Association sprung in to action!

Somewhere in my collection of dusty VHS tapes from 1984 is a recording of TBS‘ “Night Tracks” with this commercial starring Cincinnati Bengals’ quarterback Ken Anderson. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a You Tube version of that video handy, but that’s okay. While I thought it was absurd that a Pro Bowl quarterback would credit coffee for his success instead of his God-given athletic talent, the notion that the rock band Heart decided to tour again in the 80s was driven by coffee was just laughable.

Before we get to Heart, our dreams of where our various heroes get their talent are dashed from the very beginning when we see Cicely Tyson, Anderson, Heart, Kurt Vonnegut, and a female news anchor I unfortunately can’t identify clearly rising to the top of their fields because they got a jolt of caffiene every morning from coffee. In another coffee commercial the list of stars who owe everything they have earned to coffee includes David Bowie. But back to Heart…

After a couple of smash albums in the 1970’s, and a few lawsuits because of them, what caused Ann and Nancy Wilson to get back and tour in 1982? COFFEE! Of course! We see Ann downing a cup right before she hits the stage! What’s really amazing is while other rockers of their era took amphetamines or cocaine to get up, Heart just needed a little Dunkin Donuts java to get them going for the big show! Unfortunately for Ann, she was probably washing down a box of donuts with that coffee before show time. I have to give her credit for eventually losing a lot of that weight, while also having the most incredible bladder on the face of the earth since she didn’t have to pee four songs into her set after all of that coffee.

With the realization coffee can’t be credited for the fast times of every superstar in the book, the editors of this spot cut to a shot of a marathon runner, a piano player, and another shot of Anderson (probably thinking, “My team would be sooooo much better if they all drank coffee!”) before the creme de la creme of the commercial at the very end.

Ann Wilson, in true 80’s form, exits from a limo to let us know that coffee indeed keeps “Rockin!”

So the next time you’re drinking a cup of Joe four hours after drinking many cups of Jose (Cuervo), just remember you are a coffee achiever! Now go get ‘em tiger!

We jump into the WABAC Machine to head back to 1970 with this Classic(ally Bad) TV spot for 7-11. Turn on… tune in… turn your eyes around my children!

Wow! That was so cool! Who knew a convenience store with 18-day-old hot dogs spinning on heat rollers could be so mod? Maybe ingesting one of those tube steak beauties caused the creation of this spot. In 1970 7-11 was almost 50-years old, yet the 24-hour convenience factor of the chain was only a few years old. Why not pump that up, instead of pumping me up with a white version of Sly & The Family Stone selling Slurpees to me? I have to admit the slogan “Oh, thank heaven” is a very catchy one and only undercuts the importance of having one of these 24-hour stores around for your convenience. Having it sung by the funkadelic Partridge Family only makes it goofy.

If the Southern Baptist musical musings of the store, or the trippy subliminal cut-ins reminding you 7-11 is “fun”, isn’t entertaining enough, then we see a mysterious and more than likely phony doctor appear to cure our headaches and sell some bread. Apparently the doctor is the bizarre offspring of C. Everett Koop and Dan Rowan, picking up his fluffy beard from the former and his stern voice from the latter. Doctor Quack then precribes aspirin and Embassy bread (an old home-made remedy that is easy on the stomach) for that quick resolution to a headache. But I’m curious Doc, does it have to be Embassy bread for the cure? Will taking my aspirin with Wonder Bread cause an ulcer because I didn’t properly follow your advice?

Of course 7-11 is no dummy when it comes to trying to make you spend a few more bucks on that impulse buy. After settling your stomach, and your headache, with that all-important combination of aspirin and Embassy bread, the head honchos at the top of the chain try to slip a fast one on you by subliminally dropping in “SOFT DRINKS” after the good doctor’s advice! I can’t think of a better way to open up a new hole in your stomach, and provide a blood rush to your already pounding head, by ingesting a Big Gulp full of carbonation!

So the next time you’re in a 7-11, staring at the bucket of filmed-over salsa by the over-baked taquitos, just think of the funky white people and the creepy doctor offering advice as you realize you really are blessed to be standing in a mini mart!

I add this newest addition to our Classic(ally Bad) collection: a 1970 spot for the legendary Shakey’s Pizza restaurant.

First a brief history lesson on Shakey’s since you probably don’t know about the joint. Shakey’s was started by Sherwood “Shakey” Johnson and Ed Plummer in Sacramento, California, in 1954. It started out like any other pizza/beer restaurant but with an added twist: Shakey would perform Dixieland jazz music to entertain the crowd. Within 10 years Shakey’s was a national chain, and by the time the two founders sold their share of the organization in the late 60s, Shakey’s had become an international chain. Now there are only 62 stores in the United States (most in California) with a couple hundred more found primarily in Asia. I am now pinning the downfall of Shakey’s on this commercial.

We start with the beautiful Kathy Coleman, known best a few years later for her role of Holly Marshall on the Saturday morning classic “Land of the Lost”, playing the role of Goldilocks. Judging by the putty-like thickness of the porridge she’s eating, I can’t blame her for going out for pizza. Despite having tremendous appetites, the three bears sure made some crappy porridge. So out the door she goes, stepping into the wild and wacky world of Shakey’s.

Shakey’s is indeed shaky with a bad edit right after the studio singers shout “SHAKEY’S!” Then we see a delicious looking pizza dished up by a creepy man with a handlebar mustache that would make Rollie Fingers blush. My stomach is turning not just because the pizza looks like it’ll give me three days of heartburn, but also because most people should be alarmed when the fat man with the greasy mustache starts enticing a young girl with food and dancing. Where are this girl’s parents? First she’s hanging out with the three bears, now she’s hanging out with a guy whose mugshot is probably on a website somewhere.

Then with perfect delivery, and an even more perfect smile and gold curls, Goldilocks let’s us know she’s having fun. Well good… but OH CRAP! THE BEARS ARE THERE TOO! RUN! HIDE! THE CARNIVOROUS CREATURES HAVE GIVEN UP THEIR PORRIDGE FOR AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD GIRL! But wait! The bears are eating that scary guy’s pizza too! And they’re singing! Oh fun for everyone! But not nearly as fun as a free Frisbee, which brings me to the creepiest part of the commercial.

First, the production values of the Frisbee tag are awful. Clearly this commercial was tagged by the lowest bidder, probably a man with a Radio Shack mike in his basement. And that’s probably where he got this picture from– his basement. Who is this girl? And why did she bring a Frisbee to her Olan Mills photo shoot? Come to think of it, I think I saw this photo in Soul Asylum’s video for “Runaway Train”. Somebody call Crime Stoppers if you’ve seen her! She was last seen with three bears and a “person of interest” dressed as a barbershop quartet singer!

As for the Frisbee… IT SPINS! IT FLOATS! IT FLIES! Really?!? Who won the lottery?!? Mom, dad, let’s get to Shakey’s, pronto!