Classic(ally Bad) TV Commercials: Give Dad the Gift of Crap From Kmart!
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!
