Classic(ally Bad) TV Commercials: Happiness is a Vacuum Cleaner!
It’s Christmas in June! No, it’s not a Crazy Eddie sales stunt… it’s a trip across the pond to jolly old England in 1958. It’s never too early to get that Christmas shopping started, and thankfully we have a second-hand Santa giving us those yuletide ideas in the summertime!
Well I can’t agree more with the high-pitched singers and our young Santa with the taped-on beard. If I want to give happiness, I don’t give money, or a new house, or a Christmas bonus to my employees. No, I give vacuum cleaners, polishers, and spinarinses… whatever the hell those are.
At the very least this shows us how post-war Britain was rebuilding with the standard comforts of home. But it also shows us the very different home scene in 1958, where the housewife was supposed to be happy with her shiny new Hoover steam iron. Is it any wonder why the British Invasion of music started, followed closely behind by the “Swinging London” way of life in the 1960’s? Happiness was a freaking appliance!
And our poor man’s Santa reminds us that Hoover happiness last for years. Imagine that… you not only get the happiness of getting a stinking floor buffer as a Christmas gift, you get the happiness of lugging that thing around the house for years! Everytime you buff those scuff marks off the linoleum, be happy! And why shouldn’t you be happy? After all, the jolly old man taking notes at the appliance yard sale with the giant pencil you had in the 3rd grade says so. Enough said!
When happiness comes from a Hoover, life has simply gone from “suck” to “blow”.
