The Affari Edge Blog

Oh thank heaven for one of my favorite websites, Birmingham Rewound, for this gem from 1977. It’s from back in the day when newspapers were actually useful! And this charming couple apparently puts The Birmingham News to use for everything. They… just… can’t… live… without it!

Founded in 1888, The Birmingham News was (and still is) the top paper produced in Birmingham, Alabama. And before the days of the Internet ad 24-hour news channels, people were informed and entertained by what was in the newspaper. This couple, however, takes that too far as their copy of the News tells them what to do as if The Son of Sam was writing it himself.

We start in some trendy Birmingham mall where the man and woman are looking for something advertised in the paper, and we’re looking at the mall once they pass by the camera because someone forgot to move the camera. Or a more likely scenario, someone forgot to flesh this whole commercial idea out so we’re left with 25 seconds of material for a 30-second commercial. Time to stretch! Leave that establishing shot up for a few extra seconds, Phil! So after we ponder for a while staring at other shoppers milling about, we meet up with our wonderful couple again. They’ve found what they’re looking for: a giant orange tent! Oh wait, it’s 1977… that’s a dress! A really big, bright, orange dress! How tall is this woman? There must be eight feet of material on that hanger. In the meantime, our jingle singer tries to make us believe the News has a “passion for fashion” when clearly they don’t. It’s even more obvious they have no idea “what’s in and what’s out” as the woman laughs at her husband’s sports coat. Not that she has any room to laugh since just seconds ago she was fawning over a set of orange drapes she thought was a dress. I’m starting to wonder if perhaps the News convinced our old buddy Dick Reese where to buy his suits, but I digress…

Apparently our smitten couple have decided to purchase the Garfield outfit, and with the missus flaunting about the living room the poor husband reluctantly puts down his news paper so she can show off this fashion disaster in public. Honey! Let’s go to dinner! And they do, to a nice establishment that serves wine in three-gallon goblets. Reinforcing the idea there was only 25 seconds of material for this 30-second commercial, our lovers stare into each other’s eyes for waaaaaaay to long. Because the creator of this commercial couldn’t come up with anything better, these two have to mutter things back and forth like, “I love you”, “No really, I love you, I do”, and, “Are we done shooting this yet?” And then we fade to black, like most newspapers today are doing (although they’re going in the red, not black).

The News is still available when you are, even if you like to buy awful clothes and deliver sermons to your loved one while toasting your dinner at a fancy-schmantzy restaurant.

And when I say “brats” I don’t mean delicious bratwurst boiled in beer then thrown on a grill. What I do mean is these two brats who demand their own type of chicken! Thankfully for these two twerps, and their doting mom, Kentucky Fried Chicken could take care of their needs, even in 1978!

In the 30 years since this commercial was made, fast food selection has changed tremendously. It’s laughable nowadays to even think the tough choice of original recipe or extra crispy was the only tough choice a KFC customer had to make. But it’s true, and KFC went out of its way to let stressed out moms know that when your Veruca Salt-like kids demanded chicken their way they got it!

So the idea of this commercial is bad enough to begin with, and now we’ll add some horrific acting to the mix! First, what’s with the awkward three seconds of silence at the beginning of the spot? Whoever edited this thing didn’t quite grasp the concept of “tightening up” the action. The only thing missing from the start of the commercial is the director yelling, “ACTION!” But perhaps the silence would be welcome after hearing these little pipsqueaks scream out their order. And as if our tone-deaf counter clerk didn’t understand Frick and Frack’s yelling, mom repeats the order with the girls’ names thrown in. If I were the clerk, I’d say, “Lady, I don’t give a rat’s arse what your kids’ names are, just tell them to stop yelling at me! One wants original and one wants extra crispy! I GET IT!” But our clerk doesn’t get it, giving us a look as if the kids spoke to her in Japanese. You can almost see her thinking, “Uh oh… I don’t know if I can put original in one box and extra crispy in the other. I think I’ll have to get my manager!” Then again it looks like she’s about 34, and at that age she really shouldn’t be working the counter at KFC.

Our clerk shows her dimwittedness again just moments later when she hands the wrong box of chicken to the wrong kid. Still I can only blame the mother for this since we really didn’t need to know her kids’ names, but in this event the clerk should just present both boxes and ask for the money from mom. Let these two back of the airline seat kickers figure out whose dinner is in which box. Besides, one box has “EXTRA CRISPY” branded on it like it came from the CIA.

The kids eventually did figure out which was which, and as our heart-warming jingle lets us know it’s so good to feel good about a meal, mom stares at the kids as they wolf down their KFC. That brings me to another concern– these kids are already irritating, and soon they will grow up to be FAT and irritating! How old are these kids? Five, maybe six-years-old? Why the hell is their mother giving them whole boxes of chicken to eat? You saw the close-up, a breast and drumstick along with a fat buttery biscuit. Remember, this is when KFC unabashedly called themselves Kentucky Fried Chicken because nobody cared about unhealthy fried foods. Today KFC is shifting back to the Kentucky Fried Chicken moniker, mostly because they are leaving out the trans-fats and cooking food in healthier oil. Still, according to their own nutrition guide, the meal the girls are eating is loaded with calories and fat. The original recipe box contains about 710 calories and a whopping 40 grams of fat (or roughly 61% of the recommended daily allowance). The extra crispy isn’t much better (700/66/74%), and with all the sodium these kids are inhaling it’s only a matter of time before nearby deer use them as salt licks.

The kids are all grown up now, and I’m sure they feel good about that delicious meal they inhaled in the back of their mom’s car. Mom is probably paying outrageous medical bills for their daughters, but that’s okay because they got what they asked for at Kentucky Fried Chicken! Even with the assistance of a knucklehead behind the counter!

Home video game units were all the rage in America in the early 1980’s, so it didn’t take much to sell them. That’s what Toys ‘R Us thought in this 1981 commercial featuring the once-funny Arte Johnson.

Again, it didn’t take much to sell the Atari 2600 back in 1981, but this commercial is just plain awful. I guess it just shows how easy it was to sell these things back then! How did that creative meeting at the ad agency go?

Agency head: So what do we have for the Toys ‘R Us Atari spot?

Agency employee: A comdeian most people have forgot speaking in a bad German accent while mumbling about the product.

Agency head: A forgotten comedian? Jo Ann Worley?

Agency employee: No, Arte Johnson.

Agency head: Even better! And you still have the Laugh-In connection! I love it! Shoot it this Thursday!

Nevermind people spent $139 on the 2600, or that “Asteroids 101″ is the first game to tackle before spending $20 or $30 on some other goofy game, but who thought Johnson would connect well with the target audience– teenagers? This is a guy who had nothing worthwhile in ten years, which may explain why he’s doing Toys ‘R Us commercials dressed like the grandfather of Dr. Strangelove.

As if the awful German schtick wasn’t bad enough, someone actually let Johnson tell a joke… or at least try to tell one. “Can I have some of your seed?” WHAT?!? Who approved of that? Please tell me that was just improv and not actually written. Then again, if it was improv, what did the outtakes consist of? Was this really the best option? Maybe the East Germans broke down the Berlin Wall eight years later to hunt down this character and beat him down for such awful punchlines.

Interestingly, the air in Atari’s sails dissipated in the early 1980’s. Some blame the growth of the personal computer industry, others blame the video game crash of 1983. But after watching this trainwreck, I’d put my money on this commercial for killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

With the space race in full swing and science-fiction all the rage in 1961, it’s only appropriate that kids would be thrilled by a giant alien kinda-thingy as a toy. It’s not The Great Gazoo… it’s The Great Garloo!

At first it almost seems like you’re watching an old sci-fi movie as alot of the tricks of the trade are being used in this commercial: scale models with creatures only two-feet tall causing all of the havoc. Then we see the ultimately scary face of the Great Garloo! Upon further review I think the look of the Great Garloo was based on childhood photos of New Jersey Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello, but I digress…

After watching some unrealistic situations where a kid could use Garloo, we go to the realistic situations at home. Or are they realistic? Would most little boys use the battery-powered (hard-wired!) controls to do things like pick up his little sister’s doll? I mean Garloo was just lifting up railroad bridges and knocking down power lines. Now he’s babysitting? What?!? Most boys might pick up the doll, only to place it into the oven or an open flame.

After doing that, most little sisters wouldn’t kiss Garloo. Those who would, I can only imagine the type of husband they ended up marrying (perhaps the next “Mrs. Lamoriello”?). And what… umm… partner will the little boy end up with after sipping tea with his little sister? Somehow Garloo doesn’t seem so vicious when he’s picking up dolls and tea cups.

Ahh! But back to the testosterone! DESTRUCTION! No railroad bridge is safe from the Great Garloo! And no bank account is either! Could you believe this thing went for $17.98 in 1961? Minimum wage was $1.15 an hour. That means it took 15.63 hours (pre-tax) to buy this friggin’ thing! That’s about two days of work all so little Jimmy can pick up his sister’s tea cups. With the average income at $5,315 then, the average worker brought a home a check of just over $204 every week.

So kids… the only way you can control the Great Garloo is if your mommy and daddy are rich! And the situation is the same almost 50 years later as Garloo sells for $300 on E-Bay. So you can control the Great Garloo as long as you don’t mind living without the Internet or phone for a couple of months. It’s so maddening, it makes me want to destroy a railroad bridge!

In 1980, it was safe to buy from Safe Toyota and Safe Subaru in Brooklyn. It was probably unsafe to cross these guys…

Wowee wow wow! The acting is this commercial makes “My Cousin Vinny” look like “Gone With the Wind”! First we hear from Joe Manfredi, the owner of the dealerships, spit his lines out like he was going to split your skull if you didn’t buy one of his cars. Then he brings on his version of “Barker’s Beauties”, a collection of oh-so-80’s goodness we shall call the “Manfredi Meatballs”. I should refer to them as “cheese balls” because of their acting, but I’m all about alliteration.

So we cover all the bases with meatball one getting the line, “great prices” out pretty well. Meatball two goes all-Brooklyn with the line, “terrific sair-vis!” in that stereotypical New York accent. Meatball three pushes us over the edge with the great, and Brooklyn-thick, “afford-uh-bull lease-ang!”. Seeing that this may not sell cars extremely well, Manfredi ups the ante with super star power… 80’s style!

In 1980, most of America still cared about soccer thanks mostly to the success of the North American Soccer League and in particular the New York Cosmos and their star player Pele. But with Pele long gone from the team and attendance slipping a bit from the team’s glory years in the late 1970s, Manfredi goes with his Italian brother Giorgio Chinaglia as his spokesperson. Although Giorgio was one of the most famous soccer players in the world, and he continues to provide analysis for the World Cup every four years, he was one of the least-like players on the Cosmos.

Still, the Cosmos won the Soccer Cup that year, and Manfredi had a bonafied star selling cars from (then) two of the crappiest car companies in the world. Nowadays Manfredi still sells cars, and he does it well as the head of the Manfredi Auto Group in New York. He’s a great rags to riches story of an Italian immigrant finding his niche in cars at the right time. It’s a great story, with one classic(ally bad) commercial as part of it!

Who doesn’t like pancakes? And who doesn’t like adding things to their pancake batter like chocolate chips, fruit, or… illicit drugs? The last addition to one’s pancakes is apparently what happened here in this mind-bending, bizarre 1969 ad for the International House of Pancakes.

Wow… I had too much to dream last night! Can you tell IHOP was based in California? Can you also tell everyone involved in this commercial from conception, to filming, to editing, to music was free-basing on something? What the hell was that?!?

Alright, the family running through the field with bunches of balloons, we’ll let slip. It was 1969, color TV was new and hip, and the family running around with balloons was very hippie-like so we’ll give that a pass. But we can’t give it a total pass because of the awful, awful, AWFUL music featured in this spot. It sure sounds like someone got a new organ for Christmas and just HAD to try it out! Juiced up on too many conceptual albums from The Beatles, The Who, Cream, and The Moody Blues, this person with the new organ ended up pounding out 60 seconds of some of the worst music ever recorded. That, or he left a tape recorder running while his cat walked up and down the keyboard. Groovy, dude.

It’s tough to figure out which is worse, the music, or the hideous Alvin and the Chipmunks singing that accompanies it. One quick look at the singles releases of Alvin and the Chipmunks tunes sees one release in 1968, followed by one in 1980. So desperate to make ends meet, and to take care of their growing drug habit, Alvin and the boys must have been eager to jump at any opportunity. Sing stoned off our gourd for a pancake restaurant? YES! YES! YES! Sign us up!

Now back to the video, which doesn’t do anything to convince us to go to IHOP. After our romp in the park with the family, we’re seated inside a cramped IHOP where our family is probably the closest to normal at IHOP. If you consider running through the park with giant helium balloons is normal, that is, which still may be the case since most IHOPs are filled with drunks, cheap truckers, and homeless people able to scrape up $8 for a “steak” dinner.

We start with the little boy who orders pancakes, en Francaise. If the kid wants to eat crepes’ that’s fine, but he should not blame his parents in therapy for becoming an interior decorator. His sister clearly doesn’t want to be there, and she clearly doesn’t want to eat whatever is floating in that ceramic chicken. I’m guessing it’s pot pie, and I’m also guessing if she really didn’t want that meal she shouldn’t have ordered it. Mom must have had a little bit of whatever the creators of this commercial had, because she is just way too delirious about her salad. Dad is not amused with his plate of 1/2 cup of spaghetti with tiny meatballs that cost 43 cents to make but shows up as $5.95 on his bill, but he plays it off cordially. We top off our meal with a steaming fresh pot of coffee for the whole family, and that allows everybody to RUN! RUN SOME MORE! MORE BALLOONS!

We then wrap with seven awkward seconds of bad organ music playing out the bad jingle with a bad logo. It’s safe to say at this point in time the creators of the commercial, who I have an odd suspicion were also responsible for the movie “Head”, crashed from their highs and just couldn’t come up with anything better.

As odd as this commercial is, it somehow worked. I say that simply because nearly 40 years later IHOP is still dishing up food to stoners… only this time the stoners who watched the original commercial grew up and gave birth to stoners who still wash ashore at IHOP at 3 in the morning.

Let’s now step waaaay back in time when records (yes, those vinyl discs) were being sold as fun for the entire family! It’s the RCA “Best of ‘57″ collection! Dig this, daddy-o!

So what’s the first thing that strikes you about this commercial? I know, the warbling audio track. Believe it or not that WASN’T in the original commercial… and that’s a VERY good thing for RCA-Victor! Imagine trying to sell your audio inventory when your commercial sounds like the film projector in Mrs. Scarpa’s second-grade class at Seffner Elementary (at least that’s what it sounded like to me).

No, there’s something far more interesting about this commercial. That’s right, it’s in color! In 1957 very few programs or commercials were filmed in color simply because the technology was new, not widespread, and very expensive. The last of those reasons is very evident as the money spent on the color film and post-production drained the rest of the budget for this spot. I mean, what fourth-grade art project is that “house” at the beginning of the spot? And once you get inside it doesn’t get any better. I guess you could call the living room “art nouveau”, but I call it “thrift store living”. Our assembled family, all white like everyone else on TV was back then, is enjoying the light brought to their home with RCA-Victor music. Unfortunately the music didn’t bring any sofas, carpet, paint, pictures, or tables with its light. Instead we have the gang of four sitting on a putting green, staring at the only item of value in the house– a record player. Even dad has been kicked out of his recliner in exchange for a cheap camping chair.

Still, home is where the heart is and the family is all together doing one thing which is just great. But I have a hunch the kids won’t be around long after being force-fed this horrible music. Frankie Carle?!? Lena Horne?!? Harry Belafonte?!? PERRY FREAKIN’ COMO?!? Alright, I admit a little jazz or Latin music from Horne or Belafonte is appropriate for certain settings, but I hardly call it “family entertainment”. The kids must be wondering why dad, too cheap to upgrade from his camping chair, won’t let the kids have a few extra nickels to get the latest from Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, or Chuck Berry. If the giant Como display doesn’t scare anyone under the age of 23 away from the store, digging through the “best of” collection surely will.

And we’re reminded if you have a sparse living room, or a paper mache’ house like our TV family does, you can save with the “45 economy package” which really isn’t saving when you’re paying half the price for about a quarter of the LP. Then again if you’re spending $4 (a hefty sum back in 1957 when minimum wage was $1 per hour… that’s about $26 in today’s standards with the minimum wage about to go up to $6.55 an hour) on a Perry Como album, you’ve probably never balanced a checkbook.

So entertain the family with some long-playing garbage! It’s the “best of ‘57″, and thankfully it didn’t continue into ‘58 or 2008!

Ahhhh… the 80’s were a promising time just full of energy and potential after the dreary 70’s. So what do you say we practice some carpe diem with the power of chewing gum!

The reason why I selected this commercial to blog on is because the company I work for, Affari Edge, just moved to a new building (hence why no new videos have been posted here in almost two weeks). I first searched for videos involving moving like we did, hauling thousands of pounds of crap from location to another. With no luck I found this gem from 1981 advertising Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit. Now this commercial campaign actually was not bad, with a catchy jingle that I recall was used for several years in the 80’s. But I have to put it on this website not just because of the “moving” connection, but also because it’s one of those commercials that simply featured unlikely expectations for the product.

I mean, think about this… have you ever chewed a stick of gum and just decided to go water skiing? Other than caffeine-infused energy gum, has a stick of gum just lifted you up off the couch and thrust you into a round of extreme sports? I didn’t think so! Chances are you’re chewing gum because you’re bored or desperately trying to quit smoking.

Yet here is our fun-loving group of “kids”, all people around 32 or 33 dressed up and acting like they’re 17, parading to the big lake for an afternoon of water skiing. How fun! And it’s all because they were sitting around chewing gum! Then we have the overt sexual appeal of gum. Well actually it’s the overt sexual appeal of boobs, for both men and women. Who knew that chewing Juicy Fruit would give you a giant rack or rock-hard abs like our “kids” show off in slow motion.

Then we have one of our beach bums shoving a piece of gum in his mouth before embarking on a slew of water skiing tricks not seen since the last water ski show at Cypress Gardens. To be honest with you, I don’t know if I’d want to be chewing gum while water skiing. Isn’t that dangerous? Can’t that get stuck in your throat while your flying through the air in the greatest of ease? After choking on your gum, you’d be dragged around the water like Bernie in “Weekend at Bernie’s”. Is that fun for you if you’re the corpse?

Oh, back to the sexual action again as we see a beautiful blond shoving a stick of gum in her mouth, but far more sensually than our beach bum did because this time it’s in slow motion. I’m wondering how many takes that took. I can only imagine the director screaming, “CUT!” over and over again because the gum didn’t arc just right. And as if the name “juicy fruit” didn’t imply a sexual situation in the first place, we’re greeted with a shot of one of our water skiing pal’s crotch as he glides over us. Gee thanks… give me some more of that gum.

As I continue to ice up my sore back and bloody toes from hauling around refrigerators, work tables, and boxes of stuff I didn’t know we had in our office, I’m wondering how much easier our work would have been had we been chewing on some Juicy Fruit. We would just be tossing those heavy appliances and tables around like they were nothing. And if I slowly took my shirt off I would suddenly have a cut body instead of cuts on my beer gut.

Or maybe we should just hire professional movers to do it next time, and I can chew some gum while watching them do the heavy lifting.

It was 1983, and MTV was sweeping the nation. So how do we get more kids to drink milk? Why, by doing a parody of a popular music video, of course! It’s advertising milk, but this is all cheese.

The National Dairy Board, as well as other national and state milk boards, has come up with some great ad campaigns over the last 20 years oh so. “Milk, it does the body good” and “Got milk?” are two of the best campaigns ever made for a product we all need but don’t necessarily like. Before those gems though came this turd, an idea that I can probably pinpoint exactly how it came to be thanks to all of my years in the broadcasting business.

As I mentioned earlier, MTV was gaining in popularity as music videos captivated a mostly young audience of soon-to-be wealthy 18 to 34-year-olds. Even though milk is force-fed to students at every level of public schooling here in the United States, once you get to about the 7th or 8th grade it’s just not cool to drink that stuff. In the late 1980’s, the “Milk, it does the body good” campaign emphasized milk’s ability to build strong and healthy bones. Basically, girls would like you if you drank your milk because they’d think you’re hot. Before getting down to science though, the National Dairy Board tried to be cool. That’s the biggest mistake any advertiser can make.

This was clearly the brainchild of some uptight white guy who was 42 or 43-years-old at the time. He saw his kids were watching MTV, and probably an Adam Ant video, and while they were singing and dancing to the video the light bulb went off in his head. “HEY!”, he thought. “If my kids are singing and dancing to ‘Goody Two Shoes’, then they will drink their milk if we do a jingle that sounds like this song!” Uptight white guy tells his co-workers and decision makers at the National Dairy Board, who are even more white and uptight, and they buy into the deal. So a commercial is born!

And what a commercial it was, with some Fonzie-like (again, totally out of touch with pop culture in 1983) kid leading the dancing troupe of geeks and spazzes in the lunch line into a full Broadway performance about milk. The 1980’s were already an awkward, fashion-challenged decade for kids. Having them kick up their high heels probably didn’t help their self-esteem (unless they wanted to join New Order in the first place). Having the Fonz do the ultra-“Fame” head jerk at the end pushes this spot way over the top, and more than likely had kids thinking “Yeah… like I’m really gonna drink that stuff now!”.

So the next time you’re at the lunch counter getting your burger and fries, make sure you do a little song and dance when you ask for milk! Then you can do an encore number about ordering a banana split to the tune of “Stand and Deliver”.

AYE MATEYS! It’s time to go back to a day when a sailor smelled like a sailor, and nerdy men couldn’t get enough of that smell! Let’s view this gender-bending gem from 1971 for Old Spice cologne.

Now this spot really is a throwback compared to cologne commercials of today. Thanks mostly to Calvin Klein in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, cologne and perfume commercials became film noir works of art, often making you wonder what the hell they were advertising as waifs danced and/or pouted while spouting out the name of the product. In 1971, it was simple to advertise for cologne. A man comes home from his work (in this case a sailor comes back from the sea), he of course smells great with his Old Spice so he and his lady friend decide to have a great night on the town. But what’s this? It’s a secret admirer following the couple around!

And he’s not just any secret admirer, he’s a freaking CREEPY secret admirer! For one, he looks an awful lot like Mark David Chapman. Another eerie issue here is the nerdy young stalker clearly has a thing for the sailor and not for the buxom brunette around the sailor’s arm. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to borrow a line from “Seinfeld”, but I’m not exactly sure this is the best way to sell your product. You’re trying to convince the average man that by putting on this foul-smelling Old Spice, you can pull any talent like our big buff sailor can here. Apparently there’s an inherit danger of also pulling “talent” in the form of a 20-something geek who knows “The Wizard of Oz” by heart and watches it on a small black and white TV in a bedroom filled with stiff tube socks. I think I’ll stick with Jovan Musk, thank you.

The creepiness of our stalker is even creepier given where he is hiding out while watching his favorite stack of man meat… ERR… I mean that beautiful young woman the sailor is escorting around. First, he’s actually at the dock watching this guy get off the boat to meet his woman. Upon further review, a rather awkward young man with an afro and white tee shirt is standing behind our stalker checking HIM out! I’m starting to wonder if The Village People got the band started because of this commercial. Then our stalker goes to a high observation platform to eavesdrop on the couple’s lunch, standing erect when he realizes how big and tall the sailor is. He also stood straight up when he realized how big and tall the sailor was.

After walking dangerously close to the couple throughout Chinatown, our gruff sea salt finally chases the stalker away by throwing a bottle of Old Spice at him. The sailor thinks he’s doing the young man a favor by sharing the scent he uses to attract women with. The nerd is so flattered to have something touched by a seaman, he observes the bottle is somewhat conical in shape and I’m sure he’ll wind up in the emergency room that night after “accidentally” falling on to the bottle causing him to impale his rectum.

And as for the tag line here, is Old Spice really the reason why women have patiently waited for their men to return from the sea? Or is it because their men have been at the sea for six months and they want a little something something after all of those lonely nights? Old Spice may be an elixir for some people, but I have a hunch it’s the latter of the two. And knowing full well that the crabs come in on the captain’s dinghy, I’m sure these ladies aren’t the only sirens the sailor boys are coming home to.

Old Spice… it’s old and smells like rotten spice, but it’ll help the sailor in you bring home the catch of the day. Just be warned the “catch” may be a young man who carries his own butter knife.