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”.
It’s 1990, not long ago when you think about it. There was no Internet, cell phones were the size of bricks, and your cable company gave you just 48 channels. It’s amazing how technology has changed in those 18 years, and it’s even more amazing that a “portable” computer at that time was the size of the New York City Yellow Pages. The computers also had just as much memory as those phone books… as did the people that used them!
Today, the Mac vs. PC war is represented by those humorous ads featuring the cool and artsy Mac guy and the stiff and clumsy PC guy. In 1990 though, the difference between the two was slim. Apple had dominated the home computer market in the 1980’s, but when the 1990’s rolled around the PC (i.e. Windows) computers were becoming more popular. Looking to take the lead in the business community, a market IBM had held for decades, Apple tried to make their 25-pound portable computer cooler than the competition’s. That’s where the coolness of Apple died.
Of course the size and ability of a portable computer then compared to computers now is laughable. It’s hard to believe people would pay thousands of dollars for these things, but it was new technology then and I’m sure 18 years from now people will chuckle when they look at our laptops and iPhones from today. But once you get past the technology gap, the true message of the commercial is revealed. The portable Mac of 1990 was designed precisely for stupid people. The successful business man who could speak seven languages somehow isn’t successful with his PC laptop. How he got this far is beyond me. The woman toying around with the portable Mac readily admits she’s an idiot, and I’m guessing she’s playing around with her computer simply because it has pictures and stacks of coins on the display. I have a hunch she designed that solitaire game people play when they’re bored.
It is because of this sales angle Mac suffered greatly in the 90’s while the PC market (especially Windows-based computers) took off. Computers were becoming more and more necessary in the 90’s, and Windows made PC’s look very business-like while also being fun and easy to use. Basically, PC’s were the mechanical pencils of the computer world while Macs became the box of crayons. Let’s not forget the big breakthrough with the Mac in the late 90’s was you could get one in your favorite color. Since Steve Jobs was able to build up from that ho-hum announcement to once again dominate the computer market for tech-savvy people, I’m wondering if he can walk on water.
In 1990 he couldn’t, and neither could the confused young lady at the airport in this commercial. She could stack coins and make pictures on her computer, and at that point in time that was amazing enough.
Of course I mean the early years, as McDonald’s didn’t get around to really selling salads until a few years ago. In 1963, McDonald’s had to sell itself to kids, and what better way than with a creepy clown!
It’s hard to say the first Ronald McDonald commercial is “classic(ally bad)”, but it is. Ronald McDonald has become a global icon in the 45 years he’s existed, but like any other icon the first few years of his existence were rough at best. What has become a very polished icon started as the brainchild of TV weather man Willard Scott. Before Scott himself became famous for his appearances on NBC’sToday Show, he was a disc jockey in the Washington D.C. area. Asked to come up with a kid-friendly character to help sell hamburgers to young’ ens, Scott based his character on Bozo the Clown, whom he also played the role of on a Washington-area TV station. What evolved was a creative, yet odd character.
The Ronald McDonald we see here reminds me of the “creepy clown factor” referred to in the background of a current E-Trade commercial. I know 1963 was a much simpler time in television production, but how many trash cans did Scott dig through to come up with this costume? The red and yellow-striped uniform makes sense because he is a clown. But the TV dinner tray on his head? And a dinner tray wrapped around his belt? And a paper cup on his nose? Come on now… this clown has suddenly turned himself into a masquerading homeless guy.
The “magical tray” was no big deal, simply because it’s old-fashioned special effects. But the most disturbing part of Ronald’s getup is how he has fun… by pulling his own finger several times. Now our masquerading homeless guy has turned into every family’s overweight drunk uncle playing with the kids. He even dances like that uncle when “Cha-Cha Slide” comes on the radio, further embarrassing the family members. “Oh there goes Uncle Milton again, making an ass out of himself! When will he ever grow up?”
Ronald is all nice and clean and perfect nowadays thanks to corporate oversight. It’s amazing how he has changed so much, and it’s even more amazing to see the old Ronald didn’t somehow end up running the bumper cars at local county fairs.
So a lot has happened over the past month since my last post. I went exploring in the front room, the floors are now level and most of the walls are now cracked. Luckily, we’ll be replacing all walls within the next month. This entry will also include several pictures of some of the exploration and renovations that have been taking place.
Since he don’t have pictures of the foundation repair as of yet, I’ve decided to include a few images of my building contributions. I took it upon myself to remove two wooden panels that seemed somewhat out of place in our front room. With some simple tools and a little elbow grease, I successfully removed the panels, revealing a pretty cool piece of the building: two built-in shelves that added to the building’s 1920s character!
The First Panel Not sure which was more interesting: the custom shelving, or the smell.
Shelf no. 1 After I took care of the clean up the shelf looked great. Once we start on the interior, we will fully restore it!
Taking on the Second Panel A few days after removing the first panel, my obsessive-compulsive side checked-in. I finally couldn’t take having one panel on and one panel off. Plus, I’m pretty sure I would have gone crazy if I didn’t see what was behind this wall.
Panel Pry-ing This panel was a bit more stingy. I had to chissle away most of the wood - but it’s fun getting your hands dirty around the office once in a while.
Sneak Peak Here’s a pretty cool shot taken by Dave that came out great. I especially like that a shard from the panel remained in the foreground. That’s a plastic toy-horse on the shelf that’s obviously been there for a while.
Stay posted - more picture, adventures and updates are coming soon!
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: 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.
