Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

WELCOME TO 1967 VIA KNXT

Here’s a twelve minute reel of intros, outros, station ID’s and commercials from a 1967 broadcast over the local Los Angeles CBS affiliate KNEXT. They appear to be part of an hour long summer replacement show called ‘Away We Go’ which features an awfully enticing cast–Buddy Greco, George Carlin, The

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COMMERCIALS WERE WEIRD IN THE 90s

It’s hard for me to think of the 1990s as ‘period’. That was the decade in which I turned 30 and began having a professional life (of sorts) and feels to me relatively recent, not that far in my past. Of course that was thirty years ago–THIRTY YEARS AGO–and the

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SERIOUSLY F#!#!#-UP COMMERCIALS FROM THE 80s

Here’s a reel of alternately funny, scary, disgusting or disturbing TV ads from the golden 80s. Lots of Cocaine and AIDS nostalgia, of course, and Brenda Vaccaro shilling for Tampons while inhaling through an iron lung in between sentences is pretty messed up. Cosby makes an appearance, natch, and a

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PANASONIC MEETS…EDWARD HERMANN?

A mere five years before portraying Franklin D. Roosevelt in the network mini-series ‘Eleanor and Franklin’, Edward Hermann portrayed “one of the country’s leading bachelors” in the very amusing Panasonic Stereo commercial posted above. We are deep in the early 70s groove here and Hermann’s portrait of the era’s swinging

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STEREO SOUNDS OF THE 70s

The above 1973 commercial for a Pioneer home stereo system plays more like a current day SNL parody of a 1973 Pioneer home stereo system commercial than the real thing. Yet it’s the real thing. Did we really look, act and talk like that? The early 70s are becoming as

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CARBS, 1960s STYLE

What kind of crap foods were people eating half a century ago? Consult the nifty little reel of commercials posted above to find out. Pizza rolls? Rice a Roni? Jello cheesecake anyone? Don’t mind if I do! The weird inclusion of a shaving cream ad at the end of the

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COMMERCIALS/DRINKS/1950s/YOU GET IT

Here’s a nice little reel of beverage commercials the late 1950s to mid 60s. If nothing else, this grouping of ads shows us how poor the ideas and execution of commercials were before they got jazzed up in the middle-60s, as well as how poor the public’s taste was in

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MILTON BRADLEY, GAMESMAN

I guess I always assumed that the Milton Bradley sung about on TV in commercials for games that I saw on TV as a youth was either the last two names of the men who invented the games (Bob Milton and Eddie Bradley), or the Anglicized name of a fat

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SMOKES

Anti-Cigarette ads began with PSA’s brought to us by the American Cancer Society in the late 1960s. They were considered controversial at the time, as was putting warning labels on cigarette packages, a practice which started in 1965. It’s astounding to me that sixty years later the damn things still

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THE GREATEST CAR COMMERCIAL (N)EVER AIRED

No, this didn’t really air despite the YouTube posters claim that it did. But Ralph Williams, a major west-coast used car hustler, loved a good gag-reel and clearly this take was made after the commercial proper was in the can. The dogs on the hood are a brilliant touch. And

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