Do you remember in Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” the looks on the faces of the audience members as they watched ‘Springtime For Hitler” unfold? That reaction is roughly the same as the one you’ll likely be having as you watch some of the most unbearably awful, insensitive and hilariously dated
Behold the magical cereal known as ‘Grape Nuts’. I’m a fan but must admit to understanding why the nutty, fiber-heavy, kind of weird/bitter and hard to chew and swallow cereal is not for everyone. As an acquired taste it’s attracted wildly disparate fans and who could be more wildly disparate
Here’s a dandy reel of deeply offensive television commercials from the 1970s. There’s loads of chauvinism, sexual harassment, mockery of Native Americans to go around, and cameos made by convicted rapist Bill Cosby and convicted murderer O.J. Simpson do not help matters. The female stockings commercials would make Benny Hill
Compare and contrast two different 7-Up ads from two different decades. Above, we see a retread of the famous Gene Kelly/Jerry the Mouse half live-acrtion half-animation dance routine–and quite well accomplished it is. Below we see the great Geoffrey Holder twenty-some years later shilling for the caffeine-free soda in a
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWt3Mi1YAcshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PluLAxa3u2A Continuing our look at commercials for old soda brands–yesterday we watched some RC Cola ads–today lets focus on Fresca. Above are two commercials from the 1960s. In the first, the idea was to show icy, snowy weather environments in order to invoke Fresca’s icy, snowy refreshing taste. Was this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm_LmlFeNnMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md7DIQW01aM Royal Crown Cola was invented in the early 1900s as a result of a Georgia based general store owner having a dispute with Coca-Cola over…well, read the Wikipedia article if you’re really interested. My interest has to do with the storylines of RC Cola–as it had been renamed during
Apropos of yesterday’s post concerning my childhood love bordering on the piggish for crappy, sugary breakfast cereals, I thought I’d ruminate for a moment on the differences between Quisp and Quake. The two cereals were designed to be cohorts and in a sense the characters were co-dependent polar opposites. Frequent
As a kid growing up in the nutritionally-challenged 1970s I ate every crap cereal there was: Captain Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Apple Jacks, Frosted Flakes, Quisp, Quake, Fruit Loops, Lucky Chamrs–you name it, I scarfed it. But…King Vitaman? Seriously? Never heard of it! While on a cereal-nostalgia binge I came across
Above are two marvelously elaborate one-minute TV spots for Shasta Colas. Both are period pieces that reference silent comedy filmmaking –and both are elaborately conceived (especially the first) and beautifully executed. Which is quite the opposite of the product they’re shilling for. Shasta was (and still is) a quite dreadful
Over the past couple of days we’ve discussed the iconic Burger King jingle ‘Hold The Pickle Hold The Lettuce’. Having beaten that dead horse to death again, let’s move onto another iconic advertising jingle for a crappy product. Above is the ‘Wouldn’t You Like To Be A Pepper Too’ ear