This week we are joined by frequent guest Tim Lybarger from the Neighborhood Archive to talk all about infomercials.
We discuss some of our favorite products, some of our favorite pitchmen and then we spend a moment discussing some of the more ridiculous products we remember seeing info ads for. Also find out if any of us actually bought any of this crap. You’ll be surprised.
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Or listen to it online here.
I loved milk commercials when I was growing up. There were tons of them and they were shown all the time. And there were so many versions of the ads that it was endlessly interesting.
So on this Friday, I’m going to show you a bunch of my favorites.
Let’s start with one of the most iconic. The one directed by Michael Bay. The “Aaron Burr” commercial.
Next up are the “Milk it Does a Body Good” commercials. These are the ones I generally think of when I think of milk commercials. There were two versions of these. The first was a series of musical numbers featuring kids and random images of things flying all over the place. Things like animals (cows, penguins and kangaroos).
Check out the awesome 80s randomness of this ad featuring a lot of kangaroos. Seriously, kangaroos on pogo sticks and tap dancing kangaroos.
Here’s the “cow on the moon” musical PSA.
…and here’s the penguin version.
The other version of the “Milk it Does a Body Good” PSA involved kids talking to someone about the benefits of drinking milk. As they talk, they transform into an older, taller, better looking version of themselves. There were even two versions of this ad, one in which the kids were talking to someone else and one where the kids were looking in the mirror talking to their future selves. All of these commercials are filmed in front of a gray backdrop that looks like a crinkled up curtain.
Yesterday I was reminiscing about the Coke/Pepsi “Cola Wars” back in the ’80s and ’90s. I took a look back at a bunch of Pepsi’s most famous commercials from that era. If you missed it, I urge you to check it out.
Now, let’s take a look at the other side of the coin, Coca-Cola. They have come up with some pretty famous commercials of their own. Let’s take a look back in time at some of Coke’s most famous TV ads.
Coke’s 1971 Teach the World to Sing commercial (video above) is undoubtedly their most famous advertisement. It is so famous that it received two official sequels. First, during the 1971 holiday season, Coke released a Christmas version of the commercial that ended in darkness with all the candles the people were holding in the shape of a Christmas tree. Then, in 2005, Coke inexplicably allowed singer/songwriter G Love to create a horrible douchebag hipster alternative rock version called Teach the World to Chill. Might have been a worse idea than New Coke.
If the “hilltop” commercial above isn’t Coke’s most famous, then this 1979 Mean Joe Greene commercial is. It’s still today a fantastic commercial. Of course, in 2009, Coke filmed a sequel to the Mean Joe Greene commercial with Troy Polamalu.
The 11:30 Diet Coke break from 1996 is another popular Coke commercial. I remember it airing what felt like every 5 minutes. And, wait, I’m shocked to say this, but, in 2007 Coke filmed a sequel to the 11:30 commercial. Talk about milking a concept dry. I wonder if any of Coke’s commercials haven’t had a sequel.
Shawn Robare over at Branded in the ’80s is reviewing his trip to the World of Coke in Atlanta and it got me thinking about the Cola Wars of the ’80s. More specifically, soda commercials I loved during the Cola Wars.
I love the battle between Coke and Pepsi during the end of the last century. So much awesome merchandising and memorabilia come out of that time period it’s mind boggling. Both Coke and Pepsi unleashed on our consciousness oodles of celebrities, pop songs, commercials and advertising that sculpted our current pop culture consciousness and is still remembered today.
Let’s take a look back at some of Pepsi’s best soda commercials.
Just this past weekend I watched Michael Jackson’s This Is It on Blu-Ray and loved it. The man new how to perform and he had SO MANY good songs. In the ’80s Michael was a pretty big spokesman for Pepsi and made several commercials (one in which he famously caught on fire). For me, one of the best, if not THE best, Pepsi commercial ever made was Jackson Street (clip above), which premiered on the 1983 Motown 25 TV Special. I still get goosebumps when I watch it. This commercial featured an unbelievably catchy jingle-version of Billie Jean. It also starred a young Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). See another Pepsi commercial MJ made called The Chase.
Ray Charles’ “Uh-Huh” commercials were all over the place in the early ’90s. They had 6 or 7 versions of them including Ray in a courtroom and playing his twin brother, Irv. My favorite version came in 1993 which showed other celebrities (Charo, Tiny Tim, Bo Jackson, Jerry Lewis) auditioning for Ray’s singing part.
Around the time Michael Jackson was a Pepsi spokesman, another Michael (J. Fox) was also signed on. Fox starred in several commercials, mainly for Diet Pepsi, that are considered classics. The commercial above is one of his first featuring him in the library trying to be quiet while buying a Pepsi from a vending machine. See another Pepsi classic called My New Neighbor here in which Fox tries desperately to find his hot, new neighbor a Diet Pepsi.
Most of us remember waking up as kids on Saturday morning around 6am just to watch cartoons. It was a ritual. I did it, and I loved it. There were so many good cartoons when I was a kid. But it wasn’t just cartoons shows I remember from my early Saturday morning viewings, I remember fun and musical public service announcements that would air during commercial breaks. We’ve all seen them. They have colorful characters, clever songs and wind up teaching us about our government, good eating habits or proper hygeine. The most remembered and visible of these public service announcements were the Schoolhouse Rock shorts. Airing on the ABC network, Schoolhouse Rock taught kids the Preamble to the Constitution, how your nervous system works and how a bill becomes a law. But ABC produced more than just the Schoolhouse Rock shorts. ABC produced scores of other cartoon PSAs with catchy tunes and fun mascots that taught kids about healthy eating and how to get a job. Many times these PSAs are lumped into Schoolhouse Rock when we think back on them, but they were separately produced with different voice actors.
Let’s look at some of the other awesome cartoon PSAs produced by ABC in the ’70s and ’80s. You will probably remember most of these, if not, your welcome for putting songs about nutty snack mix into your head for the next 12 hours.
Time for Timer – ABC starting producing these “Timer” commercials in the early ’70s. These are probably the most remembered shorts next to Schoolhouse Rock as they played well into the 1990s. I actually didn’t realize this little guy’s name was Timer, even though I’ve seen the clips a thousand times and at the beginning of every one he says, “Time for Timer!”. I’m not even sure I knew what that meant. Now, I get it. Timer was supposed to represent a person’s “biological clock”. He carried around a giant stopwatch that went off whenever something was about to happen in the body (hunger, sleepiness, etc). None of the Timer shorts have titles, they are known by their catchy songs. His most famous is probably “Hanker for a Hunka Cheese!”. Another favorite of mine is “Sunshine on a Stick” where Timer teaches us how to make ice pops using orange juice. I remember actually doing this several times. I also love the “Eat Breakfast” short because the song is catchy (it actually reminds me of the songs in a Rankin-Bass Christmas Special). There’s also “U Are What U Eat” which features cool animation of the “factory” in your body. Timer was so popular that he actually made an appearance on Family Guy.
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