Old Commercials

[omgimsuchadork]

So Guillermo sent me a link a few hours ago, and it was an old commercial. Cue my looking through the related videos of related videos of related videos for some of my favorites. '80s and '90s children, you're welcome:

Comments

[mykonos2]

Oh God, the childhood memories... I spent the last hour watching old commercials xD and I have a sudden urge to play Guess Who again

DAMN, WHY DIDN'T WE HAVE THOSE COOL CHIA PET THINGS HERE ;___;

They only commercial I can think of right now is one for baby diapers xDD Strange enough, EVERYONE knows that one even today. It's just so catchy. Later in high school, we used this melody to make hate songs for teachers we didn't like - oh, the good ol' days...

[omgimsuchadork]

Oh man, that is catchy! XD The one that stuck over here was the air conditioning commercial because it seemed to play during every commercial break on every channel every summer for years.

Man, when I was a kid I wanted a Chia Pet so bad, and I finally got one one Christmas! I just forgot to water it a couple of times (because it seemed like I had to water it every five minutes), so it died pretty quickly. I didn't know where to get more seeds, so I was pretty bummed. The internet has since fixed that problem, but I still suck at taking care of plants.

Yeah, I spent about three hours sifting through these old commercials last night. It was a great timesink.

[red_comet01]

Oh, you have the Super Smash Brothers commercial! Cool!
And here's a commercial for Magic: The Gathering that I always thought was good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JVewMSPyWc

[omgimsuchadork]

I don't remember that commercial at all! But that's a 4/4 orc with a bunch of text on that card. I'd be pretty scared, too!

I loved the Smash Brothers commercial. It used to crack me up. I never bought the game (long story), which sucks, because I know my brother and I would have spent all our free time beating each other up and doing nothing else.

[boggyb]

The only brands I recognise out of that lot are Heinz, Pizza Hut, TMNT, Zelda, Mouse Trap and SSB. I don't recognise any of the ads for those - in fact, I don't there there were any ads for consoles at all in the UK back then, and we don't tend to get PSA-style ads either.

Anyway, here's a few clips I've found of UK adverts from that sort of time. They're all from ITV (back then it tended to be BBC2 or ITV with kid's TV, and the BBC doesn't have adverts):
1992, 1993, more 1993, 1997, 1998, and 1999

[omgimsuchadork]

In a couple of the videos, I noticed TV program start times like 7:20 and end times like 9:25. Is this common in the UK? They start and end only on the half-hour in the States. I'm also surprised by all the American-accented narrators I hear (and that Frosties (we call 'em Frosted Flakes) commercial: you don't really care about the NBA, do you?)!

Those Action Man figures look like they would have been fun. XD And I remember some of those commercials, too, though I prefer this for Micro Machines!

[boggyb]

That's pretty usual here. A lot of imported programmes seem to end up with a 25min or 50min runtime, and 15min or 45min is quite common as well (Doctor Who is usually 45min, for example). You even get the odd programme as short as 5min or 10min.

Frosties has always been associated/marketed with sport, which is probably why they picked the NBA. It does seem a bit odd though, I'd have expected them to go with football (US equivalent: soccer) or possibly rugby (US equivalent: american football, but without the padding and helmets). BTW, Frosties is a specific brand - supermarket own brand versions are called "frosted flakes" over here as well.

Heh, I'm amused that you got some of those commercials as well. I always thought they'd be very country-specific (especially given that converting between PAL and NTSC would have been very expensive back then). I don't think we ever had that Micro Machines ad though.

[omgimsuchadork]

I know we're in an age of being able to record television programs to watch later, but those very specific times make it sound like it was really easy to miss a show twenty, thirty years ago.

Frosties (UK) is the same brand as Frosted Flakes (NA): Kellogg's. It was pretty easy to recognize with Tony the Tiger (I had no clue he was international).

I remember the K'Nex commercial, and a couple of others that seem like they'd just been dubbed over.