The worst ad in television history

This thing is just unbelievably primitive, from the screechy adult-pretending-to-be-a-kid to the brain-dead-sounding Dad, and graphics that look like they were cut out with garden shears. But Colorforms were what we all played with, and nobody complained. 

Jack and the pile of oatmeal

This is my first 40-second-long gif, and if it posts successfully it will be a miracle. Most people hate gifs because they are just one or two seconds of endlessly-repeating jerks. I say that the gif is an art form, or should be treated as such. I have made thousands of them over the years. This came from a one-minute animated ad for some kind of oat cereal, likely made in the 1950s.

Fraish from the cow!

"Fraishness itself! That's Cahnation fraish milk at its best  in nourishment. Straight from the dairy, Cahnation fraish milk is fraish today and every day. Rushed to your door and to your store. Have a glass of fraishness itself. Drink Cahnation fraish milk with Vitamin D added, the milk children love the flavor of, in the red and white carton."

I wish I could get a fix on this accent, for it's one I've heard more times than I can count. It's always American, of course - a Canadian never heard of "fraish" anything, not even a Tim Horton's doughnut (and here I use the classical spelling and punctuation). The "Cahnation" part seems to say Boston or at least New England, but I always thought the weird bending of the short e into something more like "aiee" came from the Midwest. This might just be the most extreme example I've heard, but I remember Clark Gable talking like this in Gone with the Wind (see clip below, around 0:40 - he says "fayyshun" for "fashion") and even my beloved Harold Lloyd, whose Nebraskan roots sometimes showed themselves later in life (as accents are wont to do). If I could pin down where these actors came from - . And I recently heard a woman do it, too, if I could just remember who she was. It was really extreme! 

You no doubt noticed that "fraish" or "fraishness" appears six times in thirty seconds in that Carnation Milk ad. Then as now, that's about average for advertisement. 

Mary Tyler Moore's first role

An exploration of the paranormal

I pared these down. No, really. There were about fifteen of them originally. I just couldn't stop.

This creepy little ad for Sugar Crisp (now called, I think, Golden Crisp) predates Sugar Bear and his cool, Dean Martinesque "can't get enough of that Sugar Crisp" ditty.

There are three bears, of course. And you don't want to know these bears. They come swarming into your living room and cover your TV screen. They look like Ewoks, or, worse, something from the TV-movie version of Communion (remember Christopher Walken's dance?) or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

My gifs have been slow and jerky lately. These are shorter ones, so I hope they do better.  For some reason the animation in this just begged to be giffed. It's the creepiness of those bears with their jerky puppetry and cold, sociopathic eyes.

The reactions of little Janie and Johnny are almost as squick-inducing as the jerky ministrations of the Sugar Crisp Bears. Note the segue here: girl eats cereal; bear figure with pitcher appears for a nanosection in the right side of the frame, looking - if you pay attention - incredibly artificial; then the bear and the pitcher and Little Janie's bowl are shown in a different shot, so that they never all have to appear together. This saves having to combine live action with animation. The continuity here sucks. It took me a long time to figure out that this is supposed to be the same bowl/bear.

Bear talking. Creepy. Its fur seems to creep and crawl, indicating that it has fleas, or perhaps has been moved around by somebody's greasy fingers as they take each picture and string them together.

It's that jittering, that nervous, diddery thing that makes them so unsettling. They almost seem to be on the wrong speed. That, and the big staring eyes.

"Faster, kids. . . eat FASTER!" That weird sparkly thing is a big chunk of sugar with paranormal powers which bends these children to the bear's evil will. These ads often bragged about how you could (and should) eat Sugar Crisp "like candy". This seems horrible until you realize that Sugar Crisp probably had a fraction of the sugar content of Lucky Charms or Obese-berry or whatever-the-hell they have today. 

Like I said. I boiled these down. I could have gone on forever. This is the sort of animation where you can repeat one frame. I don't know if this was stop motion or what, but it's motion that I wish would stop.

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Not the worst toy ever made, but prettinear

  


This doll was eventually yanked off the shelves when it was discovered that in addition to those long gumlike strips that spewed out the doll's back (back??), it also "ate" clothing, fingers and hair. There was no "off" switch and no release mechanism: it was tripped off by sticking the gum in its creepy little mouth, so little girls were soon attached (screaming) to the doll's face while it continued to pull and pull and pull.  Presumably, a big hank of hair would have to be cut off to get her free.  I don't know why they didn't test this doll before putting it on the market. But what about the Easy Bake oven? It still exists, and no doubt still has the capacity to cause third degree burns on children's skin.

The other thing is, I think the voiceover at the end of the ad was done by voice actress Yeardley Smith, who plays Lisa Simpson and sometimes shows up in movies and on TV (most recently, on The Big Bang Theory).

The Always-Prepared Mom

Most ads blow the big one, and most Walmart ads blow Moby Dick as far as I'm concerned (though I'm not quite sure what that means). But this one comes on, and I like it because of the slight hostility implied by "oh, I know we're not exchanging gifts this year but - " (pulling out the "surprise" gift which is about as welcome as a hurled Clovis point, the implication being, HA, got you, sucker, now you're going to feel guilty and as if you have to reciprocate for the next year!), countered by the even-more-devastating "as a matter of fact, it just so happens. . ."

These are stealth gifts, and I am sure a lot of them are exchanged at this time of year. They mean nothing. Each lady gives the other the exact same box of cheap licorice All-Sorts from Walmart (for less than $5!). Is anybody further ahead? Of course not. They have cancelled each other out.  In the great holiday gift-giving joust, which is usually a battle to the death,  it's a draw. Praise the name of Walmart.

But the real reason I love it, it's that music. Whatever it is, it drives me crazy!

Close encounters of the meowy kind

. . . Meow!. . .  Meow!. . .  Meow!. . .  Meow!. . .

(bommmmm-bommmmm-bommmmm-bommmmmm)

. . . Meow!. . . Meow!. . . Meow! . . . Meow!. . .

(bommmmmm-bommmmmm-bommmm-bommmmm)


Nothing like those '80s ads!


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Wake up, it's Christmas!

I do try to get into the season. Not always easy, for there's something in me that resists. It's not just the Charlie Brown feeling that Christmas has become too "commercial" (and this was a sentiment first expressed in 1964!). I feel swept up in something I don't want to be swept up in, at least not all the time.

But I do try. I made shortbread yesterday, and if I must say it myself, it was melt-in-the-mouth heavenly. But full of butter, and not much good for my resolve to lose weight (for I need to lose a lot of weight, again).

I don't know why exactly this ad grabs me, but it does, and I was glad to see it on YouTube. I remember that rambunctious "wake up, it's Christmas" feeling when I was a kid. And yes, a lot of it was about "things".

All these gifts are supposed to be, what? A remnant of the Magi and their gold, frankincense (sp.??) and myrrh? We're getting farther and farther away from such symbolism, unless we happen to be churchgoers (talk about remnants!). Or is it Santa, his insistence on flying over us and landing on each rooftop to give just the right gift to the right child, but ONLY IF THEY'VE BEEN GOOD ALL YEAR??

Talk about a tool for parental manipulation.

So if it isn't about the Christ Child, isn't even about Santa and his explosions of toys in particular, then what IS it about?'

I'm tired of it, kind of. No, not kind of, definitely. We're scaling down gifts now, in fact attempting to do away with gifts for the adults altogether. It's hard, because there's this entrenched custom for them to give to us, and if you don't reciprocate you somehow feel chintzy.

You know the feeling.

I'm trying to start a new tradition, and I've done it twice so far, of making charitable donations in the person's or family's name. Myself, I'd love receiving this, the feeling that the money that might have gone into yet another blender or Body Shop gift set will actually do some good. The Body Shop stuff doesn't even get used, and the blender is likely to be shoved in the very back of the cupboard along with the waffle iron that you used maybe twice.

The kids, well, we're still giving them stuff, but the emphasis is changing, we hope. We're giving them tickets to activities they might enjoy, science lab kits (for Caitlin), things they can DO rather than "play with" (i.e. ignore). I've knitted things, made things for them. I'm giving a ream of paper to Erica so she can build more stately mansions with it (and I wish we had photographed the Parthenon she built with rolled-up paper and tape). They don't need more Barbies or Matchbox cars or train tracks. They've got all that stuff, too much of it.

For all that, I don't feel well today, and it occurs to me I have the same acid stomach I always have in December. I just have to get through it. Not that January will be a sweet time, necessarily, but at least all this pressure will be over.

Pressure? Yes. To go along with it, so you won't look Scrooge-y or Grinch-y. Spend, spend, spend: and not just money, but time, decorating, baking, doing all those things that I guess we should be enjoying more than we actually do.

So I don't know exactly why I like this ad so much. I think it's the bouncy energy of it, the song and the swift half-second montage of shots. Some ad people are genuises at putting it all together. I loathe almost all TV ads, but once in a while one comes along (like the Glade one with the animated cookie reindeer) that delights me.

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