It's the Ajax lady! (animation)

 

The mentally-challenged smart phone

Nothing is stranger, or funnier, than watching old TV ads where people gasp in awe over what we now see as dinosaur technology. This one was just jaw-dropping. You had to carry around a 25-pound suitcase around with you to make a phone call. Hell, why not just use a phone booth? It would sure cost a lot less. But hey, this was the '70s (or late '60s), the Space Age. It sure must have looked weird, however, toting that thing around. What happened when it rang, or could you only call out? Today we'd think it was a bomb and the guy would be arrested. Could he get it through airport security?

This is real Maxwell Smart stuff, though not quite as bad as the Shoe Phone.

Watch these - they'll make you feel better

http://www.tvspots.tv/video/2666/RALSTON-PURINA--WEDDING

http://www.tvspots.tv/video/4556/RALSTON-PURINA--CHARTER-BOAT

These are some of the best ads ever, and you CAN'T find them on YouTube! I got these off an advertising site listed under Ralston Purina.

I miss Baxter! Meow, meow, meow, meow.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

"It's Baxter!"

http://www.tvspots.tv/video/2666/RALSTON-PURINA--WEDDING

http://www.tvspots.tv/video/4556/RALSTON-PURINA--CHARTER-BOAT

Had to do some real digging to find any "Baxter" Meow Mix commercials, which used to be my favorite. No sign of them on YouTube, it's a pity, someone has to get going on this!

I can Diggit!

OK THEN. It has taken me perhaps twelve years to figure out how to post a video to a blog. It might just be here, and be playable! But I think somehow the two videos I'm comparing ended up in two separate posts. Well, go blow it out your ass, all you perfectionistas!!!

Who knows what brought me back to memories of Diggah (i.e. Digger the Dog, dragged along by an adenoidal little kid with a thick Brooklyn accent). Maybe it was seeing a much more sophisticated ad for an almost identical product called Gaylord ("looks kinda crazy, moves kinda lazy"). In both cases, you just pull his leash and he'll walkety-walkety-walk with you (arf, arf!).

I'm going to do a whole post or series of posts on Mad Men soon, as soon as I can write about it without having an orgasm at my desk. I LOVE OLD ADS. I love them so much that I've somehow transferred that love to my six-year-old granddaughter. On the weekend, during our sleepover, we did a Chatty Cathy commercial (this time called Chatty Caitlin - you can imagine).

Grandpa filmed it, or tried to, saying things like, "The battery is wearing out," and, "OK, wind this up now. . . ten. . . nine. . ." Needless to say it was high hilarity. Grandma dressed up in a frilly nightie with a bow and Mary Janes to play an obnoxious little girl getting a doll for her seventh birthday. All the doll could say was "I HATE YOU!" At one point the hard plastic ring at the end of Chatty Caitlin's string bopped her on the head and she started to cry, and I yelled "CUT!!" into the camera and sent everyone into convulsions.

I can't exactly go back to the '60s, and when I really think about it I wonder why I would want to. I wasn't a happy child, and I'm only a semi-happy adult. But these things are time machines! The first Tiny Tears doll (can't find a video, but watched it on my 1001 Vintage Commercials DVD set) looked Satanic: her eyes were so close together she was practically a cyclops.

I wonder if anyone found her freaky then, or if anyone knew how bizarre Diggah the Dahhg or his chief rival Gaylord were: two plastic canine replicas, legs rotating rapidly (or at least in Diggah's case: Gaylord moved kinda lazy). I picture them now being turned out in the same factory, last-minute changes added to make them look at least a little bit different. Then jacking up the price tag on one of them, probably Gaylord, the more sophisticated faux hound, to start a plastic dog price war. Hey, Gaylord has special features and a pedigree (but Digger is cheaper, not to mention faster).

Which one was I, then, a Gaylord or a Digger? I have to confess, it was Gaylord who stole my heart. He had that magnetic bone and all, and could walkety-walkety-walk upstairs.

Arf-arf.

Gaylord: let's rename him, shall we?

"AND. . they are mild"

In case you've been wondering where I've been over the past few days (for I am sure my hordes of readers will be worried about me), I've been trying to pull myself out of a funk of non-writing, based not so much on the work itself as the miserable process of trying to get it noticed.

So I'll do something else for a change! Something besides ordering Minnie Mouse panties (size 4 - they're not for me) or out-of-print books or cheap DVD sets on-line.

Ah. Cheap DVD sets. This takes me to an orgy I allowed myself to indulge in yesterday, with deep regret later: I think I watched about a billion ads on a 3 DVD set called 1001 Classic Commercials (and I haven't even looked at Disc 3).

These weren't as fascinating as I'd hoped. I love old ads - maybe it's the reason I watch Mad Men with such fervor (that, and Don Draper's magnificent body, often depicted half-nude). The reason being, this was a very sloppily-compiled set. Ads were slapped on the discs with very little care for the quality. Ironically, the '50s ads were often in pristine condition, in the kind of crisp black-and-white I enjoy in old movies.

The ads from the mid- to late '60s were atrocious, barely discernible in the blur of neon orange. You have to wonder what happens to color film over the years, if it rots or melts or what. I skipped over these very quickly. They never should have been included.

Ads are a-spose-ta tell us everything about a culture at any particular moment. Aren't they? Women all seemed to want to look like Donna Reed, her blonde puffed helmet hard enough to repel schrapnel. One hair spray ad claimed that "your hair will still feel like hair", as if that were an aberration. Men's hair products were simply disgusting, rendering a decent head of hair into a slick of oily black sludge full of comb-tracks. Supposedly, women loved this: "they'll love to run their fingers through your hair!" Eeeiiiicccccchhhhhhhhk-k-k-k.

I didn't realize before how obsessed these early ads were with proper meals, nutrition through the warped lens of the 1950s. The words "wholesome" and "nutritious" popped up everywhere. Vitamins were mentioned constantly. There were modern-day wonders like canned zucchini (hmm, what's a zucchini?) and Tropi-Kai Mixed Hawaiian Fruits (? Probably another variation on fruit cocktail. Mmmmmm, those gaudy red maraschino cherries.)

"Eat well. . . but wisely," the authoratative male voice-over advises us. Right. Jell-o was nutritious, apparently, as was every kind of sugary cereal (all made in Battle Creek, Michigan - oh, how I remember sending away those box tops for a plastic fire engine!). This strange guy, a nutritionist called Euell Gibbon, told us that all sorts of bizarre things were edible (holding a cat-tail in his hand), then said he loved Grape Nuts. Did no one else see the irony?

No one knew how to pronounce "protein": it was "PRO-tee-an" (a term no doubt conflated - remember that term, boys and girls? - with "protean"). This was a whole different shoe size. What sort of yearning was lurking under the glossy surface? You judge.

Then came the creme de la creme of astonishing advertising: the cigarette commercial. All these had very catchy jingles, and mostly depicted young people running along beaches with dogs. "Kent. . . satisfies best," "Come all the way up to Kool", "Winston tastes good like a (bop-bop) cigarette should." This one has become infamous on the 'net because of a cartoon ad of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble smoking in the back yard while their wives slave away at the yard work. At the end of the show Fred lights Wilma's cigarette while he sings the jingle wildly off-key, and she takes a luxurious drag. The shot of Bedrock at night while the credits roll is overwhelmed by a giant sign that says "WINSTON". Can't hurt the little buggers, can it?

Camels brag that they send hundreds of thousands of FREE cigarettes to veteran's hospitals every year. Hospitals. Where most of the men lie dying of cancer? Denial was rife in the ads, constantly mentioning how mild and easy on the throat these sticks of dynamite were. Some were even recommended by doctors. A particularly tough and virile man (and most of the men were tough and virile, no pansy-ass fags here) claimed, "It's a treat, not a treatment."

Anyway, the cigarette ads put me in a stupor after a while, so I had to dwell on something else: the odd popping up of celebs, some of whom were not yet famous. Gene Wilder (his nebbishy voice unmistakeable) did two voice-overs, one for Alka-Selzer ("Ah! The blahs!"). Alan Arbus, the psychiatrist on M*A*S*H showed up. I swear I heard Mel Blanc's voice more than once (the Frito Bandito?).

The brilliant Buster Keaton, a man who worked constantly until his death at nearly 70, did a perilous pratfall backwards off a platform, making us wonder how he ever survived.

Jack Gilford did his charming thing ("When it comes to Crackerjack, some kids never grow up"). A very drunk Arthur Godfrey did a Lipton's Chicken Soup ad as part of his show (for in the past, hosts had to do the ads). "The chicken is there. You might not see it, but it's there."

After a while the whole thing was a blur of impressions, some of which I remembered from my childhood: "Gaylord, when you pull his leash he walkety-walkety-walks with you (arf, arf!)". "Mystery Date". Lucy and Desi, looking at each other fondly and smoking. Sugar Bear sounding like Dean Martin. A toy called the Great Garloo, some sort of remote-control robot on a long cord. And oh, Chatty Cathy. The doll from hell!

You can't see the angst and despair. But it's there.