More logos, late at night

 

The RKO Radio Picture logo is significant mainly because it told us we were about to see a picture with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in it. It's too bad we don't have that compelling morse code beeping in the background. Someone finally deciphered what the morse code stood for. No, not something indescribably filthy! It just says "A Radio Picture".

Nice early Warner title, if a bit static. I wish they'd stuck with this one - I never liked that obnoxious WB logo thrusting at us, which went along with the equally-obnoxious "doyyyyy" of Bugs Bunny cartoons.

This is the best CBS eye "aperture" logo I've been able to find. Not the greatest, but the few others I've found are closely attached to end credits and can't be isolated. These gifs don't make themselves, you know, and some of them take a long time.

One of the strangest logos I've ever seen: a real find. This is why I keep chopping my way through bad copies of bad logos late at night, because once in a while I garner a gem like this one. I've always loved the Pathe rooster because he seems to take an iconoclastic stand against roaring lions and all that MGM spectacle crap. Give me a crowing cock any day.

Also tastes as good as it smells.

Tastes as good as it smells

I've long believed this is the perfect commercial. It's the combination of sensory enjoyment (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling) with hypnotic repetition ("Tastes as good as it smells" is repeated FIVE times in the space of one minute). If you watch it carefully, you'll see a brilliant montage of simple, effective black-and-white images, a steaming coffee pot, a white oval cup filling with dark coffee, the cup being slowly raised until the coffee fills the entire screen. . . The oval motif is echoed by the shape of the can, and the perspective between these objects is simply masterful. By the last shot the open can is being tipped towards the camera, and a little avalanche of ground coffee just casually spills down at us.

There's something deliberate about the whole thing, the pacing of it, as if someone is handing you an item, and an item, and an item, not rushing, but each item is solid platinum, you can't put it down. It's the opposite of the loud, pushy hard sell. . . but pitching the slogan FIVE times? I had to count it on my fingers (my brain doesn't go past four) to believe it was that many times. It's something to do with the simplicity of the narration which is hypnotic in a way that's hard to analyze. See the coffee pot, smell the coffee, taste the coffee. See, smell, taste. So seductively are we told this, over and over again, and by such a smooth announcer, that we don't even realize that they are commands. But then there is the final stroke of brilliance, that bongo-ish percolator sound that sticks in your memory forever. As if this needed any more sensory appeal! Yet to watch it is to be completely seduced by an ad that seems unremarkable in its utter simplicity.

Makes me wish I smoked

There is something utterly perfect, even exquisite about the Oasis cigarette commercial. In this case, it depicts a man and woman tearing around on horseback, which is erotic in itself. The jingle is cool and contagious, and the "Big O" can only mean one thing. What isn't perfect about it? The fact that using the product can lead to coughing your lungs out in a cancer ward. But aside from that -