Scene: A very cheap-looking, overly-lit disco set, with glittering ball overhead and about two-dozen twenty-somethings placidly grooving and shuffling on platforms of various heights. well, I'll describe the whole ad for you. It was probably the fifteenth time I'd seen it, but I suddenly realized there's a moment where. Making this tape, I rediscovered a hilarious spot (from around '79 I'd guess, give or take a year) for GWG corduroy pants. ![]() You haven't lived until you've seen the Duncan Yo-Yo "Disco Duncan" ad. There were tons of disco-influenced ads back in the day, so I included what I have. I included any ads with musicians, plus ads that featured familiar jingles or were highlighted by music. I made a music-themed tape for my buddy Mike whom I've known since the fifth grade. I still make collections from time to time because they don't take all that long to assemble and it's fun to notice odd little details that I never caught before. Of course, no one owns the rights on these old commercials (maybe the biggies like Coca-Cola or McDonald's retain them forever, I don't know), but anyway that's eBay's policy. I have recently been working on several different theme tapes, despite the fact that I can't sell them on eBay anymore because I don't own the copyrights on these ads. Just as likely, producers just decided to skip the storytelling and focus on the product details to save money, resulting in a less interesting commercial but one that still got the job done. I'd guess it was typically a smidge of the former and an assload of the latter. This evinces either a lack of respect for the viewer or a lack of inspiration on the production end. ![]() In the seventies, however, I find there's something of a step back, with much less absurdity and more trite, insipid ads. They make fascinating time caplets which reveal not only how Americans of a particular era were marketed to, but how that marketing was done in its time, with technical effects and styles of storytelling clearly evolving.Īctually, speaking of evolution, it's funny-there seems to be quite a bit of zaniness on display in the older black-and-white ads of my collection, with inventive special effects and playful narratives. Ĭommercials are designed to sell, and therefore appeal. I'd estimate that I have between three and four thousand commercials in my collection, mainly seventies through about 1986 (with some 50's and 60's in there, and even some early 90's-not my nostalgia spot, but interesting and fun to watch nonetheless). (Maybe that Oscar Mayer kid gets a pass, but that's it.) Except the ones I can't fucking stand, such as any spot with singing children. ![]() I watch them repeatedly, with fascination and affection. This is all accurate, or, as the young people say, true dat. Especially, you may argue, the ones that are the focus of my collection: the mostly-forgotten celluloid snippets of shameless crap-peddling that have been scraped from that cringingly-recalled epoch, the 1970's. Most people skip through the commercials, or flip around channels to avoid them.
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