online community focused on sharing and reminiscing about video, audio, and images that stir our memories of the past – old television, theme songs, commercials, print advertisements, the sights and sounds you remember
Long before television doctors relied on dramatic emergencies and high-tech machines, Dr. Marcus Welby was the calm, caring family physician who knew his patients personally and still made house calls. Robert Young played Welby alongside James Brolin as the younger Dr. Steven Kiley, giving viewers two generations of medicine working side by side.
The show’s instrumental theme was composed by Leonard Rosenman and is generally known simply as the Marcus Welby, M.D. theme. Welby was also remembered for making his rounds in a series of light-blue Chrysler sedans, including the beautiful 1969 Chrysler 300 used during the first season.
I don’t know why, but this M&M’s commercial was a big hit in my family.
The whole joke was simple: a card game, a suspicious player, and the line, “These cards are marked!” Of course, they were not marked from cheating. They were marked with chocolate fingerprints, which led right back to M&M’s famous selling point: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”
For some reason, that one line stuck with us. To this day, anytime someone in the family is playing cards, there is a good chance somebody will say, “These cards are marked!” That is the funny thing about old commercials. Some of them were only 30 seconds long, but they became part of the way families talked to each other for years.
I’ll never forget when we got our first Slip ’N Slide back in the 1970s. I had to be the first one to go down it. Ours did not have the fancy landing pad like this 1980s version. I slid down, kept right on going onto the lawn, and mud sprayed all over me, including my face! We all laughed! My brother still brings it up to this day!
The original Slip ’N Slide came along in 1961 and gave kids a cheap way to turn the front lawn into a water ride. Hook up the hose, get a running start, and hope you made it all the way down that slick yellow strip without sliding into the grass.
By the 1980s, Wham-O was still trying to keep the idea fresh with versions like Slip ’N Splash. It was the same basic summer fun, but with more emphasis on the splash at the end and the kind of over-the-top commercial that made every kid think they needed one.
Of course, most of us learned pretty quickly that the TV version always looked smoother than the backyard version. But on a hot day, with the hose running and everyone waiting for a turn, it still felt like the next best thing to having a pool.
In the 1970s, O.J. Simpson became one of the most recognizable pitchmen on television thanks to his Hertz commercials. The ads showed him sprinting through airports in a suit, briefcase in hand, while people cheered, “Go, O.J., Go!” It was a perfect use of his football image: fast, famous, smiling, and always on the move.
At the time, the campaign was a huge hit and helped turn Simpson from a football star into a mainstream TV celebrity. It is strange to watch now because the cheerful airport-running image became one of the most famous commercials of its era, long before all the later headlines changed how people looked at him.
Before the boxy Grumman LLV became the familiar neighborhood mail truck, the Jeep DJ-5 was the little right-hand-drive postal Jeep that seemed to be everywhere. It was simple, tough, and built for curbside delivery, with the driver sitting on the mailbox side and a tray inside for sorting letters.
These Jeeps were a common sight through the 1970s and 1980s, and in some places lasted into the 1990s before finally being replaced. It may not have been fancy, but when you saw one coming down the street, you knew the mail was here.
Only on The Lawrence Welk Show could “One Toke Over the Line” somehow become a “modern spiritual.”
In 1971, Gail Farrell and Dick Dale performed the Brewer & Shipley song on the show, giving it the clean-cut Welk treatment. The funny part came afterward, when Lawrence Welk referred to it as a modern spiritual, apparently not realizing the “toke” in the title was not exactly Sunday-morning church material.
It does not seem like someone deliberately pulled one over on Welk. It was probably more of a perfect generational misunderstanding: a hit song with the word “Jesus” in the chorus made it onto one of TV’s cleanest shows, and everyone smiled through it like it belonged there.
That is what makes the clip so unforgettable. It is a perfect little time capsule of early 1970s television, where a song with counterculture roots could be polished up, dressed up, and served with champagne bubbles.
There was a time when the back of a cereal box could be almost as exciting as what was inside.
This Everything’s Archie Post Cereal commercial is a perfect example. In the late 1960s, kids could find Archie-themed prizes on specially marked Post cereal boxes, including cardboard records you could actually cut out and play. They were not exactly hi-fi, but to a kid, getting music from the back of a cereal box felt like magic.
The timing was perfect. The Archies were everywhere, with the cartoon band becoming a Saturday morning favorite and “Sugar, Sugar” turning into one of the biggest songs of 1969. So Post put Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, Sugar Bear, cereal, cartoons, and music all into one kid-friendly promotion.
Who else remembers cereal boxes that gave you something to do after breakfast?
Thumbelina was introduced by Ideal in 1961 and quickly became one of those baby dolls that stood out because she actually moved. The original was a wind-up doll, and once wound, she would wiggle and squirm like a real baby, making her feel more lifelike than many dolls of the time.
Thumbelina stayed popular through the 1960s and into the 1970s, with different sizes and versions along the way. Then in 1992, the name was brought back with Tyco’s Twinkling Thumbelina, but that version was updated for its time as a battery-operated doll rather than the original wind-up style.
For many, though, the classic 1960s Thumbelina is the one they remember best — the baby doll that moved just enough to make a child believe she was almost real.
The 1978 Miller Lite commercial with Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner worked because it was barely a joke. It was almost real life.
The ad played off Miller Lite’s famous “Tastes Great / Less Filling” campaign. Steinbrenner and Martin are sitting together, acting like they are finally getting along, until they start arguing over whether the beer’s best feature is the taste or that it is less filling. Then Steinbrenner gives the line everyone expected: “Billy, you’re fired.” Martin’s answer: “Not again.”
That was the whole joke. Everyone watching knew Steinbrenner and Martin had one of the strangest boss-manager relationships in sports. Martin was fiery, emotional, and a winner. Steinbrenner loved that until he didn’t. Then he would fire him, cool off, and eventually bring him back.
Their Yankees relationship was truly on again, off again. Martin managed the Yankees five different times, and each stint seemed to come with drama. He won a World Series with them in 1977, but by 1978 the tension with Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson was boiling over. Martin left the team that summer after his famous “one’s a born liar, and the other’s convicted” remark.
That is what made the commercial so funny. It was not just two celebrities doing a beer ad. It was Steinbrenner and Billy Martin making fun of the exact thing everyone already knew about them.
Looking back, it is one of those commercials that could only have worked at that exact moment. The Yankees were huge, Miller Lite ads were everywhere, and Steinbrenner firing Billy Martin had practically become a running gag before running gags were a thing.
Small Shots was one of those 1971 toy ideas that sounds strange now, but made sense once you see it. Mattel basically took the Hot Wheels idea and put little dolls on skates, wagons, carts, and other rolling stands that could run on Hot Wheels-style track.
The commercial is pure early ’70s toy advertising. Everything moves fast, the kids act amazed, and the announcer makes it sound like this was the next big thing. It was not just a doll, and it was not just a car. It was Mattel trying to mix both worlds together.
That was probably the real idea. Hot Wheels was huge with boys, while dolls were usually marketed to girls. Small Shots tried to pull both sides together — little fashion-style figures that could race, roll, and crash down a track. It was a clever idea, even if it also feels a little odd today.
Another interesting note: one of the early Small Shots commercials is listed among Jodie Foster’s early TV commercial work. She was still a child actor at the time, years before most people knew her name.
Small Shots did not last very long, but it is a great example of how toy companies in the 1970s were willing to try almost anything. Dolls on Hot Wheels track? Why not. In that era, if it rolled, launched, flipped, or crashed, somebody was going to put it in a commercial.
