To me, a gift certificate was delayed gratification on Halloween night. By the time my parents got around to bringing us to McDonald’s back then, it would probably be summer and the gift certificate would have been long forgotten.
This commercial is from 1986, when McDonald’s was selling books of 20 Halloween Gift Certificates for just one dollar. Instead of another candy bar, you could hand a trick-or-treater a certificate that could later be exchanged for a soft drink.
Twenty treats for a buck sounded like a great deal for the person answering the door. I’m just not sure how exciting it was for the kid standing there with a bag full of candy they could eat that night.
What surprised me is how far back the idea goes. McDonald’s was offering Halloween gift certificates at least as early as 1973, so this had already been around for years by the time this commercial aired.
And 1986 was also the year McBoo, McPunk’n and McGoblin made their debut — those plastic Halloween pails that probably created a lot more immediate excitement than a coupon for a future soda.
Here’s the really surprising part: McDonald’s still does a version of the idea today. Participating restaurants continue to sell Halloween treat coupon packs, although now the coupons can be good for things like hamburgers, cones, apple slices and drinks.
Maybe kids today would be more patient than I was.
But on Halloween night, I wanted the candy.
How about you — would a McDonald’s gift certificate have been a treat, or a disappointment?
Category: 1980’s
Would You Believe…Don Adams Could Sell Almost Anything?
I was too young to drink beer when I first remember these commercials, and Don Adams wasn’t going to convince my dad to give up his Rheingold or Falstaff! But those Skittle Bowl-type commercials? We did buy those games and enjoyed them in our home.
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That’s what I remember most about Don Adams as a pitchman. The commercials felt like little comedy sketches, with that unmistakable voice and the same confidence that usually got Maxwell Smart into trouble.
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This Schlitz Malt Liquor commercial is dated 1980. Don plays a captured secret agent, and his captor is Leon Askin—General Burkhalter from Hogan’s Heroes. Naturally, the rescue involves the Schlitz bull and a familiar “Would you believe…” punch line.
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But Don’s advertising career went well beyond beer. Aurora used him to promote a whole family of Skittle games, including pool, tennis, baseball, and bingo. Sometimes he was a spy; sometimes the commercials played like little gangster movies. He even appeared on Skittle Pool boxes.
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Here’s something I didn’t know: Don also directed commercials. His Skittle Pool spot reportedly earned him a Clio for commercial direction in 1971. He was helping create the laughs as well as delivering them.
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He also appeared in Hertz commercials with Penny Marshall before Laverne & Shirley made her a household name, and later advertised Ideal’s Electronic Detective with Joey Forman. Advertisers certainly knew how to put that secret-agent reputation to work!
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Don didn’t change Dad’s beer order, but those game commercials got results at our house. Did you have Skittle Bowl or any of the other Skittle games?
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#DonAdams #GetSmart #SkittleBowl #VintageCommercials #TheRetroSite
“COFFEE? AISLE TWO. NO LINE.” — MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON
Sometimes a movie can explain an entire culture shock with one incredibly simple scene.
In 1984’s Moscow on the Hudson, Robin Williams plays Vladimir Ivanoff, a Soviet circus musician who defects in New York and suddenly has to learn how Americans live.
Then somebody sends him out for coffee.
He walks into the supermarket, asks where the coffee is and is told, “Aisle Two.”
Then comes the line that makes the entire scene:
“Coffee line, please?”
There isn’t one.
Vladimir walks down the aisle and at first he’s almost delighted. Then he starts reading the choices: Taster’s Choice, Maxwell House, El Pico, Chock Full O’Nuts, espresso, cappuccino, Sanka, Folgers, Café Caribe…
And you can actually watch Robin Williams change.
Wonder becomes confusion. Confusion becomes panic. Pretty soon all he can say is “Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!” before collapsing in the aisle.
It’s funny, but that’s what makes this scene so smart. Vladimir isn’t overwhelmed because there’s no coffee.
He’s overwhelmed because there’s too much.
For Americans watching in 1984, an aisle filled from one end to the other with coffee barely registered as unusual. But shortages and long shopping lines were a genuine part of Soviet consumer life. A 1982 survey of Soviet émigrés even reported coffee selling for the equivalent of $15 a pound in Riga.
Director Paul Mazursky and co-writer Leon Capetanos did their homework, interviewing Russian immigrants and traveling through the Soviet Union while developing the film. Robin Williams studied Russian and even learned saxophone for the part.
And decades later, this little supermarket sequence has actually been used in economics classes to demonstrate shortages, rationing and consumer choice.
But you don’t need an economics class to understand it.
Just watch Vladimir turn that corner and see an entire aisle of coffee.
Do you remember this scene — and did we ever stop to think how incredible an ordinary American supermarket would have looked to someone seeing it for the first time?
SEARS IN ITS HEYDAY — “THERE’S MORE FOR YOUR LIFE AT SEARS”
Believe it or not, Sears has an early online-shopping story that deserves a report all by itself. I’m working on that one. But for now, let’s go back to Sears during its heyday.
If you were watching football on a Sunday, it seemed like you were guaranteed to see a Sears commercial somewhere along the way. And that memory actually has some history behind it — Sears was buying advertising around NFL broadcasts as far back as the 1970s, including ABC’s NFL coverage and CBS NFC games. By 1981, an NFL executive said the first 32 pages of the Sears Christmas catalog were NFL merchandise.
This commercial comes from 1983, and watch how much Sears manages to squeeze into 30 seconds. Cheryl Tiegs and fashion. Winnie-the-Pooh for the kids. A big stereo. Lamps and home furnishings. Craftsman tools. It’s not really a commercial for any one product — the product is Sears itself.
And then there’s that jingle:
“There’s more for your life at Sears.”
You heard those few notes and immediately knew what was coming.
Cheryl Tiegs was especially important to Sears in this era. She had launched a Sears clothing collection in 1980, and the company used her in its catalogs and television commercials to shake off some of its old-fashioned image. By 1984, TIME was writing about a revitalized Sears, with its catalog reaching roughly 12 million homes and the company operating more than 800 stores and thousands of catalog-sales locations.
And Sears was enormous. In 1984 it reported a record $38.83 billion in revenue and $1.45 billion in net income. This was still the retailer Americans measured everybody else against.
I think that’s what makes this commercial hit differently today. Sears wasn’t trying to convince America that it mattered.
Everybody already knew it did.
Do you remember shopping at Sears — and did Sunday football immediately make you think of that jingle?
Jane Russell Playtex Commercial
Watching this 1981 Jane Russell Playtex commercial, one thing really jumped out at me when I compared it with the bra commercials we see today.
Jane is talking directly to what she calls “full-figured gals,” but she never actually appears in the bra. She stays completely dressed while explaining the support, fit and comfort of the new Playtex 18 Hour Lovely Look.
And there was a reason for that.
At the time, network television still had very strict standards about showing women in underwear. In fact, it wasn’t until 1987 that Playtex helped break a long-standing television taboo by airing commercials showing live women actually wearing bras.
Compare that with today. We routinely see women of all sizes — including larger and plus-size women — actually modeling bras and lingerie on television and in advertising. The whole idea of what can be shown, and who gets shown, has changed dramatically.
In a way, Jane Russell’s campaign feels like a step between those two worlds.
She was almost 60 years old here, talking directly to women who weren’t built like the typical young, thin lingerie model. That alone made the campaign unusual. And Jane certainly had some history with bras — Howard Hughes famously designed one for her while making The Outlaw, although Jane later admitted she hated it and secretly wore her own instead.
Then decades later, she became one of television’s most recognizable bra spokeswomen.
So watching this today isn’t just about remembering Jane Russell or Playtex. It’s also a little snapshot of how much television standards — and ideas about women’s bodies — have changed.
Do you think today’s more open approach to showing women of different sizes is better, or did these older commercials leave a little more to the imagination?
THE JERRY LEWIS TELETHON — A LABOR DAY TRADITION
For a lot of us, Labor Day weekend wasn’t complete without the Jerry Lewis Telethon. You could turn it on Sunday night, go to bed, wake up Monday morning, and somehow Jerry was still there — surrounded by ringing phones, celebrities, Ed McMahon and that famous tote board.
The Labor Day telethon began in 1966 and eventually became a huge national television event. Over the years, stars including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Johnny Cash, Cher, Michael Jackson, Johnny Carson and Robin Williams stopped by. John Lennon and Yoko Ono even appeared in 1972, with Lennon performing “Imagine.”
But the moment almost everyone remembers came in 1976. Frank Sinatra surprised Jerry by bringing Dean Martin onto the stage. The former comedy partners had gone their separate ways 20 years earlier, and Jerry clearly had no idea Dean was coming out. Watching his face when Dean walks onto that stage is still one of those great live-TV moments.
And if you watched all the way to the end, you knew what was coming — an exhausted and emotional Jerry singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
For me, that song always seemed to signal that Labor Day was ending… and so was another summer.
Do you remember watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon? Who do you remember seeing on it?
When we were growing up, did we really think Ragu was authentic Italian food?
I think a lot of us probably did — or at least we never questioned it. The commercial ended with “That’s Italian!”, there was an Italian family gathered around the table, Mom or Grandma knew good sauce when she tasted it, and that jar somehow represented the Old World.
And the interesting part is that Ragu really did have authentic Italian roots. Assunta and Giovanni Cantisano came to America from Italy in 1914, settled in Rochester, New York, and in 1937 began selling Assunta’s homemade family sauce from their home.
But by the time we were seeing commercials like this one, Ragu had become something quite different — a huge American packaged-food brand. It went national around 1970 and absolutely dominated the jarred spaghetti-sauce business. By 1975, Ragu reportedly controlled about 65 percent of the prepared spaghetti-sauce market.
And those commercials were a big reason why. Beginning in the 1970s, millions were spent selling us “That’s Italian”, using the family, the kitchen, Mom and Grandma and all the familiar Italian-American imagery to make opening a jar feel like somebody had been simmering sauce all afternoon.
Of course, what Italians traditionally call ragù can be very different. The official Bolognese version is a slow-cooked meat sauce with pancetta, vegetables, wine and relatively little tomato — quite a distance from the red tomato sauce most of us poured from a jar.
So maybe Ragu wasn’t exactly Italy in a jar. It was really an Italian immigrant family recipe that evolved into a very American idea of Italian food.
And apparently the advertising worked on us pretty well!
Be honest — growing up, did you think Ragu was authentic Italian sauce, or did your family insist homemade was the only real thing?
Jiffy Pop — Was It More Fun to Make Than Eat?
It’s Friday night, and this one brings back that whole feeling of the weekend finally being here. Maybe there was a movie coming on TV, maybe we were allowed to stay up a little later, and somehow popcorn just seemed to belong with Friday night. And if somebody pulled out a Jiffy Pop, making the popcorn became part of the entertainment. Standing at the stove, shaking that pan back and forth and watching the foil slowly puff up was almost as much fun as eating what was inside.
There was popcorn, and then there was Jiffy Pop, where half the entertainment was watching that aluminum foil grow into a giant silver ball.
Looking this one up, I found that Jiffy Pop goes all the way back to 1959, but it wasn’t actually the first popcorn sold this way. A product called E-Z Pop had been around since 1954, and its manufacturer eventually sued Jiffy Pop’s makers for patent infringement. The case went all the way to a federal appeals court, where Jiffy Pop won in 1963 partly because its foil expanded differently.
The magician connection in these 1970s commercials wasn’t just advertising make-believe either. Harry Blackstone Jr. was a genuine professional magician, and in 1976 Jiffy Pop was promoting the product as “the magic treat.” Blackstone came from quite a magic family — his father was The Great Blackstone, one of America’s best-known illusionists and a contemporary of Harry Houdini.
Harry Jr. went on to become a major star himself. He was twice named Magician of the Year by the Magic Castle, took his show to Broadway in 1980 and later donated his family’s famous floating-light-bulb illusion to the Smithsonian.
And Jiffy Pop certainly outlasted these commercials. It even had a memorable role in the opening of Scream in 1996.
Best of all, Jiffy Pop is still being made today. Some products really don’t need much improving — watching that foil balloon get bigger was the whole experience!
Since it’s Friday night, this seems like the perfect one to ask:
What memories does Jiffy Pop bring back for you — family movie nights, staying up late watching TV, or trying not to burn the bottom?
Cathy Rigby Built Quite a Career After the Olympics
This old Cathy Rigby Stayfree commercial brings back a completely different Cathy Rigby memory for me.
Back in the 1990s, I worked as a Communications Specialist at Caldor’s corporate headquarters in Norwalk. We were opening a new store in Pennsylvania and Cathy Rigby was there to meet customers and sign autographs. What I remember most about her personally was how soft-spoken and very polite she was. Nothing flashy at all, and that stuck with me.
Most of us remember Cathy first as the young American gymnast who became one of the faces of the sport. She competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics, but something I had forgotten is that her most historic medal didn’t come at the Olympics. In 1970, she won silver on the balance beam at the World Championships, becoming the first American gymnast ever to win a World Championships medal.
After retiring from competition, she did something a lot of famous athletes struggle to do — she kept finding ways to turn that recognition into a long career.
There were the Stayfree commercials, which became one of her best-known endorsement campaigns. She also spent 18 years covering gymnastics for ABC Sports, did other television and fitness work, and then built a whole second career on stage.
And that second career became huge. Rigby began playing Peter Pan in the 1970s and returned to the role for decades, eventually earning a Tony nomination in 1991. She and her husband also moved into producing through McCoy Rigby Entertainment.
Then there’s Caldor itself, another memory for a lot of us. The chain was founded in 1951 by Carl and Dorothy Bennett, and even the name came from them — CAL from Carl and DOR from Dorothy. By the time I worked there, it had grown into one of the Northeast’s best-known discount chains.
So for me, this commercial connects three different things: a familiar face from television, a remarkable post-Olympic career, and my own memory of meeting Cathy Rigby years later through Caldor.
Do you remember her most from gymnastics, the Stayfree commercials, Peter Pan, or somewhere else?
Shopping For Phones
Who remembers when we were finally able to go shopping for our own telephone?
For years, the telephone was basically part of your phone service. Ma Bell supplied it, you paid for it every month, and there usually wasn’t much reason to think of the phone itself as something you would go shopping for
That began changing in the 1970s with Bell PhoneCenters and all those new colors and styles. The transition was actually a little strange — with some early Design Line phones, you bought the decorative outer housing while Bell still owned and maintained the working parts inside. Eventually, complete customer-owned phones became the norm
And I’m sure many of us made sure that second or third phone had all the new bells and whistles — almost literally! Touch-Tone buttons, last-number redial, programmable memory dialing, speakerphone, mute, hold and answering machines became things to look for. Then there were telephone-company features like Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Three-Way Calling and Speed Calling. Caller ID came later and suddenly knowing who was calling before answering seemed absolutely amazing
What surprised me is how successful the shopping concept was. Bell reported in 1974 that 73 percent of PhoneCenter customers selected an extension phone, compared with 58 percent of customers using the old sales method. The stores let you actually see and touch dozens of phones instead of having somebody describe them over the telephone
And look at the variety in this commercial — colorful phones, fancy phones, character phones and phones designed to match the furniture. Bell even sold Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, Winnie-the-Pooh and that unforgettable doughnut-shaped Sculptura phone
Then almost overnight it seemed every department store had phones, and eventually nearly every phone came loaded with features we once thought were something special
What was the first telephone you remember actually buying instead of renting from the phone company?