1970's Commercials Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Happy Meals

Here’s a commercial showing the beginning of something that eventually became such a normal part of childhood that it’s hard to imagine McDonald’s without the Happy Meal.

This commercial is from 1979, the year McDonald’s took the Happy Meal nationwide. But here’s something that confused me at first: the Happy Meal actually dates to both 1977 and 1979.

McDonald’s was already test-marketing Happy Meals in selected cities beginning in 1977, and the company even filed the HAPPY MEAL trademark that year. Those early tests gave McDonald’s time to refine the meal, the packaging and the prizes.

Then in June 1979, the Happy Meal officially went national with the colorful Circus Wagon boxes. That’s why 1979 is usually considered its official birthday.

And those first boxes weren’t tied to Disney, a movie or the latest cartoon. Inside you got a hamburger or cheeseburger, fries, a drink and McDonaldland cookies, along with prizes like an ID bracelet, Doodler ruler or McPuzzle Lock.

I also didn’t realize how complicated the “who invented the Happy Meal?” story was. Advertising executive Bob Bernstein said the activity-covered box was inspired by watching his son read cereal boxes at breakfast. But in Guatemala, McDonald’s operator Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño had already created a smaller children’s meal called the Menú Ronald, complete with a gift.

And McDonald’s wasn’t even the first burger chain to try the idea. Burger Chef introduced its Funmeal in 1973 and later sued McDonald’s over the similarities.

What amazes me is how quickly it all took off. By the end of 1979, McDonald’s was already doing movie tie-ins, and from there the toy became almost as important as the food.

Do you remember your first Happy Meal — and were you more excited about the hamburger or the toy?

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?

Muriel Cigars — Edie Adams Made “Hey Big Spender” Her Own

Here’s one where the commercial spokeswoman may have become better remembered than the product.

Edie Adams spent an incredible 19 years selling Muriel cigars on television, and the Television Academy says Muriel’s sales increased more than tenfold during the years her commercials ran.

This spot uses “Hey, Big Spender” from the Broadway musical Sweet Charity, but with one perfect advertising change: instead of “spend a little time with me,” Edie sings “spend a little dime with me” because a Muriel Corona cost ten cents.

And apparently that little change caused quite a stir. I found that Universal filed suit in 1968 trying to stop the cigar company from using the Big Spender parody in its advertising.

Edie herself had quite a résumé. She was Juilliard-trained, won a Tony Award for Li’l Abner, appeared in movies including The Apartment and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and was married to television comedy pioneer Ernie Kovacs.

Here’s the part I really didn’t know: she never smoked. Adams later said the Muriel cigars never even touched her lips, and she devised a special ring to hold one convincingly for the commercials.

She also did something television historians owe her a lot for. After Kovacs died, Edie fought to locate and preserve his old programs at a time when networks were routinely erasing or throwing television recordings away. More than 1,200 items from the Kovacs-Adams collection eventually went to the Library of Congress.

Not bad for someone many people simply remember as “the Muriel cigar lady.”

Do you remember Edie Adams herself, or is it “Hey, Big Spender” that immediately brings these commercials back?

Don’t Blow Your Top

Don’t Blow Your Top came out in 1972, and this is one of those wonderfully simple toy ideas that probably didn’t need much explaining to a kid. You spun the spinner, added the required number of marbles to the character’s hat, and watched the pressure build on a real balloon hidden underneath. Eventually — POP! — somebody literally blew his top

The game came from Marvin Glass & Associates, the legendary Chicago toy-design company connected with Mouse Trap, Operation, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, Lite-Brite and eventually Simon. They created and developed toy ideas, then licensed them to companies like Schaper to manufacture and sell

Schaper itself had quite a history. The company was founded by Minneapolis mailman Herb Schaper, whose homemade Cootie game became such a huge success that Schaper eventually promoted itself as “The Cootie Company,” just as we hear at the end of this commercial. The company also gave us familiar games like Ants in the Pants and Don’t Break the Ice

And I have to give them credit for the name. “Don’t blow your top” was already a familiar expression for losing your temper, so turning that into a game where the poor fellow actually blows his top was pretty clever

The game apparently had some staying power too, with advertising for it continuing several years after its 1972 introduction

Did anyone have Don’t Blow Your Top — and was waiting for that balloon to pop more fun than actually winning?