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?
Tag: classic commercials
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?
Pepsi’s “You’ve Got a Lot to Live Campaign
Do you remember this Pepsi jingle? Because this one was designed to do a lot more than sell you a bottle of soda.
This 1970 commercial, called “Portrait of America,” was part of Pepsi’s “You’ve Got a Lot to Live, and Pepsi’s Got a Lot to Give” campaign. Watching it again, what strikes me is how little time they spend actually selling Pepsi. Instead we see racing, boats, city streets, beaches, children, couples and ordinary Americans simply living their lives.
And then there’s that song.
The music was written by Joseph Brooks, who years later wrote “You Light Up My Life.” Pepsi described the sound as “gospel rock” or “jubilation rock,” with a big communal chorus meant to sound hopeful and uplifting. It reportedly grew out of a protest song Brooks had written before being reshaped into the Pepsi theme.
That makes a lot more sense when you remember what America felt like around 1970. BBDO realized that the carefree “beautiful young people doing beautiful things” advertising of the earlier Pepsi Generation no longer completely reflected a country watching war and social unrest every night on television. Their new goal was to be real and involving, even searching the country for real people doing real things.
Maybe that’s why this jingle stuck. It didn’t tell us Pepsi tasted better. It told us we had a lot to live for.
Do you remember hearing this one on television?
Ford Once Used “Fix It Yourself” to Sell Cars
Could you imagine a car manufacturer running this commercial today?
This is a 1969 commercial introducing the 1970 Ford Maverick, with a group of American Airlines stewardesses practically taking the car apart and putting it back together.
There was actually a reason for it.
Ford marketed the Maverick as “The Simple Machine.” It was supposed to be simple to buy, simple to drive, simple to maintain and — most interesting to me — simple to repair yourself.
And Ford wasn’t kidding.
Period advertising proudly pointed out that the Maverick owner’s manual contained 24 pages explaining maintenance jobs owners could perform themselves, including changing spark plugs and adjusting ignition timing. Ford even advertised that the fenders and grille could be replaced in a matter of minutes.
Think about how different that sales pitch sounds today.
Modern cars are safer, cleaner and far more sophisticated, but they’re also filled with computers, sensors, electronic modules and software. Some repairs now require proprietary diagnostic equipment, programming or electronic authorization. The Federal Trade Commission has even examined manufacturer restrictions involving parts, repair information, diagnostic software and components electronically paired to individual vehicles.
So while you can certainly still work on your own car, there are a lot more barriers between the owner and the machine.
Ford was selling almost the opposite idea in 1969:
Buy our car because you CAN work on it yourself.
The strategy apparently worked. The Maverick started at $1,995, Ford reportedly received more than 22,000 orders in its first three days, and nearly 579,000 were produced during that first model year.
A car company encouraging you to grab a wrench and fix your brand-new car yourself.
Do you miss when cars were simple enough that you could actually work on them in the driveway?
MIGHTY MOUSE & ZESTABS — WHEN CARTOON HEROES SOLD VITAMINS
Seeing Mighty Mouse selling vitamins takes me right back to an era when our Saturday-morning cartoon heroes seemed capable of selling just about anything. In this commercial, Mighty Mouse gets clobbered by a cat, takes a Zestabs chewable vitamin and suddenly turns the tables — not exactly subtle advertising, but certainly memorable!
There’s actually much more history behind this little commercial than I expected. Zestabs came from Sauter Laboratories, a division of pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche. That strange “Mighty Mouse — Nutley, New Jersey” slate at the end makes sense once you learn that Roche’s longtime American headquarters and research complex was in Nutley.
The campaign also arrived just as people were beginning to question how products were marketed to children. Zestabs came in fruit flavors and later chocolate, and groups such as Action for Children’s Television objected to advertisements that made vitamin pills look and taste too much like candy. By 1972, Hoffmann-La Roche said it had stopped placing its vitamin commercials inside children’s programs, although Zestabs advertising continued elsewhere on television.
And here’s one connection I never expected: years before Pretty in Pink or Two and a Half Men, Jon Cryer says his first paying acting job at age four was a Zestabs commercial.
FUNYUNS — THE SNACK THAT ALMOST WASN’T CALLED FUNYUNS
This commercial takes me right back to when a bag of Funyuns seemed like one of the strangest snacks in the chip aisle. They looked like little onion rings, tasted like onions and even had a name that sounded like somebody made it up on the spot. As it turns out, somebody pretty much did!
Funyuns were introduced by Frito-Lay in 1969, created by employee George Wade Bigner. But here’s something I never knew: Funyuns weren’t supposed to be called Funyuns. The original name was OnYums, but that name was already taken. Advertising copywriter Jim Albright came up with “Funyuns” instead, and more than half a century later we’re still calling them that.
And listen closely to the music in these early commercials. The tune came from “I Love Onions,” a wonderfully odd 1966 novelty song recorded by Susan Christie. The song actually made the Billboard Hot 100 before its melody was adapted to help sell Funyuns.
Another great connection: in 1971, a young Roger Enrico went to work marketing Funyuns. He eventually became CEO of PepsiCo and was one of the men behind Pepsi’s blockbuster Michael Jackson era. Not a bad career beginning for a guy working on onion-flavored rings!
And yes, Funyuns are still around today.
“Ever Eat a Pine Tree?” — The Commercial That Turned Euell Gibbons Into a Punchline
This may be one of those commercials where one sentence became much more famous than the product being advertised.
Euell Gibbons looks into the camera and asks:
“Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.”
And if you were watching television in the early ’70s, apparently there was no escaping what happened next!
I found contemporary FTC records for this exact Grape-Nuts commercial dating it to 1972, even though it’s often identified today as a 1974 spot. Gibbons wasn’t some eccentric actor they hired either. He was a respected author and wild-food expert whose Stalking the Wild Asparagus had been around since 1962.
But that pine-tree line turned him into a pop-culture phenomenon.
John Byner spoofed him on The Carol Burnett Show, Johnny Carson made tree-eating jokes, and Match Game used Euell Gibbons repeatedly as material. One question joked that he had eaten the television camera! Even The Electric Company created “Early Gibbons,” who ate stumps, sticks and stones.
Gibbons even got into the act himself. When Sonny and Cher handed him what appeared to be a wooden plaque, he took a bite out of it. It was actually made to be edible.
And all those jokes certainly didn’t hurt Grape-Nuts. By the end of 1973, the advertising trade press reported that his commercials had increased sales by about 30 percent.
There was one unexpected ending. In 1975, the FTC stopped commercials showing wild plants as edible because regulators worried children might imitate Gibbons and eat something dangerous.
More than 50 years later, say Euell Gibbons to someone who remembers the ’70s and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll answer with something about eating a pine tree.
Do you remember the original commercial — or do you remember all the jokes about Euell Gibbons even more?
Before Taxi, Judd Hirsch Was Selling Us Listerine
Take another look at the young radio DJ in this commercial. That’s Judd Hirsch, years before Taxi, Ordinary People and the long career we know him for today.
This spot appears to be from around 1970, when Hirsch was still trying to establish himself as an actor and doing commercials to make a living. What I didn’t know was that before acting, he had earned a degree in physics and actually worked as an engineer. A few years after this commercial, his career began taking off, and by 1978 he was Alex Rieger on Taxi, eventually winning two Emmys for the role.
But the other star here may really be Listerine’s advertising.
Most companies tried desperately to convince us their products tasted good. Listerine basically said the opposite. Its famous campaign was “The taste people hate twice a day.” In other words, yes, it tastes awful — but that must mean it works!
And boy did we believe that.
Listerine had actually been around since 1879, originally developed as an antiseptic rather than an everyday mouthwash. By the 1920s, advertising helped make the word “halitosis” part of the American vocabulary and convinced generations that bad breath could ruin everything from a date to a marriage.
Looking back, I think the burning sensation became part of Listerine’s identity. You swished it around, tried desperately to make it the full 30 seconds, and then came up gasping for air!
And sitting there in this old commercial is a young Judd Hirsch, probably with no idea that millions of us would someday know him as one of television’s most familiar faces.
Did you recognize Judd Hirsch right away — and be honest, how long could you actually keep old-fashioned Listerine in your mouth?
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?
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?