vintage advertising Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

WATCH JOE NAMATH GET CREAMED!

Only in the 1970s could a shaving cream commercial turn something as ordinary as shaving into entertainment!

And who better to star in it than Broadway Joe Namath?

By this time, Joe had already guaranteed a victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III and then delivered. He was one of the biggest personalities in football, and his fame extended well beyond the playing field.

Then Noxzema came along and made getting creamed part of the act!
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What really makes this commercial memorable is that catchy jingle. The music has a funky, almost theatrical sound, with a singer enthusiastically encouraging us to let Noxzema cream our faces so our razors wouldn’t.

I did some digging and found that an advertising-music retrospective identifies an uncredited studio singer behind the famous Namath jingle, although I couldn’t establish the singer’s name for this particular recording.
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And the advertising worked well enough that Noxzema continued running Joe Namath commercials for more than three years.

According to the advertising agency’s historical account, they received surprisingly few complaints about the suggestive humor.

Another interesting thing is how many commercials Joe made over the years. In 1974, he even appeared in an advertisement for Beautymist pantyhose, wearing a pair himself!

That’s how big Broadway Joe had become. He could sell shaving cream, pantyhose and just about anything else advertisers put in front of him.

And more than 50 years later, we’re still watching him get creamed.

Do you remember these Noxzema commercials?

#JoeNamath #BroadwayJoe #Noxzema #NewYorkJets #SuperBowlIII #1970sCommercials #VintageCommercials #RetroCommercials #AdvertisingJingles #ClassicAdvertising #1970sNostalgia #VintageTelevision #TheRetroSite

Only Vincent Price Could Make a VHS Tape Sound Terrifying

Only in the 1980s could Vincent Price sit in a creepy castle and convince us to buy blank VHS tapes by telling us he wanted to clean our heads.
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This 1985 commercial was for Polaroid videocassettes, and the funny thing is they weren’t advertising a separate VCR head cleaner.
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Polaroid actually claimed its regular videotapes helped keep your VCR heads clean while you played them.
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Remember when dirty VCR heads were actually something we worried about?
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Using Vincent Price was perfect casting. Just a couple of years earlier, millions of younger viewers had heard that unmistakable voice at the end of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Price recorded that famous narration in only two takes.
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And 1985 was also the year he became Vincent Van Ghoul on The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo.
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What I always find interesting about Vincent Price is how much more there was to him than horror movies. He studied art history, became a serious art collector and helped build the collection that eventually became the Vincent Price Art Museum.
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He even spent years helping Sears select original artwork that ordinary customers could buy in their stores.
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Price was also a gourmet cook and co-wrote A Treasury of Great Recipes with his wife Mary.
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But put him in an old castle, light a few candles and let that voice loose, and suddenly even a blank VHS tape became creepy.
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And apparently it cleaned your head, too.
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Do you remember Polaroid selling VHS tapes?
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#VincentPrice #Polaroid #VHS #VHSTapes #VCR #1980s #1985 #VintageCommercials #RetroCommercials #ClassicHorror #Thriller #MichaelJackson #1980sNostalgia #HomeVideo #TheRetroSite

Would Kids Today Take a McDonald’s Gift Certificate — or Trick Your House?

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Maybe kids today would be more patient than I was.
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But on Halloween night, I wanted the candy.
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How about you — would a McDonald’s gift certificate have been a treat, or a disappointment?

Why Did Kids Have to Be Warned About Blasting Caps?

I remember seeing these warnings as a kid. They showed us what blasting caps looked like and told us never to touch one. Even then, I wondered: Why would I ever find one? Why weren’t the adults keeping them locked up?

We recently posted an old public service announcement with Willie Mays warning kids about blasting caps. Seeing it again brought that question right back. The warnings weren’t limited to Boy Scout posters, either. They appeared in films, public service announcements and other safety materials.

The danger was real. An explosives industry report said six boys were injured in five blasting cap incidents in 1989. Its conclusion was that the injuries apparently resulted from adults storing the caps improperly or illegally. A later report described children finding caps beside a road, near a park and even during a school trip to a lighthouse in Connecticut.

Of course kids needed to know: don’t touch one, and tell an adult. But that warning only came into play after someone had left a dangerous explosive where a child could find it.

We don’t see those old television spots much anymore, although the “Don’t Touch” warning still exists. I’m glad Willie Mays told kids to be careful. I just wish the adults handling the blasting caps had always been as careful.

Do you remember seeing these warnings growing up? Did you ever wonder why kids needed them in the first place?

Happy Birthday to the United States Air Force!

On September 18, 1947, the U.S. Air Force officially became an independent branch of the military. So today marks its 79th birthday.

I thought this early-1950s recruiting commercial was a great way to look back at just how young the Air Force still was at the time.

The cartoon wasn’t simply advertising enlistment. It was recruiting young men for the Aviation Cadet program, where successful candidates could become pilots or other flying officers.

And check out the sales pitch: jets, travel, officer’s wings — and more than $5,000 a year after graduation.

There was a reason the Air Force was advertising so aggressively. Historical records show it was dealing with a serious shortage of Aviation Cadet applicants in the early 1950s. Requirements were adjusted, the minimum age was lowered to 19, and recruiting teams were sent onto college campuses looking for candidates.

It’s also easy to forget just how new everything was. The Air Force hadn’t even celebrated its tenth birthday yet, and the Air Force Academy didn’t exist when this recruiting push began. Congress wouldn’t authorize the Academy until 1954.

And since we’ve been paying more attention to the music in these old commercials, I looked into that too. I couldn’t find a reliable credit for the jingle used in this particular ad, so I’m not going to guess.

But here’s something I never knew about the official Air Force Song.

Robert Crawford wrote what became “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder” in 1939 — and according to Air Force history, he first came up with the melody while flying from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Trenton, New Jersey.

Even better, the first page of Crawford’s original handwritten score eventually went much farther than Bridgeport or Trenton — Apollo 15 carried it to the surface of the Moon in 1971.

From a brand-new independent service in 1947 to the Moon barely 24 years later.

“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?

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?

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?

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?