vintage commercials Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

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?

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?

Did You Walk A Mile For A Camel?

If you grew up watching television in the 1950s or ’60s, cigarette commercials weren’t unusual or something that jumped out at you — everybody saw them. Camel, Winston, Marlboro, Salem and the rest were mixed right in with the cereal, cars and laundry detergent.

And Camel was certainly no little brand. It was introduced by R.J. Reynolds in 1913, became the company’s first nationally marketed cigarette and within four years was America’s number-one seller.

The commercial I’m showing comes from Camel’s revival of one of advertising’s most famous lines: “I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel.” What surprised me is how old that slogan actually was. Smithsonian records show it appearing in Camel advertising back in the 1920s, and Reynolds brought the idea back again near the end of the 1960s.

There’s also a future TV connection. Geoffrey Scott, who later played Mark Jennings on Dynasty, became one of the faces of the “Walk a Mile” Camel campaign. Scott made nearly 100 commercials during his career and also wound up doing ads for Old Spice and even portraying a Marlboro Man.

Then everything changed. Federal law ended cigarette advertising on American radio and television after January 1, 1971.

Do you remember the Camel commercials themselves, or mostly just the line “I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel”?

The Monkees, Bugs Bunny and Kool-Aid

Talk about putting two things together that you wouldn’t expect — The Monkees and Bugs Bunny selling Kool-Aid!

But the first thing I noticed was that there are only three Monkees here. Peter Tork had already left the group in December 1968, leaving Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Michael Nesmith to carry on as a trio. By this point their NBC television series was over too, but that wasn’t the end of The Monkees on television.

In the fall of 1969, CBS brought the show back as Saturday morning reruns, and General Foods’ Kool-Aid was a sponsor. That explains a lot about why these commercials exist. The Monkees were suddenly being introduced to kids all over again, and Kool-Aid had three very recognizable spokesmen ready to go.

Bugs Bunny wasn’t new to Kool-Aid either. I found that the “Make Friends with Kool-Aid” campaign was already using Bugs several years earlier, so pairing him with The Monkees was really a combination of two existing advertising ideas.

There’s another interesting connection from this period. Their 1969 album The Monkees Present was also tied into a Kool-Aid promotion. The group was well past peak Monkeemania by then, Peter was gone and Michael Nesmith would soon leave too.

And for anyone wondering where the Kool-Aid Man is — he wasn’t the television star yet! That familiar walking pitcher didn’t make his big TV debut until 1975.

Looking back, this commercial is almost a snapshot of The Monkees right near the end of their original run.

Do you remember this commercial, or do you remember The Monkees more from their Saturday morning reruns?

When Jonathan Winters Sold Us Hefty Trash Bags

Here’s one of those commercials where the product almost takes a back seat to the guy selling it. Jonathan Winters could turn something as ordinary as a trash bag into a comedy routine, and Hefty apparently knew exactly what it had.

I found Winters doing Hefty commercials as early as August 1970, and there are documented spots with him still representing the brand in November 1978. That’s a pretty long run for what could easily have been a one-shot celebrity endorsement.

What I didn’t realize was how much of Winters’ own comedy world crossed over into these commercials. His famous old-lady character Maude Frickert was partly inspired by an aunt who taught him poker when he was only nine. Then in 1972, Winters actually appeared on The New Scooby-Doo Movies, voicing both himself and Maude in The Frickert Fracas.

And there’s another connection most of us probably know without connecting the dots — Robin Williams considered Winters a huge influence. Years later they wound up working together on Mork & Mindy, with Winters playing Mork and Mindy’s very unusual son, Mearth.

So this is really a little piece of comedy history disguised as a garbage-bag commercial. Do you remember Jonathan Winters more from the Hefty commercials, Mork & Mindy, or somewhere else?

Joe DiMaggio as the face of Mr. Coffee

When this ad aired in 1974, America was right in the middle of changing the way it made coffee. For generations, the kitchen percolator had been the standard. Then Mr. Coffee came along with automatic drip brewing, and Joe DiMaggio became the familiar, trusted face convincing people to give this new machine a try.

He didn’t exactly “kill” the percolator himself, but he certainly helped America move away from it. Mr. Coffee had only been introduced in 1972, yet by April 1974 the company had already sold its millionth machine.

One of my favorite details is that DiMaggio reportedly turned down the endorsement at first—and had actually won a Mr. Coffee machine at a golf tournament before the company ever approached him.

And here’s the best irony of all: the man who became one of the most famous coffee spokesmen in television history reportedly wasn’t much of a coffee drinker himself.

Do you remember when your family finally replaced the old percolator with a Mr. Coffee?

Remember the Fruit of the Loom Lady?

A lot of us remember Fruit of the Loom commercials because they were just plain fun, but this one has an extra connection many people may not realize. The woman in the commercial is Loretta Tupper, a veteran actress who became one of television’s most recognizable commercial performers. Kids remembered her as the Fruit of the Loom lady, while older viewers may have spotted her in all kinds of other ads during the 1970s and ’80s.

What made these commercials so memorable was the simple but clever idea of bringing the Fruit of the Loom characters right into an everyday home setting. It gave the brand a playful personality and helped make those fruit costumes instantly unforgettable. Looking back now, it’s another reminder of how much charm older commercials had, when a funny concept and one memorable performer could make an ad stick in your mind for years.

Do you remember seeing these Fruit of the Loom commercials when they first aired, and did you recognize Loretta Tupper?

Whoop-dee-doo for my Subaru Midas Ad

I recognized Midas right away, but the lady driving the Subaru is another familiar part of this commercial. That’s Loretta Tupper, one of those faces we saw over and over again in commercials during the 1970s and ’80s. I’m going to save more about her for another commercial later, because she had quite an interesting career.

Midas itself started back in 1956 and, for its first few years, was basically all about mufflers and exhaust systems. One of its biggest selling points was the famous guarantee that covered the muffler for as long as you owned the car. The company gradually expanded, adding shocks in 1960 and brakes in 1979 before eventually becoming the full-service auto repair chain we know today.

It’s also a reminder of how common muffler shops once were. Replacing an exhaust system was simply a much more routine part of owning a car than it is today.

Do you remember going to Midas for a muffler, and did you recognize Loretta Tupper when she appeared?

This Ad Introduced Visa’s New Name

Yes, this commercial was introducing what looked like a new credit card, but it was actually announcing that BankAmericard was becoming Visa. The ad shows the new Visa card placed directly over the older BankAmericard and ends with the line, “We’re keeping up with you.”

Bank of America had introduced BankAmericard in 1958. By the 1970s, many banks inside and outside the United States were issuing versions of the card, sometimes under different regional names. The organization adopted Visa in 1976 because it was a simple international name that sounded similar in different languages.

This appears to be the 1977 “Becoming Visa” campaign. The scenes of travel, restaurants, boating and shopping were meant to show that the card was becoming more modern and useful wherever customers went.

Existing BankAmericard holders did not need to open a completely new account. New cards gradually carried the Visa name, while older BankAmericards remained valid during the transition, reportedly until October 1, 1979.

The DeLorean: A Dream Car With a Wild Story

The DeLorean DMC-12 looked like it had arrived from the future, even before Doc Brown turned one into a time machine. With its gull-wing doors, stainless-steel body and low, sharp styling, nothing else on the road looked quite like it. Unfortunately, the performance did not match the appearance, and buyers discovered that the futuristic-looking sports car was not especially fast.

The company was also running out of money. In 1982, John DeLorean became involved in what appeared to be a plan to finance the company through a cocaine transaction. The deal was arranged with James Hoffman, a convicted drug smuggler working as a federal informant. DeLorean was arrested during a videotaped hotel-room sting, but his attorneys argued that the government had pressured a financially desperate businessman into committing a crime.

A jury agreed with the entrapment defense and acquitted DeLorean of all charges in 1984. By then, however, the company had collapsed and his reputation had been permanently damaged.

Was the DeLorean reliable? Early cars had electrical problems, weak alternators, troublesome power windows and inconsistent assembly. The V6 engine itself could be durable, but the car needed attentive maintenance and knowledgeable mechanics. A properly restored DeLorean can be dependable today, although owning one is still more of a passion project than ordinary transportation.

Did you dream of owning a DeLorean before Back to the Future, or did the movie make you want one?