Sunday, May 22, 2011

Commercials - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Week #21

This is a weekly challenge from GeneaBloggers called 52 weeks of personal genealogy history.

Week 21. Commercials. Do you remember any commercial jingles from your childhood? Share them here.

My earliest memories of commercials are from the Saturday morning cartoons where they bombarded the kids with ads for cereals and toys. I remember Captain Crunch, Lucky Charms, and Fruit Loops in particular and of course, the ones that tried to lure us in with the "free" prize inside. Mattel ads were on constantly hawking Barbie, Hot Wheels and their other toys.

The first ad I thought of when I read the prompt was "Winston Tastes Good... Like a Cigarette Should". I've never been a smoker, so it's amazing that that one stuck in my head for so long! I also remember the ads targeted at women for Virginia Slims and Benson & Hedges Menthol. Thankfully, we don't have to endure any of those on TV anymore.

Some other ones that came to mind were the Hai-Karate ads, the Volkswagen ads with Meet Harry the Swinger, the Alka-Seltzer Plop, plop, fizz, fizz ads, the Wendy's commercials with Where's the Beef, and the Enjoli jingle where the woman could bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.That must have been some perfume!

Then there were the local ads. The one I remember the most was a car dealer in Central Florida named Art Grindle. He had a large car dealership with a big statue of himself waving his arm up and down with his index  finger pointed out at drivers passing by. In the TV commercials, he would have a line of cars slowly driving past with the sale price on them as he kept up a frantic stream of babble. He would sometimes jump up and down on the cars and tear the signs in half, always ending by pointing at the camera and saying "I want to sell you a car"! His son tried to carry on, but the commercials just weren't the same without his father's crazed antics.

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