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Pointless Nostalgia Pt. 3.5: Adtacular!

As promised/threatened, here's some ads from the 1989 baseball preview tape I shared yesterday. Behold, the wisdom of the ancients!

Nowadays, armed forces recruitment tries to challenge your manhood. Their commercials show Rangers rapelling out of helicopters into enemy territory, or Navy SEALS making a covert amphibious assault on a secret island fortress. Testosteriffic rap-rock yells in the background, the kind of music also frequently used in "nutritional supplement" ads. The implied tagline: C'mon and join the Army, you fuckin pussy.

Once upon a time, the Army emphasized the practical aspects of national service. Witness this ad, where the tagline is GET AN EDGE ON LIFE. Another ad from around this time proclaimed the Army as A GREAT PLACE TO START, as if it was merely a way station in your career trajectory. Here, the Army tries to convince you that driving a tank and crossing a rope bridge will prepare you for a future in the white collar world. If climbing the corporate ladder is your goal, you're probably better off going to business school than basic training. But at least if you follow this commercial's advice, you can learn how to wield a bayonet, which will come in handy for taking care of that pesky competition for the junior vice president of sales position.

This ad for a shop in Boro Park depresses the hell out of me, because it's for the kind of store no one wants to shop at. You go to a "discount center" because you can't afford to spend your dough elsewhere. It reminds me of being a little kid and having to go with my mom to horrible places in Newburgh and Middletown, full of loud, angry people, because I needed a pair of sneakers for school. Check out the guy who waves to the camera for like five minutes--was this something his work buddies ragged him about for years, or was it the sad highlight of his failed existence? Did he even have a job, or buddies of any kind? Pardon me, I'm gonna go eat a can of Drano now.

This is a promo for a special celebrating the tenth anniversary of the legendary 1979 Larry Bird/Magic Johnson NCAA finals matchup. It dates from the era when networks did sports specials like this, before ESPN Classic took over that territory. And before ESPN Classic gave up that territory so it could show endless reruns of poker tournaments.

This ad for Crastsman tools insists it's "a true story," which is your first tip-off that it's a big fat lie. If you're thinking of using a wrench for a tow winch, here's my advice: Don't. Unless you want to destroy both the wrench and the bumper of your car. Also, learn from the idiot in this commercial and don't drive your pickup truck straight into a clearly visible ditch you could have easily avoided.

Nestle used to depict sports stars being distracted by the creamy goodness (and annoying crackle) of a Crunch bar. Here, John Elway's wife diverts her hubby's attention with a handful of chocolatey goodness. This would be funnier if John hadn't just gotten slaughtered in two consecutive Super Bowls, and was one year away from getting his ass handed to him in a third. If he hadn't eventually won the big game (twice), this would be a bitterly ironic reminder of his futility--thwarted by a candy bar! Blast! Luckily for Elway, the fates were eventually kind to him, so it just looks cheesy in an 80s sorta way.

This is a promo for NBC's Game of the Week, a now-defunct institution I examined last week. If you read my earlier post, it won't take a keen eye to notice that this ad is virtually the same as the GOTW ad from 1988. Only the returning champs have been substituted. Hey, computer graphics were expensive in 1989; you had to squeeze at least five years' use out of them in order to make it a worthwhile investment.

You may think TV sucks now, but look: TV has always sucked. In fact, thanks to cable and the envelope-pushing of HBO, it's probably better now than it has been in a long time, perhaps ever. Don't believe me? Peep this NBC sitcom promo from 1989, and tell me that you'd be jazzed to plop down in front of this at the end of a long day. And consider this: if you didn't want to view the comedic genius of 227 and Empty Nest, you had only two other networks to take your eyeballs to.  

Remember when Newsday launched a city edition called New York Newsday? No? Um, okay. Well, they did. Here's their baseball preview.

This amusing campaign for Kellogg's Nut And Honey Crunch had a cute premise that people seemed to like. So naturally, Kellogg's beat the living shit out of it, running what was essentially the same ad for about three years longer than they should have. Just another demonstration of the once longer shelf life of the Pop Culture Phenomenon. I remember my grampa thought it was funny, though.

Here's another ad campaign that ran for several years, this one for Nynex (one of many incarnations of NY's Enormous Telephone Monopoly). The premise: show something sorta confusing, and then tcut to a Yellow Pages with a clever pun to explain it. In addition to this example, I remember a commercial with a baseball manager paraphrasing lines from Shakespeare. It then cut to the Yellow Page listing for ACTING COACHES.

Look, I usually don't make fun of old technology just because it's old. One day, someone's gonna think the laptop I'm typing this on is one step left of a stone axe. But seriously, can you imagine laying out a cool grand in 1989 dollars for this heap?

Here's an old SNL promo with Mel Gibson, back when he kept his racism to himself.

Posted 02.27.07 08:15pm * Permalink

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