UPCOMING EVENTS

Watch this space!

YouTubery '85: Snacky Cakes

Fitzcarraldo, I understand you. Because I too feel doomed to take on grand projects that ultimately fail, and would have meant nothing even if they succeeded. Lately, I've been digitizing a pile of old VHS tapes, which is slightly less arduous than dragging a steamboat across the Amazon jungle, but no less pointless.

I've just gone through two 6 hour tapes of Kiddie Stuff my grandfather taped for me around various holidays in 1985. He lived next door to me and had a VCR years before I did. So I was constantly begging him to tape stuff I wanted saved for posterity. Then I'd come over to watch said tapes and monopolize his TV some more. And on top of it all, I'd eat all his Cheez-Its, too. That man was a saint.

Grampa's magnanimity did me a great favor. Not by taping the shows, since most of them can now be found on DVD, and 75 percent of them I'll never watch again anyway. But when these tapes were made, networks would dedicate an entire evening to Kiddie Stuff, and I'd want him to tape all of it.

So thanks to Grampa, I now have little TV Time Capsules. An evening of TV is lot like an hour of radio, or an issue of newspaper: it's meant to be immediately consumed and forgotten. When you view it years later as a whole entity, the effect is surreal, because the presentation was intended for the sensibilities, hang-ups, and prejudices of people 20 years ago.

Of course, I can't post six-hour blocks of digitized VHS to the Web. So I'm going to do a series of posts on the real source of surreality on these tapes: the ads. It's difficult to understand now why spokes-things like the California Raisins, Spuds Mackenzie, and Robin Leach were ubiquitous in the 1980s. Most of them look ridiculous now, but few people thought they were ridiculous as they were happening. (Well, I guess some people did.)

What strikes me most about these ads is their sheer earnestness. In 1985, the fin de siecle's general snarkitude was still very, very far away. Today, virtually every ad has to be "funny" in some way (or at least try). So it's weird to view ads from a time when commercials didn't sadistically mock, torture, and injure all of their characters (and the audience).

My first post will concentrate on that bastion of American consumerism: snacks. Today's shopper presumably knows that snacks are fattening and artery-clogging and all around bad for you. So rather than claim otherwise, ads for snacks try to convince you to "spoil yourself." Because that's what America needs--more snacking and less self-restraint!

In 1985, snack ads didn't try to convince the viewer that Fried Corn-Based Things were good for you. But they routinely said that their products would give you energy to get through your busy day. As in this ad for Combos, where a bunch of young fresh fellows power a boat-painting session with plenty of cheese-filled goodness.

The jingle proclaims, unironically, "Combos cheeses your hunger away." I've never understood what that's supposed to mean. Is "cheeses" supposed to sound like "chases"? Is it some weird, antiquated slang I'm not familiar with? Or is it a weird effort to force a new slang word on us, a la ESPN's "Who's Now"?

In this ad for Snickers, an actual construction worker (at least he doesn't look like an actor) tells us that the peanut-packed candy bar gets him through a tough morning. I'm not usually one to judge, but a Snickers bar at 10 am? Do you down it with a belt of Colt 45? And the cross-sections of chopped up Snickers bars look really disturbing, like shellacked diagrams of internal organs.

But candy bars don't just power construction work. This young go-getter at a radio or TV station (it's unclear which) gets through a busy day of back-stabbing, brown-nosing, and three martini lunches thanks to Milky Way. It also helps him sail, and to also think about sailing when he's too busy to sail. The tagline: "A Milky Way a day helps you work, rest, and play." My doctor always used to tell me that, before he got diabetes and had both of his legs amputated.

If you're less ambitious, try a Kit Kat. It won't get you through a busy day, but it will turn you into a werewolf.

Travel back to a more innocent time, when a mother could give her kids a Cadbury chocolate bar as a between-meal snack and not feel like a horrible parent. And when admen could write jingles like "A finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat," free of the myriad of double entendres that are now swirling around in my head.

Speaking of accidentally raunchy jingles, this Juicy Fruit ad is a classic of Retroactive Filth. "Take a sniff, pull it out, the taste is gonna move you when you pop it in your mouth." C'mon, the admen had to know that was dirty, right? The next thing you'll tell me is the geniuses behind this ad didn't know what "ball buster" meant.

But gum isn't just for inspiring naughty innuendo. It is also highly effective in readying the men of our armed forces for inspection. And helping a woman get in her car, I suppose. How these two people are related, if they're supposed to be related at all, is anyone's guess. But I'm pretty sure that if a drill sergeant catches you chewing gum, you can expect an R. Lee Ermey-style verbal evisceration.

Gum also allows you to shirk all responsibilities. At least Big Red does.

Certain gums, like Bubble Yum, can turn you from a glasses-wearing, grocery bagging nerd into a chick magnet. But beware, that chick wants to take you up in her magic spaceship, and who knows what kind of probing awaits you there.

Every so often, a Food Craze hits the supermarket, and every manufacturer feels compelled to put out a product that capitalizes on said craze. Sometimes it's health related (low salt, no trans fats), but more often it's pure presentation. These Food Crazes are inescapable for about two months, then disappear without a trace. Think crystal cola, or ice beer.

In the 1980s, one of these Food Crazes was "soft" cookies. Masses tired of crumbly, palate-scraping cookies demanded soft and chewy snacks. The corporations of America heard their plaintive cries and responded. Keebler's Soft Batch cookies were but one example. Try not to think too hard about what kind of chemicals allow cookies to remain soft and chewy for weeks.

Duncan Hines responded with their own soft cookies. This commercial combines two of my most loathed ad devices: a repurposed classic song (in this case, "Love and Marriage") and kids singing. I still can't hear the original tune without thinking of this commercial, so fuck you in the pants, Duncan Hines.

Another great snack craze of the 80s was the candy-covered granola bar. After years of trying to sell healthy treats, granola companies just said "screw it", dumped chocolate fudge on their formerly wholesome products, and watched the bucks pour in.

Of course, not all bars survived the great granola wars of the 80s. One casualty was Quaker's Whipps (the extra P is for peanut butter, I guess). Good thing for Quaker, they have about 9 billion other granola bars that made the cut.

Cocaine use was rampant in the 1980s amongst high-powered creative types. Witness this commercial for Fritos, which could only have come from the fried-synapse mind of a drug-addled Madison Avenue exec. We see a gang wearing satin jackets with SNACKERS stitched on the back, like they're a really lame offshoot of the Hells Angels. They terrorize the neighborhood by standing in the middle of traffic, making weird hand gestures and downing bag after bag of Fritos.

There are two wholesome-looking chicks who have a thing for the Snackers, or at least their snacks. They want to approach the Snackers and get some of their sweet corn-based bounty. But how? They begin to approach the Snackers, but one of them gets cold feet. "We can buy them ourselves!" she panics. Her friend reassures her, "It's better to get them from the Snackers!" Their big gambit? They walk right up to the Snackers and take some Fritos. That's it, end of commercial.

I can practically see the coked-out adman pacing around the set, his forehead sweaty, sunglasses slipping down the bridge of his aching nose, yelling incoherent instructions to the director so that by the end of a day's shooting, they only have 17 seconds' worth of usable footage.

Although I suppose that this incomprehensible, coke-dusted Fritos commercial from the 1980s is better than this racist chestnut from the 1960s.

In a world filled with such flash, what's a bland product like Saltines to do? Insist that you have new, improved taste of course. And invent words like premium-ier, which sounds like something our current commander-in-chief would say.

Posted 12.03.07 9:25pm * Permalink

Copyright 2004-08 Scratchbomb Inc. Trespassers punished by catapault