Hey, I just noticed my old pal Mike O. has revived his blog (Industry!) from its state of suspended animation. He just posted the video of an oddball Tootsie Pop commercial that I also remember from childhood. When seen through my 21st century lens, it seems strangely edgy. What’s up with that blind fox? Right up to the end I was wondering if this was the actual commercial or a postmodern ironical send-up of same. It’s so hard to tell anymore.
While on the subject of old commercials that stick with you across the years, I was glad to find the old Chuck Wagon Dog Food commercial. I loved that little wagon! How did it just melt into the wall like that? It thrilled me every time.
Any commercials you particularly remember? It must be incredibly satisfying for the old retired ad men to see their material coming around again on YouTube. Look at all them cotton-pickin’ Alka-Seltzer ads.
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 
For me, old commercials are more associative than .. I don’t know .. upwelling? or callable-on-demand?
In contrast, I can call up a Monty Python, Tom Lehrer, “ZAMM”, or Lessons Learned in Software Testing quote pretty much on demand, in any context.
But it’s harder for any particular commercial to well its way up from the murk of thousands (tens of thousands? urk – Hundreds of thousands?) of commercials I’ve seen.
OK, now having seen that Tootsie Pop commercial, I am for some bizarre reason reminded of a commercial for a not-quite-peanut-butter spread called Koogle. Set to the tune of “Barney Google”, it goes “Here comes Koogle with the koo-koo-koogly eyes…” I am not sure I want to go Google Koogle and find out what kind of sugary plastic oil derivatives were in it..
“…first you Koogle it, then you chew-gle it, and then you Koogle it one more time!…”
dear god make it stop
“..what do you doo-gle with peanutty Koogle? Spread it on a sandwich(?) or a cracker or a bun. First you Koogle it, then you chew-gle it, and then you Koogle it one more time!…”
if I don’t post again in the next hour or so, don’t worry, I’ve only found some sharp object and dug out various parts of my brain in the effort to kill this earworm…
This isn’t quite commercials, but I’ve got to get something off my chest about “Schoolhouse Rock”, and this seemed a marginally nearly-appropriate place to do it.
I’m guessing if one is within shouting range of my age (41 here in 2007) you’re familiar with “Schoolhouse Rock” — I mean, if I say “conjunction junction”, not only would I lay good odds that half of the 41-year-olds in this country (who were in this country in 1976) could respond “what’s your function?” but that a significant number of them would be stuck with an earworm tune for a while afterwards.
There were the parts-of-speech-ones (see above), the U.S. government ones, some history ones, and the ones that I liked the most: Multiplication Rock.
So a couple nights ago, our three young kids and I are down in the basement, and I put in a videotape — honest-to-goodness VHS videotape — of the Multiplication Rock stuff. All glory and honor to my wife for buying it several years ago, by the way. The three kids are enraptured. I’m over in another part of the basement, cleaning up, idly playing with a deck of cards and whatnot. I look over and see the backs of their unmoving heads — somehow, Eddie has managed to climb up onto a chair and is sitting big-boy-style next to his siblings, a skill he has worked very hard the past few weeks to master — and, beyond them, the beginning of “Three is a Magic Number.”
Three, is a magic number.
Yes it is, it’s a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient mystic trinity.
You get three, it’s a magic number.
The past and the present and the future.
Faith and Hope and Charity.
The heart and the brain and the body
Make it three, it’s a magic number.
Now I’m not, by several billion, the sappiest person on the planet, and not, again by several billion, the most reverent person on the planet, but right around the line “the past and the present and the future”, I was tearing up. We hadn’t even gotten to the real knockout verse (that was nevertheless ringing in my head at the time):
A man and a woman had a little baby,
Yes they did.
Now there’s three in the family,
It’s a magic number.
–JMike