1001 Classic Commercials (Mill Creek Entertainment DVD) + Sold Separately – Classic Kids Commercials
(Passport/E1/Koch DVD)
Picture: C Sound: C Extras: D Compilation: B+
Though it
may not seem so at first, an argument can be made that advertising is at its
best, an art form and not just junk or “the pornography of capitalism” as some
have suggested. This is not that it is a
place of artistic expression, but it is a place where the better ads are as impressive
as the best Music Videos or memorable moments in film and TV. As a result, more video companies are issuing
compilations of such commercials, some of which even go back to pre-TV days and
many are not going to be on YouTube either.
1001 Classic Commercials and Sold Separately – Classic Kids Commercials
are the latest.
There was
a time when commercials (like movies and TV) respected the intelligence of the
audience more than not and as compared to most of the really bad ads we see
now, there was a pride and classiness to older ad campaigns usually missing
from today’s promotions. A recent
Coca-Cola ad spoofed a violent, popular videogame at great expense and was
extremely well done, but did not get the credit it deserved. If the ads making it on TV today were
submitted as late as the early 1980s, those creators would have been fired and
accounts cancelled.
Of
course, many are also slight, boring and flatly dumb. At least when a campaign did not work before,
it was not for lack of ambition. You
either had stars promoting the product, a fictional character (like “Mother
Nature” for margarine) or a clever jingle to sell the product. Both sets (despite some overlap, including
ads both have form the valuable, out-of-print Classic Commercials set Madacy issued years ago) are chock full of great
ads and some are still part of our pop culture.
We will not ruin all the surprises in this set, but here are just some
of the highlights of each set. 1001 Classic Commercials is a three-DVD
set:
Disc 1 highlights include some
interesting Food Commercials including Coca-Cola and 7-Ups ads, Kool-Aid
campaigns you likely missed, the politically incorrect Hawaiian Punch campaign,
Pepsi ads that helped put them on top, Flintstones Welch’s Grape Juice ad, Peanuts
Hart’s Bread campaign, an amazing Mars Candy campaign pushing natural
ingredients, General Mills’ bizarre Country Corn Flakes ad, Ruth McDevitt (All In The Family, Kolchak: The Night Stalker) in a hilarious Heinz Pickle ad, Kroger
animated egg ad, actual Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken ad, prune ads
Johnny Carson may have spoofed and Pink Floyd Dole Banana campaign circa Dark Side Of The Moon.
Toys Commercials include a surprising amount of
space race-inspired toys, followed by many robots even before that craze. There are also some war toys, a nice
selection of Remco, Marx and Gilbert ads, including a good share of various car
toys. The ThunderStreak (by Ideal)
all-weather flying, riding toy is interesting and yes, we get Barbie and her
imitators, as well a big baby dolls, one of which is life size. Louis Armstrong even shows up in one. There are also spy toys, many not connected
with James Bond or other shows, plus some Western Cowboy toys are
included. Of course, there are more than
a few toy gun ads. Infamous game show
host Jack Barry shows up with Joe DiMaggio plugging Lionel Trains. Silly Putty and Slinky ads also turn up.
Public Service
Announcements
include anti-drug and drinking ads, including some from movie theaters prior to
the advent of commercial TV, plus Tab Hunter for the Mental Health Association,
Mark Hamill for The March Of Dimes, Gale Gordon battling cancer, James Cagney
battling tuberculosis, Clint Eastwood battling crack, several different ones
for John Wayne, classic Iron Eagle Cody pollution ad (the most successful of
all time) and the famous “VD is for
Everybody” ad.
Disc 2 highlights include over 200
now-infamous ads for smoking on half the disc, while the other half offers Health
& Beauty ads, including an animated Bactine ad, Hai Karate
after-shave (you need instructions on how to protect yourself from women
jumping on you) ad, Clairol ad vaguely referencing the 1960s Batman series, amusing
shaving cream ads, a Crest Toothpaste ad with Marge Simpson voice Marcia
Wallace, animated Ipana Toothpaste ad (different from the one made famous by
the 1978 film of Grease), Brylcreem
ads with stop-motion animation and a series of bar soap ads that in the 1960s
and 1970s, constituted a sort of cycle unto itself.
Disc 3 has 21 subdivisions (which we’ll
skip listing), but highlights include the animated United Airlines “This Land Is Your Land” campaign, funny
Old Milwaukee Beer ad campaign with Tony Dow among other liquor ads, a couple
of extensive Polaroid ad promoting the advantages of their instant photography,
several I Love Lucy/Ford car tie-in
ads, a movie theater ad for General Motors (at letterboxed 1.85 X 1) called A
Touch OF Magic, the infamous Lincoln/Mercury “Sign Of The Cat” campaign that was eventually dropped when a child
was mauled by a real cougar like the on in all the ads, the Ford Edsel ad, a
cycle of coffee ads, a 1934 None Such Coffee ad meant for movie theaters, Mel
Blanc (cartoon voice actor) for American Express, the household items section
includes detergent, paper towels, tissues, pens and bug spray, two Cheer ads
(one a Star Trek knock off, the
other with future Electric Company
cast member Judy Grubart), a Mary
Hartman Comet ad, the Hefty Trash Bag campaign with Jonathan Winters, a
General Electric light bulb ad with Mr. Magoo, an industrial film on the
manufacture of a jack-in-the-box, a Bell Telephone long distance extended
promo, a National Oil Heat promo with Charlotte Rae, the RCA 16mm film
projector, some political ads, The
Munsters at Marineland,
Girl From U.N.C.L.E. crossover promo with Boris
Karloff, early Lost In Space promo
before the first season debuted and an extended (51) different ads for food and
beverages for drive-in theaters.
The
listings above by means imply that the longer the description, the better the
disc. It is just meant to explaining how
good some of the many commercials included are.
Then there is the Sold Separately
compilation, which expands on the out of print Hit Celebrity TV Commercials DVD.
We reviewed the Celebrity
disc at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1234/Hit+Celebrity+TV+Commercials+(Comp
It
includes all those ads, minus identifying tel-ops of the stars, but my previous
review covers that, so no problem. The
two new sections are for Toys & Games and Cereals
& Snacks. Toys
highlights includes a space-aged sounding Silly Putty ad, classic Big Jim
action figure ad where he meets Big Josh, Rock Em Sock Em Robots form Marx, the
classic Connect Four checker game ad with the classic line “pretty sneaky sis”,
Matt Matson Mattel toy ad, STARTeam space outfit playsets from Ideal, silly
& amusing Keds Sneakers toy tie-in, the Big Wheel Cobra Cycle from Marx,
classic 1979 Matchbox ad where kids pretend to be adults as if they were in an
ad for full-sized cars, the Chick-A-Dee Game, great Welcome Back Kotter – Up Your Nose With A Rubber Hose board game
from Ideal with different actors playing the cast, a Chatty Cathy doll ad that
looks like a tie-in to Whatever Happened
To Baby Jane? and some Barbie ads that also appear on the Mill Creek set,
but looking better here. Snacks
highlights includes the bizarre Clanky chocolate syrup ad, Crazy Guggenheim
(from The Jackie Gleason Show) for
Malt-O-Meal, early Kellogg’s Pop Tarts ad with a miniature man riding a
combination toaster/truck powered as a three wheel bike you have to see and one
of many Honey Comb Hideout installments.
Just
about all the ads are 1.33 X 1 and sound is Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, as none of
the ads are from TV’s stereo era. A few
are letterboxed, but even the few movie theater ads are 1.33 X 1, made before
the advent of television. Some are film
copies, hardly any are videotaped ads and some are digital copies of filmed
ads. You can see this from bleeding
colors and poorer definition, with a few possibly from a VHS source. I know some of the black and white ads were
on VHS from an archival collection and had seen them actually shown from such a
source at The Andy Warhol Museum.
There are
no extras, but Separately treats the
repeat of the previous DVD like an extra, despite being the longest program on
the DVD. We will not consider it as that
and hope these and other companies will issue even more compilations. There’s much more where these came from and
people want to see them.
- Nicholas Sheffo
