Stupid Tuesday Questions: End of an Era Edition

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40 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    Moving away from the Midwest, I now miss the upbeat jingle of:

    Save Big Money at Menard’s!Report

  2. Mike Dwyer says:

    We have a local personal injury lawyer, very successful, who has been around forever and has the typical types of ads you see everywhere. He also happens to be an alumni of the same prep school I went to. I always thought he was a little silly based on the ads but I recently served on a committee with him and found him to be bright, articulate and a very caring person. It completely changed my opinion. Now when I see the ads I want to call him and tell him he should just be himself.Report

  3. greginak says:

    Well there were the gravely voiced ice cream ads for Carvel from back east. In the west there was Cal Worthington. Praise be to the holy mute button and not listening to his folksy drivel anymore.Report

  4. Miss Mary says:

    Stupid Tuesday Questions!!! Oh how I’ve missed you.

    I recently visited my hometown for the holidays. My birthday is inconveniently close to Christmas and so my sister took me out to lunch before I drove home from our holiday extravaganza. I got to pick the restaurant, because, well it’s my birthday, duh. So we went to a local seafood place that is in between the harbor and the local beach best known for the kite festival and surf competitions. It was lovely to be surrounded by water while having some amazing fish tacos, but what was even better was the advertisement pamphlet on the table. Almost every restaurant in my home town has a laminated little book of advertisements, jokes, and pop quizzes you can do while you wait for your food. I don’t know why, but everyone has one, and they never change them! I feel like the one I read two weeks ago was the same one that was there when I was ten!Report

  5. Chris says:

    When I was a kid, there was a shoe store with a couple locations in Nashville (Green Hills and Hillsboro Village, for my fellow Middle Tennesseans) called The Family Booterie. They were most famous for having a fluoroscope that they used to show you your feet inside the shoes when you tried them on, which was probably not a particularly healthy thing for either their customers or their employees, but what everyone remembers them for was their ad, which was on constantly for a few years in the 80s. The jingle said, “Two for the price of one plus a dollar,” and to this day — to this day, god… damn… it — that damn jingle still gets stuck in my head.

    And I’m not alone. A few years ago I was in a bar in Franklin and made made a joke that something was two for the price of one. The woman at the bar behind me said, presumably reflexively, “plus a dollar!”Report

  6. Kazzy says:

    Zizmor has been missing from the subway for a few years now, if not longer.

    This ad: http://images1.villagevoice.com/imager/u/745xauto/7483348/doctors-plastic-surgery-ad.jpg is fairly ubiquitous and as evidenced by the stickers ‘defacing’ it, it is not very well received.

    The Kars For Kids radio ad is probably the Zizmor for the new generation… assuming this generation actually listens to the radio.Report

  7. LeeEsq says:

    On occasion, you can still see ads for local businesses on TV, although its much rarer now than it was during the 1980s and 1990s, and they are still as cheesy. I really don’t understand this. I’d assume that you could create a decent but not great ad with somewhat quality acting for that much money because of CGI and the fact that struggling actors can’t be that expensive to hire for a commercial. Local TV ads should exist at a higher level of commercial perfection these days.Report

  8. Burt Likko says:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOsLdT4slsk

    (This one is better than the first one I put up because it has the jingle)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HJALwCNbco

    Cal did a lot of things with “his dog Spot,” who was quite a lot of different animals over the years. My favorite when “Spot” was the giraffe.Report

    • Miss Mary in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Wow, those cars are really cheap!

      Car commercials are still that bad. At least the ones for the dealerships I work at are. 🙁Report

    • Richard Hershberger in reply to Burt Likko says:

      You make me feel young again. These were (and perhaps still are) a fixture watching Dodgers games on TV. I can also still hear in my mind Vin Scully doing spots for Union 76 gas, and the Union 76 station in the stadium parking lot. Oh, and Farmer John sausage, “Easternmost in Quality, Westernmost in Flavor.” I never quite figured out what that meant.Report

  9. North says:

    Casino Taxi had a jingle programmed into my brain by music.
    If you’re a person on the go write down this number; it’s the key for travelling quick.
    It’s Casino Taxi’s number: 429-6666 or 425-6666! *da da da-da daa*
    Report

  10. Hoosegow Flask says:

    Cal Worthington (and his dog spot) have already been mentioned, but others I remember from my time in Southern California are Jack Stephanovich (It’s Stephan, Jaaack Stephan) and “I’m Larry Parker…”Report

  11. Kolohe says:

    Can’t beat Crazy Eddie. (esp now that PPACA would give him the medication he needs, making his prices rational. Thanks, Obama)Report

    • Kim in reply to Kolohe says:

      Man, I know someone who worked for Crazy Eddie.
      (That’s not the fun part… the fun part is how he got hired, which involved farts and birthday cakes)Report

  12. dragonfrog says:

    The Saskatchewan pork marketing board or council or whatever they were, ran a billboard campaign with the slogan “Pork. The one you love.” Always showing a happy loving couple, preparing or eating pork.

    I’m not sure how long it actually ran, but it’s in my memory like it was fairly long.Report

  13. Anne says:

    The Christmas season in Oklahoma does not officially start until you have heard this. It has been running since 1956 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LJBB65r-9o&w=420&h=315%5DReport

  14. Patrick says:

    I still know the street address of Pete Ellis Dodge (1095 West El Camino Real, Sunnyvale) due to their jingle.Report

  15. Alan Scott says:

    Local business where I grew up weren’t creative enough for their cheezy commercials to stick in my head years later.

    But as far as Icons go, Willie Romero’s Barber Shop has been on the streetcorner by my grandparents house for my entire living memory. With a classic red-and-white barber pole that I’ve never seen used by any other actual place that cuts hair. It will be the end of an era when he closes up shop.Report

  16. Brandon Berg says:

    We lived out in the boondocks and got our TV on a satellite receiver. Not one of those cute little DirecTV dishes, but a full-sized one, seven or eight feet across. You probably could have cooked with it on a hot day.

    Anyway, where you guys got local commercials, I got test patterns and snow. Every time I flip past channel 1, I get hit with a wave of nostalgia.Report

    • You probably could have cooked with it on a hot day.

      The movable kind, so you could point it at different satellites to get a variety of channels? If you point one of those at the sun, you will very quickly fry all of its electronics (the satellite being carefully designed to focus the signal at them.)Report

      • Brandon Berg in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        Yeah. One of those. Changing channels took several seconds, unless they were on the same satellite.

        Well, now I’m glad I never tried to cook with it.Report

        • A friend of mine used to have one like that. He lived in what passes for the boonies around here (rural Sonoma County.) This was in the days before the networks encrypted their feeds, so you could see stuff like newscasters sitting around waiting for their shows to start, smoking, buying stuff over the phone, telling dirty jokes, etc. There’s a wonderful Atlantic piece about those long-gone days here.Report

  17. Kolohe says:

    “Nobody bothers me” is the classic DC area commercial (and was featured on “The Americans”)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7PEMGuA6twReport

  18. Slade the Leveller says:

    Any Chicagoan would recognize this one. Check out the watchband on this guy.

    https://youtu.be/BH95UTtbmr8Report

  19. The Miller Lite commercials starring retired athletes. This was one of my favorites:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPm3l5przFIReport