The famous Honda Cog commercial, which took over 500 takes until they got everything to line up correctly. That’s Garrison Keillor on the voice-over at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo

Alas, I don’t think this is on YouTube. In fact, I only ever saw it once, in the mid-1980s, while visiting Canada.

The commercial showed a fashionable, nervous woman walking along a dark street when two men in trench coats leaped out of the shadows. “Give us ze microfilm!” one of them barked.

“I’ll never give it to you!” the woman said (in a similar foreign accent).

The men jerk her purse away, scattering the contents on the sidewalk. Spotting a small wrapped object, one of them snatches it up saying, “ha! I have eet!” and the two men run away.

Fading back into the shadows, the woman hisses contemptuously, “Zat vas not ze microfische, you EEDIOT.”

Cut to a shot of a box of sanitary pads…

BEST SANITARY PRODUCT COMMERCIAL EVER IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION. I don’t even remember the brand.

Right now, I think everything should end with the phrase “I’m on a a horse”.

Of course, I also loved the Gerbil Cannon and thought the Spong Monkeys were pure genius, so there’s clearly something wrong with my perceptions.

I also remember liking the commercials for the “new” VW beetle. I think they were the first to use music I actually listened to (Stereolab and the Polyphonic Spree), which at the time I thought was pretty cool.

The Kia spot was cute, but I thought the walking cyclops that’s been “nubbed for your pleasure” didn’t get enough screen time.

I always wondered where that “atsa spicy meataball” bit in The Mask came from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecH8tgass1A

I knew it felt like a ref to something (every bit in The Mask was) but I couldn’t place it.  Now it makes sense.

Thanks, Pam!

I hate commercials and have trained myself to not see them. Radio is the hardest to screen, but I change stations as soon as one comes on—and they Particularly outrage me when they are on “non-commercial” NPR.  Wonderfully talented image-makers and story tells and brilliant brain researchers have colluded to warp our imaginations and replace the fears and joys of our lived experience with lies for the purpose of selling us things or ideas, and the Big lie that getting and spending = happiness.

Right now, I think everything should end with the phrase “I’m on a a horse”.

You and me both. I didn’t watch many commercials before I got a DVR, and now it’s even rarer for me to watch them. I back up for those, though.

Seriously, though—the DVR may have been the greatest improvement in the quality of my leisure time since I started drinking 27 years ago.

My kids can’t believe the alka selzer ads because they never see ads where such excess is celebrated, thanks to neoprohibitionistic and puritanical mores.

I still love the Monster.com ad from the superbowl, where the kids aspire to being stuck and shit on workers.  Painful, but amazing.

The Subaru “love” series of commercials is brilliant and plain just chokes me up.

I’m going to third the Old Spice “the man your man could smell like”  commercial. It’s got to be the best one running right now. I also love the Ally commercial with the little girl asking about the pony. Her facial expression is priceless.

I really like those Coors Light commercials where they cut back and forth between responses from NFL coaches’ post-game press-conferences and goofy douchebags asking absurd questions about Coors Light.

The Kia spot was cute, but I thought the walking cyclops that’s been “nubbed for your pleasure” didn’t get enough screen time.
Comment #5: Egnu Cledge on 03/14 at 04:24 PM

That’s Muno from the amazing Nickelodeon kid’s show Yo Gabba Gabba. It makes me incredibly sad that they use him to try and sell me a car.

I do like the Kia Soul ads with the hamsters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFHCfwF87_o&feature=related

My favorite commercial of all time is this local Chicago commercial for Eagle Insurance, featuring Eagle Man, the only male spokesbird to ever lay an egg. Brilliantly awful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4-e4nlfdRI&feature=related

Way back, (late 60’s early 70’s?) George Raft was in the mess hall of a prison
gives meaningfull look to other prisoner and nods
prisoners all start banging on the tables in unison
guards rush in with shotguns
prisoners start chanting “Alka-Seltzer!, Alka-Seltzer!”

GHorton, I bet you don’t even own a TV, eh?

As a designer, it always annoys me when people immediately jump in and claim that advertising or marketing is shallow and less creatively “legitimate” than other forms of art.  It takes just as much thought, creativity and effort as creating any other kind of art*, and you can end up with some impressive stuff, such as:

Bruce Campbell for Old Spice

I really enjoy Target’s advertising for the slightly trippy-pop quality of them, and the creative ways in which they use store products.  Their more recent “Brand New Day” ads about switching to lower-cost items and stay-at-home treatments and entertainment in the face of the recession are also interesting, emphasizing optimism, quality of life and style.  It’s a unique way Target has positioned itself in the market.

American Express’ “happy face” ads

(*And, don’t forget, all those paintings and sculptures the great artists did centuries ago that people hold up as the highest examples of human creativity?  Just as much as a marketing ploy as ad for toothpaste, except in those cases, it was the Church writing the check.)

One of the more recent commercials I love is this one from Geico:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjMUfIKktWU&NR=1

But the classic Best Commercial of All Time goes to EDS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

Also voting for the “Alka-Seltzer riot” ad, and better yet, providing a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRh2IDFmbgU

But my all time favorite is the Coca-Cola “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mOEU87SBTU
I started liking it even better when I noticed that Pepsi has always been advertised as something for an imaginary “elite”, a “Pepsi Generaqtion”, while Coca-Cola has always been advertised as a universal and unifying common demoninator between people who might have nothing else in common.
Now, that’s just advertising, you might say, but it’s also a sentiment worth encouraging.
And for all the wrongs the Coca-Cola company has done, working with repressive governments and harassing their employees for unionizing, they did stand up for their professed value of universalism when their South African subsidiary wanted to film an all-white version of the “singing on a hillside” spot, and Coke refused.

I like the non-sexist Bud Light Super Bowl commercials.

Anyone remember the old R. Crumb-esque Nesbitt’s Orange commercial?

Anyone old enough to remember the flying 7-Up commercial?  It’s what the Pepsi Throwback commercial is visually quoting.

Wow… Nesbitt’s…that’s a blast from the past. I used to drink a lot of that and Bubble-Up when I was a kid. Haven’t seen either in years. Check out a young David Caruso in a 1980 Bubble Up ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnrBGIJAgYc

New (ish) one - the Stride gum with the ostrich riding enforcers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzLkRr2g3aA

Almost as good as the one where the guy gets headbutted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojgi16des-U

OH! AND!
“Who are YOU callin’ a cootie queen you LINT LICKER?!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEJJUGJZxpU

LOL

Also - “What the french, toast?”

LAST one - SUN FIZZ. BEWARE.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fA8ad71n94

The Sprint ad campaign where people weren’t getting what they wanted because of cell phone static, capped by the oxen/dachshund mix-up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJrO8TijBpU

This one is interesting because the wife is played by a Japanese actress, this is a classic, and this is for people like Amanda who remember when there was an Iron Curtain.

I like the one where a car is made out of cake.  Hang on - Skoda Fabia!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhfEGKc7PLQ

The Honda Element ads with the various animals- the best one featuring “Gil the Crab”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxPg7CwtG2w

I pinch.

I giggle helplessly every time.

Ooh! Ooh! Levi’s, “Odyssey”. Saw it on a SIGGRAPH demo reel, I think, and came back to it a few years later. Gorgeous music, gorgeous visuals. Mmm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfYmwaf89UE

And a much more recent favorite, since I took up running. Warhawk Matt Scott, “No Excuses”, for Nike. Yeah, Nike. I know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obdd31Q9PqA

Some company has a commercial out now which shows a man stopping to pick up a toy that a kid dropped from his stroller.  Another guy was observing him, then he did something simple to help someone else, and so on down through the line.

I think that’s Nationwide or All State with the helping hand-play it forward.  Definately an insurance company.

I love the music for that insurance commerical.

The one I love the most features a schoolteacher and her hubby at the dining room table, talking about her habit of buying school supplies every year for the kids in her class is putting a real strain on the family budget.He’s asking her to cut down. Well, next scene she’s at the cash register at some store, happens to look up——and there’s her hubby, buying school supplies at the next register over. He gets a “D’oh! Busted!” look but the look she gives him is so full of love it gets me even now typing about it. CAn’t remember the company—-office max? Something like that.

I too like the Old Spice commercial. The one with the horse was good for a hoot, but the one that had me absolutely in stitches was the pirate ship one.

I tried to find the old Little Ceaser’s commercial where the baby in the high chair goes catapulting out the front door because the pizza was so cheesy (ok, I laughed) but I couldn’t pin it down.

So I’ll show a few of my favorite foreign commercials:

John West Salmon

Banned condom ad

Ah, Japan.

Part of the fun of the Old Spice commercials is that they are really picking on the razor commercials where they put in a female at the end out of fear of being too gay.  They seem to revel in not mandating heterosexuality.

Alas, I don’t think this is on YouTube. In fact, I only ever saw it once, in the mid-1980s, while visiting Canada.

The commercial showed a fashionable, nervous woman walking along a dark street when two men in trench coats leaped out of the shadows. “Give us ze microfilm!” one of them barked.

“I’ll never give it to you!” the woman said (in a similar foreign accent).

The men jerk her purse away, scattering the contents on the sidewalk. Spotting a small wrapped object, one of them snatches it up saying, “ha! I have eet!” and the two men run away.

Fading back into the shadows, the woman hisses contemptuously, “Zat vas not ze microfische, you EEDIOT.”

Cut to a shot of a box of sanitary pads…

BEST SANITARY PRODUCT COMMERCIAL EVER IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION. I don’t even remember the brand.

YES!  I saw it dozens of times during the mid-80s. It was certainly memorable, and prompted endless “Give us ze microfilme!” jokes among giggling adolescent girls.  Does anyone remember which brand they were advertising?

OMG, DonnaH @ 18 - the EDS herding cats commercial!! I remember seeing that during that SuperBowl (was it 2000? 2001?) and ROTFLOL. I think what absolutely “makes” it is the faux-Americana, Copland-esque cowboy music playing in the background.

“Anybody can herd cattle. Holding together ten thousand half-wild shorthairs? Now that’s another thing altogether.”

I just have to say that I LOVE that Kia commercial, and I hate nearly all commercials with a passion.  It is just so clever and artistic, and it doesn’t go for the easy targets like sexism.

I absolutely HATE every single Geico commercial, ever.  I hate the gecko, the cavemen, those weird “spokesperson” things they used to have, and all the rest.

I work in advertising. I can’t watch broadcast TV.

So bold it’s not recommended for human consumption!

The Levi’s Tainted Love commercial made me LOL when I first saw it. I hadn’t heard that song in ages. Directed by Spike Jonez.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVY04NQUpxk

I absolutely love Pedigree dog food commercials.  The shelter dog series with David Duchovny voice-overs always make me cry.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADR7GiCdOpo

This one is just cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUCRZzhbHH0

My all-time favorite commercial: 90s Chef Boy-Ardee commercial, set in a kind of Merchant-Ivory conception of turn of the century Italy. A grim orphanage overseen by a cruel governess, and a line of sad children, shuffling through a dim and desaturated, dust-filled food line. Their spirits are broken.

One child dares to voice dissent after receiving his allotment of gruel. This is not yet Chef Boyardee, but rather Little Boy Boyardee.  The governess commands him, “EAT!” (I think.) He says, “But thisa tastes terrible!”

The governess, swathed in black cloth, points an angry finger and sentences him banished from the orphanage, with one screamed word: “OUT!”

What does Little Boy Boyardee do? Does he cry? Does he plead? He’s penniless and now without a home, and how does he react?

I WILL TELL YOU. He stands atop a sun-dappled hill, overlooking the city, and pushes two chubby fists into the air, not in despair, but in *triumph*, and proclaims to the open air, “One day, children EVERYWHERE will thank-a me!”

The rest, as we know from the prevalence of Beefaroni and Spaghettios on our supermarket shelves, is history.

I can’t find this on YouTube, but I know it is out there somewhere.

The Ally Bank commercial with the girl on the bike always cracks me up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suBGbef5p3g

“I can’t really ride in this little *space*.”  The accent on “space” is what gets me.  Cute overload.

Here’s the Lite Beer commercial that really launched John Madden’s career as a TV personality, AFAIK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2IG4IrWEVw

So good they decided make a sequel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbrRVaRMGBs

John Madden breaking through things and being over-the-top animated.  That was his schtick, and it worked for me.

My mom really liked the Budweiser lizards and the ferret:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF4Qcz6fIzk

I’m partial to this one, but that’s because I helped write it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTVrQcJ_AHA

Terry Tate, Office Linebacker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzToNo7A-94

I’ve never worked in an office that didn’t need an Office Linebacker.

Plus, the boss’s name is “Felcher.”

Does anybody else remember the Phillips lighting ad where the young guy has a totally dream penthouse apartment, but furnishes it with lawn chairs in that vinyl-coated wire square pattern? (when people stand up, their legs look like waffles). Probably 1989 or so ...

God, those Geico caveman ads are disgusting, especially since that’s exactly the women get treated by a lot of companies. 

  The pedigree ads make me sniffle, but, boy, if you want to turn on the waterworks, there’s nothing like those heart-wrenching APCA ads.

Berlitz’ “German Coast Guard” ad; I have no idea when or where this was shown. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD4roXEY8hk

I also have fond childhood memories of Skittles’ “Taste the Rainbow” campaign, where they would have pretty Generic Fantasy Movie sequences with dramatic music and slow-mo and things, and then Skittles would rain out of the sky. I also found it effective, in that lots of other fantasy crap I watch then reminds me of it, and then I want Skittles. Like, listening to this song makes me want Skittles.

Oh, goodness gracious gravy, if I could have back all the brain cells devote to remembering old commercials, I’d probably be curing cancer or something.

Wendy’s Soviet Fashion Show (Ees next: svimvear!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CaMUfxVJVQ

Chanel No. 5 (Share the fantasy!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxRkocAPdJ0

Thom McAn shoes (She’s a Thom Girl!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izuSeGKlsdM

Muncha Buncha Fritos!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quq7bAzQ9cQ

Shake and Bake (And we helped!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POI5aMgxYFk

7-up (No caffeine! Never had it; never will): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHMKyWgkChk

gimmer, those SPCA ads piss me off so hard. What purpose can they possibly serve? The people who aren’t doing anything to help animals aren’t going to be moved by pictures of abused cats and dogs, and the people who ARE moved by them are generally already doing what they can to help. All they serve to do is make animal lovers weep and change the channel.

@ ttintagel , #55: I LOVED those commercials!!
Did you live my childhood, too?

hbsweet, do you also remember the Carol Burnett commercial parodies?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndn2ZzUy4S4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Mx-_XoDio

Well, what?: Terry Tate, Office Linebacker.

I’m of two minds on those. On the one hand, office environments can be profoundly controlling, fascist even. The idea that it’s okay to intimidate and harass workers in various little ways is so ground into our concepts of work that we don’t even really notice it. The idea of celebrating that sort of meme… I find it distasteful.

On the other hand, “THE PAIN TRAIN’S COMIN’! WOO WOO!” makes me break out into helpless laughter each and every time.

Ms. Kate (and any other Old Spice supporters):  I’m not seeing the tweaking of heteronormativity in those commercials at all.  If anything, they’re earonically saying “you don’t want to smell like a *girl*, do you?  You want to smell like a *man*!  Like *me*!”

“THESE are not Little Richard’s shoes! These are ALL YO’ SHOES!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6uzaNElJRo

THere was an old commercial, for some oil company, which had an animated dinosaur, and it began, once dinosaurs roamed the earth, then they died and became oil.

NY Expat, you didn’t watch enough Monty Python, I guess.  Or you missed the pre-barbie doll ending Gillette commercials with the manly masculine macho all male man stuff - over the top!

Anyway, the Chanel No.5 link reminded me of the Ejaculating Pierre Cardin ad, which I can’t seem to find on YouTube.  It ended with a phallic-shaped bottle of cologne blowing its top and spraying.

@Dana: 5th floor, Fossil Fuels.

Ms Kate, I’ve watched plenty of Monty Python, and Old Spice ain’t deconstructing shit.

Like I linked to, it’s earony:  The irony used in the commercial is self-aware, but it isn’t for the purpose of rejecting heteronormativity or any other hegemonic norm.  It’s simply a level of communication with younger viewers who are steeped in self-awareness.

Ironically (hah!), in their new documentary Monty Python admitted that they didn’t understand women at all while they were doing their show (all except Gilliam went to all-boys schools), so the Old Spice commercial can be said to be ahead of Python in acknowledging the norm of femininity as profane, but unlike Python, it sees nothing wrong with the norms as they are.

TTintagel, I turn those commercials off and snuggle my spoiled-rotten rescue kitties. They’re the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

My current favorite is this Chevy Traverse commercial.

Excellent father/daughter bonding, and warm fuzzies all around.

Ohh, deconstructing it is not ... but it is poking fun at the “manly manly masculine and get a woman in the shot before it is over so nobody says GAY” male grooming product ads. 

Overthinking things is possible.

Oh, and I have to admit, I always loved the old Watchamacallit commercial when I was a kid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ET-K4JrYP4

The weird thing was that I liked it because it was laid back and mellow—a lot of commercials that ran during afternoon cartoons were just hyperactive with people screaming at you and this was more fun and low-key. It doesn’t really seem it out of context.

Ohh, deconstructing it is not ... but it is poking fun at the “manly manly masculine and get a woman in the shot before it is over so nobody says GAY” male grooming product ads.

I suppose that’s true.  After all, it’s not like Old Spice has run an ad during this campaign that not only showed a woman at the end for our earstwhile manly-man.

Oh, wait.

Wishful projection is possible.

Also, there is a woman implied throughout the commercial we’re discussing: The viewer.  The spokesman addresses ladies at the top of the spot, and does all those amazing things to impress her.  That’s how male viewers know he’s “so not gay”.

MPG, thanks for reviving that memory.  I can hear that laconic twang now…

Right.  And I suppose you were one of those people who hated In Living Color because you are completely unable to see satirical humor in over-the-top stereotyping.  don’t answer - we already know.

Not at all; I still feel a little bit guilty that I only have one job.

It’s not that I refuse to see satire, it’s that the Old Spice ads aren’t satire.  I don’t know how I can make it more clear (I even linked to an ad to the campaign that does the very thing you claim they don’t do), so if you choose to keep believing that they’re breaking taboos when they’re actually reenforcing them, that’s your problem.

I can’t belive I found this! Haven’t seen it or heard it since I was a kid. No more rice Krispies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7joApY9dnw

*believe