Dear gawd. I assume they also made Pocket Billiards (Travel Edition).
Wow. I guess the term New Wave (which is closer but still doesn’t cover most of the bands) was unknown to the manufacturer. This is even less authentic than the execrable Freedom Rock compilation, which featured two equally fake frontmen.
Not just central Indiana. Don was advertising in Bloomington too. Personally, I like the Dave Mason Buick guy. Noooobody.
“Remember the good old days of WAR and PROTESTS… and GOING TO JAIL”
This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. This is real?
Edit: I wasnt there, but the more I hear about the 60s, the more it sounds like ‘Fallout’ but without the radiation…
Yes, it’s a real product. These kind of things followed after the K-Tel record compilations which were all over late night commercials. You’ll hear MST3K mock those a lot in the original series (along with Sessions records).
And you are correct, bits of the 60s were like Fallout. In part because the decade came right on the heels of the Atomic Age (40s-50s) and was somewhat cast from (and out of) that mindset.
Our current period seems to be borrowing more heavily from Mad Max.
I was thinking something with a bit more Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator in it, but yeah.
“Is that Freedom Rock? Well turn it up, man.” is just classic. If I had a dime for every time my friends and I said that in high school I could retire sooner.
I’m still cackling about that commercial. We watched ‘Apocalypse Now’ recently, so that’s fresh in mind and it just adds so much to an already impressively bad advert
As a random note, I miss the commercials before internet took off that implied late-night cable programming was gonna get all “softcore sexy time”
Like scifi’s commercials for ‘Lexx’
Or MTV’S ‘Undressed’
In hindsight, yes it was 100% because web porn hadn’t been established.
Some of that was probably the regular channels trying to keep up with the premium channels like Cinemax (aka Skinemax), who were indeed showing late-night softcore. And yes, very much an artifact of pre-internet days.
Many of us old-timey MST3K fans remember how whacked out late-night TV was in the 90’s.
The early days of videogaming had some interesting ads.
Every time I see that Zelda commercial I regret my triforce tattoo, lol
There’s also one with Robin Williams, I think
edit: FF6, Majoras Mask, and Chrono Trigger were like the holy nintendo trinity of my childhood so I definitely remember every terrible video game commercial and sigh movie from about 91 to 2004.
I would absolutely love to see who all sat in the Westwood Promotions pitch room on that commercial’s inception.
Because nothing screams “anti-establishment” more than a man in a clown wig, doing his best impression of what he thought hippies sounded like, sittin’ in his uncle’s rec room telling us how Erasure really flipped the bird at the authoritarian status quo.
Commercial? Or public access drunkathon?
Always loved this.
Yes.
Psychedelic Pepsi!
For fans of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, here’s the much-missed Vivian Stanshall advertising Ruddles beer.
The Metz ‘Judder Man’ advert. Few remember the product, many remember being freaked out.
That punk album should have been titled “Bands who thought they were punk for like one rehearsal until they realized punks didn’t make any money.”
