commercial nostalgia

heya


oh, the irony. if irony is, look you see, the correct term. whereas i have resisted the appeals and temptations to "monetize" this blog by allowing adverts to appear, here we go with a post that is just about dedicated to advertisements. this is done, at the least with a difference, and certainly for no personal gain off of me.

i was browsing that there car boot sale ("bootie") of this century, ebay, when i noticed something of interest. actually several things, but for the purpose of this post one in particular. that was a listing offering a variety of dvd discs featuring no more and no less than advertisements. not just any advertisements, but ones from days gone by.

call it impulse or curiosity or both, but i bought a set. this was all for not an unreasonable price, for it was south of £10 to obtain not five, not seven, but six discs all full of adverts, with the adverts coming from the 60s, 70s and, of most appeal, 80s. although you are of course free to determine whether or not it is wise to spend any money for the privilege of watching adverts, which at heart are trying to sell you something further.

as it turns out, i am most delighted with my purchase. the adverts are compelling viewing, whether that is compelling in an expected, unexpected, strangely or curious way. i mean, you can decide on that. they are, after all, an insight into the way thing were, how life used to be, and all that. no, i am not saying then was better or worse than now, just different.

some samples of the adverts? of course. in truth i could have grabbed and uploaded hundreds of images here, so much of it is fascinating. maybe one day i shall, but for now i have limited selections to just one of the discs - 1 of 4 80s ads DVDs - and further tried to limit it to products or items which no longer exist, lest i be accused, in my unsolicited status of being a "social media influencer", of endorsing any of them.

like, for instance, the above. what is it? part of an advert for Oracle. as in teletext. the BBC had Ceefax, the commercial channels ITV and Channel 4 had this one. if you are none the wise, teletext let you get news, sports results, weather predictions and other forms of information via your tv set. yes, a bit like a quasi, prototype "internet", just without all the mucky filth and certainly without any "streaming" or "illegal downloads".

as far as i am aware teletext vanished as of 2012, when the whole (or just about all) of the UK moved to "digital broadcasting". this is a bit of a shame, really. just as is the case with Morse Code, i would have thought it prudent to keep it around as a backup or safety net, for it requires no complex technology to broadcast a message to a wide audience.

what, other than teletext, did one use to obtain information in the era before the internet? publications, most notably magazines. such as Look In.

that, as far as i can tell, is an edition of Look In, a trendy popular magazine for "the kids", from December 1985. how do i know this? well, that's Shakin' Stevens, the self-styled Welsh The King, Elvis Presley, on the cover, looking like he was on the set of the Merry Christmas Everyone video. this was a single scheduled for Christmas 1984, put he wisely pulled it, not fancying the competition off of Frankie's The Power Of Love, Last Christmas off of Wham! and of course Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid. shrewd move, for he claimed the coveted Christmas 85 number one spot, i believe.

magazines were class. yes the internet is smart for "free" (so long as you have paid for the equipment and connection) information in abundance, but i quite miss the filter. for something to be committed to print then it generally had to pass certain measures of quality standards. on the net it is a free for all, where anything can be published. hence this blog existing, i suppose.

you have seen enough and you want to get some DVDs of these ads for yourself? sure. the lad who sold them to me requested i "tell my friends", so here is the bit of paper he included to do just that with.

telling my friends is one thing, but that is possibly not happening here. from what i can tell the larger number of readers of this blog are the many who simply do not care for me, and just check in from time to time so as to reassure themselves that they are better, or in some way superior. yet they might want some of these advert discs too, so there you go.

anyway, back to some screens of adverts, and indeed one for a product you cannot get here any more. well, at least, not get with any ease. if i say an Australian product then you would automatically assume a lager. this would be correct, so here is one that has not been seen on the shelves in the UK for ten years, or if you like a decade, now.

yes, indeed, Castlemaine XXXX. the advert was rather splendid, featuring a chap go into a "creek" in the "outback" to retrieve some cans of this, safe in the knowledge that there were no sharks about, but unaware of that being the case due to the crocodiles ate them all.

why is XXXX no longer available in the UK (outside of specialist Australian importers), and has not been since 2009? licencing. whoever had the licence to sell it here either did not renew it or Castlemaine (presumably) opted not to licence it in the UK any more. perhaps it was not profitable, or something, but may well turn out to be as and when (if) the UK leaves the EU, as maybe XXXX will be cheaper to bring in to our nation than Stella or Heineken.

not that the UK is bereft of Australian lager. Fosters is still quite the big seller here. this i would always put down to the fact that Paul "Hoges" Hogan, of Crocodile Dundee fame, was employed to advertise it in the 80s. that was a bit of branding much cherished and not easily forgotten.

something you really don't see adverts for any more is anything to do with smoking, like the quite class Panama cigars advert image above. from what i recall cigarette adverts were taken off the tele in England in the 70s, but cigar ones were allowed until some stage in the 90s. there were cigarette adverts in cinemas too, and i am sure seeing an advert for fags before The Goonies or perhaps even Cannonball Run II is why i am a smoker today.well, we are in an era where everyone gets to blame something for something for no apparent reason.

yes, you can still get Panama cigars, and indeed further they are packaged in packets of six, for your convenience. no, i do not smoke them often, but i have had one before. it is not all that often i have a cigar as such, but out of devotion to David Lee Roth and proper Van Halen (as in when David Lee Roth was in the band) i perhaps should.

now then, a bit of a controversial one, this next one. at a glance, through the eyes of today you may suspect, on the basis of who is in it, what is worn and what is being consumed, that this is one of them "gay agenda" adverts, the kind of which some get quite excited about whereas some of us just go dig what you dig. this is not what is happening in the ad at all.

as point of fact, that is Tennent's Pilsner (i think that is how you spell it) being promoted. that was Scotland's top drink export except for McEwans and whisky, and remained the most popular one they did right up until vast swathes of the Scottish nation discovered Buckfast ("Buckie").

what you are looking at there are three extremely, perhaps none more so, hetero gents what are exceedingly comfortable with their sexuality. they are simply wearing the fashions of the day, whereas such garments today would be worn to signify that you are a chap who quite likes other chaps, back in the 80s shirts such as those, and indeed the hairstyles, turned you into an absolute fanny magnet. especially if you drove a Ford Capri.

more controversial adverts and interpretations? i do not see why not. few would ever have been as likely to one day be upsetting as this one off of the normally quite innocent company Homepride.

yeah, you are not really allowed to differentiate or highlight differences between races, nationalities and what have you today. so, no, really no company today would be brave or bold enough to present a cartoon caricature of a Chinese gentleman to greet some caricatures of English gentlemen with the intention being to flog chinese style food to consumers.

what really amazes me is how much time, money, creativity and effort was put into the adverts back in the 70s and 80s. there was only one channel that you could screen them on until the (very) early 80s, and then it was the case that only two channels carried adverts until the early (ish) 90s. basically, with a captive audience, you could have put any old rubbish on and millions would have seen it.

but no. instead they chose to make adverts memorable, and works of art. this does not happen today, which is strange. with literally hundreds of channels in the UK showing adverts you would have thought the competition would increase. it has not, the quality and standards of adverts have dropped to being as cheap as possible, and none will be remembered like these ones from days gone by. well, at the least, not remembered fondly.

oh yes, that is indeed George Cole, starring in an advert for something called Leeds Liquid Gold, which i believe has something or other to do with money and fiscal matters. celebrity endorsements were a massive thing back then, which follows on what i was saying before the George Cole picture distracted you. on my 70s adverts disc, for instance, there are members of the entertainment aristocracy such as Cilla Black, James Hunt, the annoying one out of Monty Python and no less than Charles "mother f*****g" Dance in adverts, the latter interestingly enough for posh sherry.

it is hard to say which celebrity endorsement was the most successful, except for maybe Paul "Hoges" Hogan and Fosters, or even Michael Jackson and then Madonna for Pepsi. but the Leeds bank or building society landing George Cole as their frontman was a coup of note. for context, for our American friends, in the 80s landing George Cole to endorse you (for a huge some of money) was probably like getting Jack Nicholson, right after Terms Of Endearment came out, to advertise some sort of "Mom and Pop" store in Wisconsin. as in, it just would not have seemed possible.

any other examples of celebrity endorsements? sure, oodles, or loads. but for now, a personal favourite of mine for you.

yes, that is who you think it is. it is Daley Thompson, star of the boss computer game Daley Thompson's Decathalon and occasional (gold) medal winning Olympiad, chugging a smart can of Lucozade, back in the days when they did it in cans. do they still do them in cans? not that i am aware of.

can you still get, or play, Daley Thompson's Decathlon here in the wastelands of the 21st century? indeed, certainly, surely. as a general rule i would always advocate you do this via a Commodore 64 "emulator" for your PC, but in this instance there is valid reason for doing so. for reasons best known to themselves, the designers of the ZX Spectrum version unwisely elected to make Daley a white dude in the game.

more things which were commonplace then but you really don't get now. how about recalling the era and the glory of Radio Rentals?

things were expensive in the 70s and 80s. as generally true as this was, it was made worse by the subjugation of the proletariat and the working classes by the Thatcher regime. unlike now, "credit" was not a thing, and one did not get a credit card unless they could prove that they had the means (and intention) of paying money spent on it back. with little or no other option, people thus rented things like televisions, video machines (VHS if they were intelligent), washing machines and so on. and Radio Rentals were seen as the kings of this service.

no way would something like Radio Rentals exist today. other than such items as those listed now being made and sold very cheap (thank you, China), for those that are still unable to afford there is a dazzling range of credit and loan facilities to choose from. yes, sure, recklessly lending money to people you know cannot afford it has a down side, such as the minor economic wobble of 2008 or whenever, but a small price to pay so that the people can have shiny things.

how about, in conclusion, a "two for the price of one" for things that do not exist any more? although now that i think, one of them might.

yes, indeed, that is Our Price records advertising the fact that there is a new 5 Star, or if you will Five Star, album out. or there was. actually there might be now, i am not convinced they have disappeared. with other bands doing revivals, maybe i am remembering something on the radio recently about them doing something new.

selling physical copies of music was big business in the 70s and 80s (and some of the 90s) as that was the only way to actually get the vibes. it was worth advertising an album in an expensive tv advert because it would increase sales. now, of course, it is virtually unthinkable. the only album i can recall being advertised on tv in its own right of late was Blood Red Roses by Sir Rod Stewart. actually, as that sold a lot, maybe that says something to the industry. maybe it was a dream, but i suspect there were also ads for Barbs' lovely Walls album on tv over Christmas.

well, anyway, that's enough of that. should there be interest, or if i get bored, i may well do another post about these discs loaded with adverts. yes, more screenshots shall be in them, and if i work out how to do so on this new(ish) pc i may well yet made a short video of some of them.

many thanks as ever for reading, and i hope you have found something of interest or entertainment in it all.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!