Childhood Commercials?

[mbarker]

Just an odd observation.

LiveJournal has these odd writing prompts. One of the recent ones was "What is your favorite commercial from your childhood? Bonus points if you include a video of it."

I got fascinated with the assumptions underlying this. First of all, I know when we got our first television -- I was 10 years old, and we had spent a month living in a motel that had TVs in the room. My father watched the family watching TV and decided that we would get one in our new home. But even then, I really don't remember the commercials.

See that's the second thing, the notion that consumption and commercials -- buying stuff -- is really important in life. It's an assumption that threads through so much of our life nowadays. And yet, when you sit down and think about it, beyond the basics of life, I'm not so sure that acquiring great stacks of stuff is all that interesting.

Third, I do wonder about newspaper commercials, radio commercials, or even those old billboards. I mean, some of those were pretty pervasive, and yet, I doubt if anyone thinks of those in response to this prompt. After all, a video of a magazine commercial would be kind of boring, wouldn't it? Just sit there and ... huh, it isn't moving, there's no sound, what is that?

Does everyone have childhood memories of favorite commercials? What do people who grew up outside the Great American television channels have as childhood memories? Is it cultural illiteracy to admit -- or to have to hide -- the fact that you don't have a favorite childhood commercial?

Do you have a favorite childhood commercial? What is it, and why is it a favorite?

Comments

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

I do, actually, but I don't remember the product, except that it was dog food (the brand is lost to me). I remember the commercial because it had a puppy in it and ducklings and I tend to pay attention to commercials with animals in them, especially the baby animals (not human, by the way). Starting with one duckling that multiplied into many ducklings over time, the commercial had a storyline of the ducklings stealing food from the puppy and the puppy's angst over what to do (killing the ducklings was not an option in consideration). Currently one of my favorite commercials features an English bulldog who has eaten some kind of dog food that gives him so much confidence that thinks all the girl dogs are flirting with him. It is funny and well produced, and won't sell me a bag of dog food. Neither commercial ever sold me anything--I viewed them more as mini-movies than anything else. There is so much product placement in films right now that it is hard to tell the difference between a commercial and a feature movie.