Good Morning.
My parents' generation would be appalled at the commercials of 2017 and it wouldn't matter whether they lived in a
New York brownstone, on a ranch in Wyoming, or in a beach house in Florida; they'd be simply aghast at being confronted
during the national news, always an uplifting experience in itself, with laxatives in a variety of carefully explained forms, medications to brighten the day as long as they didn't kill you, and the relentlessly presented miracle pill guaranteed to turn a geezer pushing a hundred into a thirty-year-old. Notice that all of these products involve alterations to the human body, once thought to be a venue of privacy or even the temple of the Holy Ghost if one had been educated by the nuns. My parents and their crowd would probably be okay with the ads for the product that helps an arthritic dog jump off a dock and the insurance company that has a couple in a submerged vehicle with an octopus in the back seat. It's rummaging around the bathroom or bedroom that would make them nervous.
The ads of the 50s and 60s were so much better. Watching television was a big deal after years of sitting next to a radio
and listening to people in a studio somewhere pretend to open and shut doors and blow into a microphone to feign fatigue after a hard day's work. Nobody ever burped because it was considered bad form, and the ads for shampoo and coffee were
often sung with lyrics aimed at a five-year-old mentality. Then TV arrived and the commercials tripled in frequency to pay for the expensive technology. Forty-year-olds saw and heard elves making odd bubbly sounds to promote Ajax cleanser and a family of four, including a father in a business suit and a hat, croon yoo hoo, yoo hoo before they ate their Swiss creme cookies. They drank Ovaltine to get rocket power, fed a baby in a high chair 7-Up, and felt their Cheerios that Sister Mary Immaculata never knew about because nuns couldn't watch television.
The mid-century folks also had print ads in an era when everyone read the daily newspaper, even two daily newspapers in some locations. Here are a few inspired slogans:
The Chef electric mixer does everything but cook. That's what wives are for.
She'll want to thank you three times a day if you buy an In Sink Erator garbage disposer.
More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.
Fagged out? Drink Orange Crush.
What we have that they didn't have is the remote. We can mute or change the channel without ever leaving the chair. The fact that the networks coordinate their schedules, in an obvious conspiracy, so the ads air at the same time is a concern but
surely a step up from the tobacco companies that told us the kindly old pediatrician who made house calls puffed away in his car while making his rounds and that Santa kept a carton of Luckies in his sleigh. Lovely.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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