“Like Mike…I could be like Mike”. Yes, I loved those commercials!
Now that’s a spicy meat-a-ball!
I forgot about another great ad from the GAP. The “GAP Swings” commercial…showing a dozen young men & women dancing to the Louis Prima song, “Jump, Jive, ‘n’ Wail” in their Khakis. The GAP put the commercial up on their website for download. I should still have it somewhere. Love that girl kicking her legs in the air at the end!!!
My favorites have already been mentioned …
“BaconBaconBaconBaconBacon!!”
The Cog
And “Aaron Burr!!”
I saw this one on one of those ‘World’s Best Commercials’-type special…
SCENE: Old-style country general store, where the store is also the postoffice. Two older guys are standing at the counter: one behind, as the store clerk, the other on the other side as the customer.
(Paraphrased, since I can’t remember the exact words.)
Store clerk: “Oh. that package your wife ordered came in.”
Man: “I know she’s been waiting for it.”
The Store Clerk gets out this package: it’s a tall rectangle, and looks like it could hold perhaps two cans of soda stacked on top of each other. He sets it down on the counter with a small ‘thunk’ and the package starts vibrating and buzzing along the counter top.
Both guys just look at each other.
Cut to:
Man is sitting down, reading a newspaper. Heard in the background is the same buzzing/vibrating noise as from the package in the store. Man looks to his left with a disgusted look and hrumphs, as the camera zooms out to show the wife, smiling very happily…
…and using one of those battery-powered mixers to mash potatoes with. 
<< Fnord. >>
“It’s so easy, a CAVEMAN could do it!” :cut to two cavemen watching the TV: “HEY! NOT cool, man!”
And the followup commercial with the TV salesman apologizing to the two over dinner at a fancy restaurant.
There’s another good one where the guy delivers the line and the camera pans back to see a caveman boom mike operator flip out and walk off the soundstage. They’re both hilarious.
The Honda Cog commercial is, quite possibly, the best thing ever filmed on camera. It was 100% real.
I still can’t believe they got it all to work.
That was an incredible ad.
But overall, it’s hard to argue that Nike does the best ads around.
Who sings that version?
The Luv’s diaper commercial that came out in 1995 with among other diapered kids, a really, really cute blond kid shaking a piggy bank. He’s my nephew so naturally its my favorite commercial of all time.
The original television broadcast(s) of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer included commercials with the elves for Norelco including Santa and the elves at the end dropping Norelco products, shavers etc, among the presents dropping out of the sleigh. I think that first year or two the commercials may have run separately. I was too young to remember, but I was enchanted by it.
Also as a child I loved the McDonalds Hamburglar commercials. I knew they made no sense but I also appreciated that they were for me.
For the same reason “Mikey, he likes it, he likes it!”
I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony…It’s the real thing, Coke is.
Not only a great commercial but the perfect blending of 70’s feeling and music. Probably every school choir in the country learned the non coke version and thought “Coke is” every time they sang it. Brilliant.
Michael Jordon bouncing one off the Sears Tower.
The Peter Max 7-up commercial that ran about the same time as number 5.
Also Cola nut, Un-cola nut.
I seem to remember a commercial where a guy is putting a flat razor blade in the little slot they used to have behind his bathroom mirror and he puts in one too many and the wall caves in, made me laugh like heck. Don’t remember who it was for, probably an electric razor company.
Then there are the ones so classic they have penetrated your brain in their entirety for all time. (Mods I doubt that the copyright owners will have problems with additional promotion of their product so I have taken the chance of quoting in the entirety - if you have a problem just cut anything after the second line for each - thanks)
Once upon a time there was an Engineer, Choo Choo Charlie was his name we hear
he had an engine and he sure had fun, eating Good and Plenty Candy
to Make the Train run
Charlie says “love my Good and Plenty”
Charlie says “Really rings my bell”
Charlie says “Love my Good and Plenty,
don’t know any other candy that I love so well.”
Good and Plenty,(4x) woo woo
Hot Dogs, Armour Hot Dogs, What Kind of Kids Eat Armour Hot Dogs?
Fat Kids, Skinny Kids, Kids who climb on rocks, Tough Kids, Sissy Kids
Even Kids with Chicken Pox love Hot Dogs Armor Hot Dogs,
the Dogs Kids love to bite.
We wear short shorts, Nair for short shorts, If you dare wear short shorts,
Nair for short shorts (Narrator…)
Then there was that one really great Cracker Jack commercial with Jack Gilford. He had a very, very expressive face, walking down the street and peering into a storefront. Strong image.
I agree that Mean Joe Green is up there with the best.
The Apple Macintosh 1984 commercial also set a standard. (For the record it is 60 seconds not 20 minutes long.) However, it is not entirely true that it has not been played since its first broadcast. Apple may not have paid for it to have been played but it was such a classic commercial that it has been used countless times on television as an example of excellence in marketing. And remember folks that was for the original floppy disc Macintosh. Go figure. I think Jobs updated the commercial for a recent event.
Anybody remember the Mounds/Almond Joy “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t” advert set in some local high school? Considering everyone in it were non-actors, they did brilliantly. Loved that one.
The Geico metro-neanderthals crack me up every time I see them.
A lot of the other recent ones mentioned here I’ve never seen. Should watch something other than baseball on TV sometime, I guess.
Still on the web. Download it here.
Another of my favorites , and I am guilty of having no idea WHICH car company it’s for , because the setting is so eye catching to me , is set in a Westminster dog show type arena (Probably CGI) and they are ‘showing’ cars and trucks in group competition . It is a wonderfully cute commercial , but probably only sticks out in dog show peoples’ minds . It makes me smile tho !
Anna
I rather liked a PGA tour commerical. I don’t remember the golfer, but he was in a parking lot with a shopping cart and with one push got the cart to curve right into the cart corral some distance away.
Spike Jonze’s Ikea “lamp” commercial was brilliant. It actually took the top prize in the 2003 Cannes Lions Advertizing Festival over Honda’s “Cog” ad, mentioned earlier.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned (though perhaps I overlooked it) the fake-out Geiko commercials, especially “Tiny House.” Some of them have really fooled me on first-viewing. They’re a hoot.
I also love the Citibank Identity Theft ones, and remember fondly some of the older ones mentioned so far (Mean Joe Green, I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing). Related to the Pepto Bismol “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” commercial, was the Alka Seltzer “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh what a relief it is,” one. I learned in a marketing class in college that that campaign was the result of corporate execs trying to figure out how to sell more product in a pretty fully penetrated market. They noticed that the instructions on the label said, “take one or two…”, so they asked if taking two would be harmful in any way, and when hearing that it would not, they devised their brilliant campaign. Who here doesn’t use two tablets when taking Alka Seltzer? (Though admittedly, the package now does say to take 2, but that’s precisely because of the campaign, and what we’ve come to believe about how to take their product.)
Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, my husband and I actually sing along with the K9 Advantix commercial – adorable puppies do it to us every time! “…Swimming, hiking, and tent pitching. They’re not biting, I’m not itching…” Hehe. If I had a dog, I’d totally be buying that product.
And speaking of cute dogs in commercials, we LOVE the Verizon Wireless “can you hear me now” one with the dachshund stampede.
Yes! All the Rainier Beer commericials…racing recliners, six-packs in the wild–I miss Rainier Beer commercials (and the big “R” in Seattle).
Also, the old beer commercial (Rainier? Bud?) where the wife is sitting at the kitchen table telling us so sweetly how she takes care of her man, then her husband interrupts (off camera from the living room) asking her to bring him a beer and she yells back, “Get it yourself, Bob!” I still use that line when someone asks me to get something–it took a while for mr.stretch to get used to being called Bob. 
What a lot of people forget is that <i>if you can’t remember what product the commercial was selling, it’s a bad commercial</i>. I watched an award show for commercials once, and with half of them, I couldn’t even figure out what they were selling as I watched them. And companies actually paid to have them produced!
That one salmon commercial that starts out as a nature show, but has a guy run up and fight the bear gets me everytime. Especially when the bear does this great boxer’s shuffle.
“Look a bald eagle!”
Either Sony Walkman or Memorex.
A baboon stands at the bank of an African watering hole, A foggy mist blankets the area. In closeup we see he wears a walkman, a classical piece plays. He gazez out over the water, then his eyes slowly close as he’s taken away by the music. Very cool.
Hysterically funny. I’ve never seen the trunk monkey before, must be local?
Peter