Lessee, I always liked the commercial (I think it was for Alka Seltzer) where they ask some people what they’ve eaten, and a middle-aged guy with a thick Brooklyn accent, bald head, and huge paunch, says “sticky spaghetti, warm beer, and cold coffee!”
I also liked the animated Levi’s commercials (particularly one with all these little Levi logo-shaped alien creatures that step out of a spaceship, see the giant Levi’s logo, and say “oooooo”
Wendy’s had some funny commercials, pre and post “where’s the beef”. Anyone remember “pieces parts”? Or “if it’s square, it’s fish, if it’s round, it’s a burger!”
I loved the Diet Coke commercial with the swimming elphant exchanging a Coke for some peanuts.
I remember a Mickey D’s commercial from the “you deserve a break today” era in the seventies. It was a chorus line of dancing cleanup crew singing about a broom and a mop and the french fry machine or some damn thing. The twist was all the guys looked to be in their forties. It seemd a little odd then but seems positively surreal now.
The original “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercial that was running around 1989. They have a remake running now, but the woman who speaks the line has no acting skills.
It’s circus fun, right in your bowl
And you’re going to want to come flying
With horses and hoops, balls and bears
Elephants and lions
Horses, hoops, balls, bears
Elephants and lions
or this one, from my college days outside of Philadelphia (I’m sure I don’t have this one quite right) (everything in quotes is from various “person in the street” testimonials) (there’s no way that the addictive charm of this ad can be properly communicated without the ad itself)
Philadelphia is talking about Music in the Mornings on B101.1
“Hey, star and magic, they’re OK, but in the mornings, they talk a lot”
“That’s why I listen to B101.1”
“They play music all morning”
“The kind of music I want hear”
“??? I like Elton John”
“Michael Bolton”
“Phil Collins”
“Billy Joel”
{spoken in the weirdest voice imaginable} “More music in the mornings… that’s the difference”
Yellow pages commercials, from when I lived in Vancouver in the mid-late 90s.
One in particular was about an oriental man that was robbed. He was in a police station giving a description to the police sketch-artist. The cop is asking him all these questions about how the crook looked and the victim is describing him. At the end, he goes “IS THIS THE MAN THAT ROBBED YOU!?” and shows him a sketch of a stick man with a gun, and all the attributes he described. The oriental man says “YOU ARENT ARTIST! YOU CANT DRAW!!” in a heavy accent. Gawd it was funny.
Then there was the vegetarian tour group, and their booked into the resort with all the mounted animals on the wall and the host is carving up a roast or something while saying “WELCOME, WELCOME!!!”.
and another one for chicken sauce… the theme song was “IIIIII don’t wanna work… I don’t wanna work work work all day…” and then the poeple would do the chicken dance and be like “I feel like chicken to-night”
I liked the bud-wie-ser ones, with the frogs, too.
I like a lot of the one’s I’ve already seen here, but I seem to be the first to mention the series of Taster’s Choice Coffee commercials. Of the series my favorite was where the guy comes calling and another man answers her door. “She’s in the bedroom, changing” She asks “did you tell him you are my brother?” “He didn’t ask”
Let’s all sing along (makes for a great choral also):
My baloney has a first name,
It’s O…S…C…A…R
My baloney has a last name,
It’s M…A…Y…E…R
Ooooh, I love to eat it everyday…
And if you ask me why I’ll say…
Cause Oscar Mayer has a way with B…O…L…O…G…N…A
The Mrs. T’s pierogies commercial… this nerdy-type guy in a suit walks in to a biker bar, and exhorts all these rough-tough-tattooed-and-bearded Harley guys that they should try Mrs. T’s pierogies. Then the one older-looking biker gets in his face and says in this rather belligerent voice, “WHAT’S A PIEROGIE?!”
I loved those weird Lee Jeans commercials from a few years ago with the Kewpie-esque “Buddy Lee” doll. My favorite was the one where the brakes failed on the junker car and it went careening down the street and some woman screams hysterically: “OH MY GOD! MY BABY IS IN THAT CAR!” Buddy Lee heroicly dives into the car and ends up getting all smashed up, but then the lady says in this totally vapid voice “Oh wait, that’s not my car…THAT’s my car!” and points to a nice new TOTALLY DIFFERENT car that you’d never mistake for the other. That lady cracked me up!
Also some oldies from the “Chicagoland” area of my youth:
588-2300…Empiiiiiiiiiire! (The carpet king!)
Victory Auto Wreckers: “That old car is worth money!” (Said in voiceover as a guy goes to open the door of his old beater and the door falls off in his hands, ROFL!)
I also seem to remember a product/service/company advertising with one of those old style phone numbers. (HU3-2700 sung as “Hudson three two seven hundreeeed!”) Anyone remember what that was for? And why they were still using a word based prefix into the mid-seventies?
Rainier Beer commercial, circa 1981. A motorcycle speeding away from the camera, and the engine sound is rrrrrraaaaaaiiinnn (gear shift) iieeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr (gear shift) beeeeeeeeerrrrr… (fades into the distance). My sister and I absolutely loved that, for some reason, and still occasionally imitate that one to each other, lo these many years later.
For Charleston Chew candy bars: “It’s chewy, Louie, but not too chewy.”
For recent commercials, I have yet to see a Snickers “Not going anywhere for awhile?” ad that doesn’t make me giggle. Especially the panda one.
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