In this article about Meat Loaf he claims this was a radio ad running in his youth. Seems kind of out of character and nasty for a Levis’ ad. Any truth to the assertion this ad existed?
I sure don’t remember it, and I watched a lot of TV in the 70’s.
That’s probably why you don’t remember it. You weren’t listening to the radio. 
Well I will go out on a limb and say such an ad almost certainly wasn’t the 70’s or didn’t have the effect on him he is claiming. Meatloaf was born in 1947 and by 1970 he was 23 & a hanger on in the LA music scene and already had some success in musicals – notably Hair. (his debut album was in '71, Rocky Horror '73) So I call B.S. on that dating.
In his Autobiography he tells the same story but places it when he was in the 7th grade which would put the ad in ~1959, which if such a ad ever existed at all, made makes much more sense than it happening in “the 70s”.
Yeah, except jeans weren’t a widespread phenomenon in 1959; they didn’t become popular as standard casual wear until the mid '60s. It doesn’t seem to fit the tone of '50s advertising for what would then have been considered work clothes.
And, I can’t find any cite for that line- or close to it, that isn’t from Meat Loaf. Levi’s were work clothes in the 50’s and AFAIK, came in sizes up to 54, which should have fit “fat Marvin”. Byt the time “designer jeans” came in, Meat Loaf was already a singer of some note. Note that Marvin claims now to have been born in 1951.
I call “dubious”. :dubious:
No one wore Levi’s in the Fifties? What about James Dean? Though in Rebel I think he actually wore Lees. Jeans were definitely catching on by then, at least among teenagers.
Lots of dudes wore Levi’s in the 50’s. Just not “designer jeans”. They were still work clothes, even though they were “cool”. T-shirts were also “work clothes” even though they could be “cool” also. The point is, you bought them in the “work clothes” section, and they came in a full range of sizes.