They sure do, although they sell assorted “As Seen On TV” doodads and the like, not magazines.
FWIW, my brother knows a guy who won $5,000 in the Publisher’s Clearinghouse, so I don’t hesitate to enter the contest online. Nothing to lose but a few minutes of my time, I guess.
I haven’t seen any ads for press-on nails in a while.
And, not necessarily a product, but I remember in the 80s how common ring-around-the-collar was in laundry detergent ads. Now it seems we’ve conquered ring-around-the-collar cuz I never hear about it anymore.
What about wine commercials? They don’t seem to be around like they use to be.
That’s because Wisk, the laundry detergent promoted this way, is no longer on the market.
Small Chain Electronics stores? I guess they hardly exist any more. Best Buy is the only retailer I can think of of the top of my head.
I’m thinking of “Crazy Eddie” in NYC area and “Fred Rated” in LA.
Are Lifesavers advertised on TV anymore? I’m pretty sure they are still sold somewhere.
Or Tootsie Roll Pops?
Have cake mixes been mentioned yet? Duncan Hines, et al.? They used to be plugged all the time on TV.
Cool Whip?
Margarine? Blue Bonnet, Promise?
So-called “maple syrup”? Log Cabin, Mrs Butterworth’s?
Tang, the drink of NASA astronauts?
Yeah, lots of foods seem absent. Remember major marketing campaigns from York Pepperment Patties and Klondike Bars, for example?
A shortened version of their old animated “How many licks” ad has been running on cable during the fall (i.e., during the run-up to Halloween) for the past few years; I just saw it on TV last night. When I’ve seen it, it’s been on programming for adults (rather than kids), and I suspect that it’s tapping into nostalgia, and is out there to convince parents to buy Tootsie Roll Pops for Halloween.
I’ve seen ads recently for pancake mix and pancake syrup from “Pearl Milling Company,” which is what Aunt Jemima has rebranded itself as; I’m fairly certain that the ads are specifically to build awareness of the new brand name, and I would imagine that they won’t run forever.
Duncan Hines, Log Cabin, and Mrs. Butterworth were among the brands scooped up by Aurora Foods, a private equity firm that specialized in buying fairly well-known brands and using them as cash cows, relying on the brand’s reputation for sales rather than putting any money into marketing. Aurora went bankrupt and sold out to Pinnacle Foods (originally known for Vlasic Pickles) which in turn sold out to ConAgra.
I imagine brands like that will simply disappear when their owners can no longer wring enough cash from them to justify manufacturing them anymore.
I find it interesting that glop like Log Cabin and Mrs Butterworth’s was plugged so heavily, while I can’t remember a single ad for REAL maple syrup!
International Coffees had a string of memorable commercials. They’re still available for sale but more limitedly than before.
Man, I never drank a cup of that stuff but I remember my mom would buy it on occasion and she’d give me the leftover tin. The sweet smell would last for YEARS if you kept the lid on. I had a tin full of marbles that I never played with but I would open it on occasion just to smell the french vanilla.
Vlasic pickles is another one I haven’t seen in years.
Remember the stork mascot? I always thought he was there to give the product some Polish-ness.
I agree here, though there is a notable exception.
The old-school Orson Welles wine commercials – “We will sell no wine before it’s time” – are long gone. Who were those for? Paul Masson? Ernest & Julio Gallo? Both at different times? Googling leads to equivocal answers.
But anyway, back to the notable exception: Kim Crawford wine commercials are all over the place on evening cable/streaming television. Those are the ones that feature the following song:
Head up, nothing gonna take me down
Stand up every time I hit the ground
Feel the pressure building inside my bones
It feeds my body, it’s liquid gold
Likely because there hasn’t been a major national brand of real maple syrup in the U.S. for decades.
(Disclaimer: I was the market researcher on Aunt Jemima for a year and a half in the late '90s; at that point, AJ still had a small amount of real maple syrup in their “Original” syrup, while all of the major competitors (Log Cabin, Mrs. Butterworth’s, Hungry Jack) had no maple at all.)
Here’s one of the original Vlasic Stork ads from the '70s; the stork was used to evoke the memes that pregnant women crave pickles, and that storks deliver babies; instead of delivering a baby, the Vlasic Stork delivered pickles.
Were they ever gone? Kit-Kat’s “Give me a break” campaign has been around for years.
I’m wondering if a lot of brands have basically given up TV advertising. I was watching the Freeform channel and literally every single advertising break would have 3 different ads for the same brand of “Filtered Milk” and then 2 different Geico ads, leading to only 2 commercials for other products.
Particularly for a lot of “staple” grocery items, yes, they largely have abandoned TV advertising.
I’ve noticed the same thing on cable channels, particularly the smaller ones – they seem to have relatively few unique advertisers. So, if you watch one channel for any length of time, you see the same ads again and again.
I can’t recall having seen any ads for household cleaning products lately. Stuff like Windex, Lemon Pledge, Endust, and similar “spray and wipe” cleaners. Same for floor cleaners and drain cleaners.
There are plenty of ads for laundry detergent, dishwashing soap, Swiffer mops, and other cleaning products; but little to nothing for the above. Maybe I’m just watching the wrong channels, and/or at the wrong times.