What the oldest television commercial you remember?
I remember that old Virginia Slims commercial from 1970?
You’ve come a long way baby to get where you’ve got to today…
how bout you
The earliest that I can bring to mind would probably the Weebles commercial that used to play endlessly during the cartoon shows. 1973, '74. 'Round there. “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!” I was very excited by the circus cannon.
I can still remember a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercial on the old Superman series in the mid-50s starring George Reeves. And here it is. Of course, what made it memorable was that it involved Superman! Strange I can’t remember any other commercials during that era, but this one has stayed with me.
The :confused oldest TV commercial I can remember dates back to the 50s. It was in black and white, or maybe it was just that my family didn’t own a color TV then. It involved a chorus line of dancing cigarette packs with very shapely legs. I think the brand was Chesterfield. I was very young. I liked the dancing but couldn’t figure out what it had to do with cigarettes. I guess they were selling a connection between sex and cigarettes but, at the time, I found the whole thing really puzzling. 
In the 1950s, there was a TV ad campaign for Kool cigarettes that featured an animated penguin who said “Smoke Kool.” I was fascinated by the penguin, and drew pictures of him. I mimicked the penguin’s voice, and ran around the house shouting “Smoke Kool.” Not surprisingly, a few years later I became addicted to menthol cigarettes.
Ancient Chinese Secret, Huh? Calgon, 1972.
Mr. Clean, circa 1959. My mom told me that I used to go around the house singing the jingle.
The oldest TV commercial I can remember was for Muriel cigars. They had a animated (sexy) half cigar, half woman saying “Why doncha come up and smoke me sometime?”
BTW the oldest radio commercial I can remember is Quaker Oats “Shot From Guns!”
Sorta fits in with the George Reeves commercial. 
Wow, I loved those Muriel commercials! As I recall, Edie Adams did the sexy voice.
Various Nabisco cookie commericals from the late 50s/early 60s:
“Yo Ho Ho for an Oreo”
“I’ll fly to the moon for a Lorna Doone.”
“You’re darn tootin’ I like Fig Newton.”
Also Milky Way & Snickers commercials with the terrific slogan “The best candy on Earth comes from Mars.”
And several of those mentioned so far.
“Murray Mints. Murray Mints. Too-good-to-Hurry Mints”. Though not from 1955: it carried on well into the 60s.
It is my recollection that the dancing cigarette packs were “Old Golds.” The “shot from guns” commercial featured, as I remember, the real, honest to God, authentic Gabby Hayes. Captain Video, he of the army surplus L shaped flashlight ray guns, was sponsored by Ovaltine - a really crappy chocolate flavored milk additive. Space Cadets may have been Post Tosties’s show. I can’t remember the sponsor for Kukla, Fran and Olie. Of course there was always the damned Hamm’s Beer Bear. Ovaltine may have been the Howdy Doody sponsor, too, back when Buffalo Bob was Uncle Bob Smith and Mr Bluster was just somewhat obnoxious and not a real villain.
We got a TV in 1948. It was a six inch Crossly. With a booster on the aerial we picked up Chicago, maybe Detroit, on the back side of Columbus. We got a TV so that my father could watch the Thursday Night Fights (brought to you by Gillette razors) and the Firestone Hour where real New York opera singers appeared weekly and peddled automobile tires.
Edie Adams. Ernie Kovack’s widow, did White Owl Cigar ads.
From the land of sky-blue waters…
Hamms, the beer refreshing.
Funny, and vaguely disturbing, that so many of the strongest advertising memories from my early childhood are jingles for beer and cigarettes.
But perhaps the strongest is the little cartoon guy singing the praises of then-novel color television:
Hey! I got color TV!
RCA Victor color TV!
I know what I’ve been missing now,
Wow!
I got color TV!
In the early 1960’s, Jim Henson’s Muppets were on commercials in the Washington DC area for Wilkons Coffee. Darn funny!
I guess mine would have to be for Lucky Strike cigarettes as featured on Your Hit Parade from maybe 1952. We didn’t actually have a TV set in our house until 1955, so this would have been on friends’ TV’s.
Others from that era were for:
Bardahl – some sort of oil treatment
B4 – similar stuff with the ditty “You’ll be for B4 before you drive six city blocks.”
Carling’s Black Label beer – “Hey, Mabel! Black Label.”
Mohawk carpets
Godchaux sugar
M&M – melts in your mouth, not in your hand
Kellogg’s cereals (several types like Sugar Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes, etc.)
Brylcreem hair goop – “a little dab’ll do ya”
Winston cigarettes – “Winston tastes good like a cigarette had oughta” (wink)
Alka Seltzer
Gillette razors and blades – boxing sponsors
Chevrolet – “see the USA in your Chevrolet”
Chrysler Corp cars – “the Forward Look” – beaucoup fins and push-button drive (Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial)
Kaiser Foil – aluminum wrap
Sylvania TV – had some halo gimmick around the tube
Prell shampoo
Halo Shampoo
Toni shampoo
Revlon makeup
I could go on and on…
I definitely remember that one! And ever since I’ve worried about that couple. Did the marriage survive the financial ruin that came from the wife driving away all of her husband’s customers?
N E S T L E S , Nestles makes the very best, choooooooc-lit!
Tall UP! For the tall corn taste of Kellogg’s golden flakes
It’s corn that you can really crunch, corn that really packs a punch,
Tall America, Tall America, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes!
Husband sitting on the edge of the bed: “I can’t believe I ate the whooooooole thing…”
Wife: “You ate it, Frank.”
I don’t remember what it was for… Rolaids, Pepto Bismol?
I remember the “My baloney has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R” commercial- I’m about the same age as that kid (who I hope earned a fortune in residuals). I’m also about the same age as Mikey who hated everything.
A commercial I used to love when I was little but I don’t remember what it was for— I think it was for insurance— showed a series of weird and strange disasters. The one I loved though was a little black girl with her finger in her mouth standing over a big beautiful dollhouse that’s been demolished, and her mother is asking her “What happened to the dollhouse?!” and she says, very innocently, “Nothin’…”. Used to crack me up, no idea why.
I wish they would release more classic commercials on DVD. They’ve released some, but few of the really great ones and few of the really old ones (1940s/early 1950s). My favorites, just for the oddity factor, were the ones of TV show characters in character hawking cigarettes (including the Beverly Hillbillies- seeing Granny light up and tell Miss Jane “Now that’s true tobaccky” was just weird [even though in real life both Irene Ryan and Nancy Kulp were chain smokers]). Carol Channing sharing Jell-O with Nazis was also an odd juxtaposition (down the page).