Tense, Nervous Headache: Central adverts and continuity, Christmas Day 1994

The Christmas Day Matinee of Mary Poppins comes to an end and we get an ITV Central trailer, replete with snowflake motif. At this point, Central was wholly owned by Carlton, who had been part of the consortium that started the station back in 1982. They wouldn't murder the name altogether until 1999, but they did ruin the onscreen branding a year beforehand. Anyway, the trailer is for Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean. I don't remember how he gets the turkey on his head, but I do remember that Rowan Atkinson made it seem perfectly logical at the time. After that, Honey I Shrunk the Kids is trailed in much the same fashion. Joyce Summers is unimpressed.

Then the adverts start, with a lot of repetition. Christmas Day advertising space isn't as plum as you might think, at least not in the late afternoon, hence starting out with that Cesar thing with the rat and the tinsel, a shortened version of the Magnet one with the Aryan girl, and the Lunn Poly advert with Father Christmas falling out of the sky.

Next, there's a vaguely troubling battery advert, starring John Hurt as an offended Walkman belonging to some marathon runner who simply cannot run without the Chariots of Fire soundtrack in his ears at all times. I hope I'm not the only one who finds the idea of our appliances feeling insulted slightly unsettling.

Then, Father Christmas falls through the Comet advert again. After that, a very much post-Christmas advert starring a Scotch Bloke creature who sticks GMTV on, notices the leotard woman and decides to eat some Bran Flakes, which have apparently materialised on the shelf in front of him. Richard Briers looks on approvingly.

Next, the late Michael Elphick - and this is cruel, given that alcoholism killed him, but I'm not sure the poor sod's sober - shows up in a warehouse to point at MDF on behalf of B&Q who blah blah blah sale. The company seem to be in a transitional phase as far as their image are concerned: the old-fashioned logo can be seen on at least one of the lorries (before something is hurriedly hauled up to cover it) but a prototype of the current one is slapped on the last shot.

After that, First Choice again, and arguably the most famous of the set of "what the hell are we advertising" launch ads from Christmas 1994. Then that increasingly terrifying DFS collective show up again to command you to visit the sale or they'll plug you into the Matrix.

Then the late Anita Roddick, prior to the tennis success, discusses why The Body Shop is nice and how American Express helps them out. And yes, the whole "simple people are inherently better" ethos is patronising, but her heart was in the right place.

Nexthere'sthatCriscoblipvertagain and after that, excitingly enough, a PIF! Just to illustrate how little-valued this advertising space was. Starting out dripping with menace and looking vaguely like it's going to be about car thieves or murderers or something, it eventually turns out to be about littering and have a really stupid song. I'd rather have Ted Bellingham kicking litterers to death and then putting the remains in a bin. In fact, I'd still rather have that. One interesting thing: it's among the last PIFs to look distinctly different from the rest of the commercial break, with the telecine and the scratches and the hey hey.

The final advert is for Sheba, which my cat won't eat so it can just about sod off, and then we're back with the trailers. Turner and Hooch: the bit of Tom Hanks' CV everyone forgets, even more than Mazes and Monsters. Decent enough film considering it's about a cop and a dog. Better than the one with Jim Belushi. Or Chuck Norris. That dog's dead now. Turner and Hooch is on "Holiday Tuesday"; ie the day after Boxing Day. In 1994, the Christmas season was structured exactly the same as it is this year (ie 2011 for those of you reading this in the burning radioactive wildernesses of the future). With Christmas Day falling on a Sunday, an extra Boxing Day was (and is) declared on the Tuesday to make up for it.

Then a Christmassy Central ident in which the Cake vomits snowflakes at the screen leads into Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol, which, no, I don't have any of, as will be demonstrated tomorrow...

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Central
• Television
• Central Independent Television
• Christmas
• adverts
• commercials
• Commercial
• Advertising
• Spot
• Ads

[treffynnon19]

The announcer on duty and on the trails is Paul Veysey.

[Nickyootoob]

1983 has the same sequence as will 1984 in 2012 as they are both leap years...

[jx866]

Notice how the B&Q lorry has the old logo on the side, which is expertly concealed at the end by the forklift hoisting its load right over the logo. It's like the logo was never there! (Except when we just saw it at the start.). That kind of branding disparity would be enough to make a 2011 marketing man self-immolate. You couldn't get away with it nowadays. People might get confused and start thinking there are two B&Qs.