 This is the SF Productions podcast network Let me hook this up here, let me see what we got. Back with us to the 60s and 70s, the dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. Welcome to the place your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. I'm your host Mark Schmidbar along with Wilbur Neal and Marty Wiley. And we're here to talk about 60s and 70s television. And tonight, it's commercials! But before we jump into the show, just a couple notes. As we always say, we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. here on ACTV. Hey boo, 25. Also, if you want to write to us for some reason, just write to vast wasteland box 151526. Columbus, Ohio, 43215. Also, one last note before we go on, I want to thank Jim Hagen, who's right now running one of our cameras, who created the new logo for vast wasteland that you just saw in the air. And it's wonderful and we couldn't be more pleased. Now, on to the show. Commercials, Wilbur, go! Alright. You know, no matter how much you watch TV, you just can't escape those darn commercials. They're always there and especially now, you've got remote controls and things. You can just, you can, if you recorded something, you can zap right through those commercials. But hey, you're missing a part of American culture if you do that. Commercials are important. And you should watch these commercials. I say you should watch these commercials. Anyway, but when we were growing up, especially, it was like, you didn't have those things back then. So you watched those commercials. You got a lot out of them. Now what do you get? You get toy commercials. You watch cartoons. You got toy commercials even before, long before Christmas. Toy commercials, you gotta rush out there. You got a half hour toy commercial, which one of those cartoons you guys are in. This is true. But back then, I mean, we had, we had substance. We had commercials. We had real commercials. We had commercials for cereal. Yeah. Good sugar-coated cereal. None of this oat-brand garbage. Yeah. It was sugar. They call it super, like, golden crisp. Super golden crisp. They haven't changed the formula. I don't want to say it. It's still sugar. The golden this comes from is sugar. It's just golden sugar now. Yeah, it's still a sugar bear. That's right. It's a little sugar bear. He's not a golden super bear. A golden super sugar crisp bear. It's just sugar bear. That's right. Sugar bear. Sugar bear. That was, what was his name? The blob? The noise connected. Sugar bear. Everything's been after him. And then, of course, sugar bear got his start. With Linus. Linus, Linus, the lion hearted. That's right. Who ate the crispy critters? The only Brussels cereal that comes in the shape of animals. Well, they had a whole show on that. Oh, yeah. That's true. Because each character had, was identified with the cereal. With a, that's right, a post cereal. Post cereal. Post cereal. That came up, that came up. Well, yeah, but. And now, now we have commercials that are 30 minutes long and they call them cartoons with commercials for toys. I mean, and this, this would have, this was like an actually a 30 minute commercial, but it was for cereal. And they had stories. That's true. No, no, no. Rest it out there. Okay. Okay, okay. Wow. Rub in the food for Alphabit. He was a postman. Alphabit's mother. Ah. Blank, blank, blank. That's a tie for rice crinkles. Now, that's, that's something. I guess we were in trouble with that. That got into trouble. I mean, the whole. Wow, with the Frito Bandito. The Frito Bandito, the Soha, the rice lin, rice, rice lin, rice lin, rice lin. That guy got in trouble. And the whole, the Dick Tracy cartoon that they had in the 60s that had all the ethnic characters. Right. They, they had it on then and they took it off because it caused trouble back then. And then now they brought it back and it's causing trouble again because there's more people looking at it. But you know what we had there? What we don't have is the commercial jingle for the original song. Yeah. And we sang it. And now it's like a scarf off an old B.O. directory or. Anything popular. Or something from the temptation. Right. And they don't use original commercial music anymore like, like they used to. Yeah. They were just so many, um, gosh. Songs. Right. They were, they were real songs. And they were stupid but we sang them. Right. Like, like, Yeah. Right. Like, Yeah. Like, Yes they did. They started off with one guy but it did develop into a whole choir. In fact, the Alka Seltzer thing, the, um, what else else? Was it Pepto Biz, what was it Pepto Biz Ball? No, it was, I think it was just all Alka Seltzer. They, they kind of had a corner on the market for commercials, for jingles, for songs. I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Right it Ralph. And that, that went along for, I don't know how long and um, no matter what shape your stomach's in. Yeah. That was an Alka Seltzer. And that developed into a, into a whole song. They developed, they made a whole song off of the commercial. The commercial. The, the song for the, the music for that, they made a whole. And then, um, it was like all the major soft drinks. It's just like Coke started out with, they wanted to teach the world to sing. Well. Fresca. Fresca had a song, too. Tree Lopez. Yeah. Fresca did have a song, um, was seven up, uh, with the Un-Cola thing. Did Peter Max do those? Peter Max did the Un-Cola thing. Of course we're growing up with the Alka Seltzer is the thing. Andy Warhol's painting, Campbell Soup can. Right. So of course commercials could just glom off the art. Like nobody's business. But the, the seven up commercials were beautiful. Yeah. And they were, um, they came out right around the same time the yellow submarine was out. And it's like the artwork was real similar. And they did similar things. In fact, they had a, they had a seven up bottle that was shaped like a submarine. And it was painted on a wall here in Columbus. Okay. Down, um, I don't know where it is. I've seen it. I've seen it. I know where it is. I've seen it. It's faded. It shouldn't be retouched up again. But it is the, um, the old seven up, seven up, submarine, submarine, submarine bottle. The Un-Cola. But you know how they all had a song. It's like, coke had the real thing. I liked it too. It's a world scene. And Pepsi came in with Pepsi generation. And, you know, they kind of could be tea. Come alive. Come alive. Y'all in the Pepsi. Y'all in the Pepsi generation. Hey. Okay. But it's like all the, you know, it was like a battle of the bands with the pop commercials for a while. This is a cola net. They grow here. They are used to make a cola flavored soft drink. These, on the other hand, are un-Cola nets. They grow here too. Notice they are a bit larger than the cola nets. Juicier too. Because it's actually a limit. And these cola nets, we use to make the Un-Cola seven up. I think, you know, I think today the only character. Marvelous. Seven up. The Un-Cola. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, that was, Jeffrey Holder did those characters. Right. He went on, well, he did a lot of things. He was a director and everything. Yeah, but he was like a character, we had commercial characters. Yes. And now it's like the only guy you've really got is the commercial characters who have already done it. Yeah. It goes through everything. That's about it. Which is great. I think it's one of the better commercials. Yeah. I think it's one of the better commercials on now. You can see that. But better than Pampers. He's still got. He's still got. He's got the Pampers. Many B.M. Leeds. Ha, ha, ha. Well, you still got, well, Tony the Tiger, he's like, he's an institution. He's an institution. He's been around since the 50s, or maybe some of the 50s at least. And Snapcraft on Pop is been around. Snapcraft on Pop, they're still around. They are. But a lot of them, yeah, a lot of the Kellogg's ones have just faded into nothing. Really, you had, let me see no one's left now. Tony, Snapcraft on Pop. Well, we can. Two can. Two can Sam. Two can Sam. He's following his nose. He's following his nose and making everybody else follow it, too. Put on a little fake nose and follow after him. They don't always know. I keep expecting one of them to, you know, when they start doing that, to fall off the tree or something. It never happens. I'm falling. I can't get enough. Lucky is still around. That's true. Lucky. Lucky for Lucky Charms. Lucky for Lucky Charms. Lucky for Lucky Charms. Lucky for Lucky Charms. Lucky for Lucky Charms. You know, you turned to, like, a North Coast. You know, a Ronco. Ronco is faded to nothing. Ronco has become an institution which doesn't have its name anymore. It's just everything that you send for, you send to Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah. You send it to a post office out in Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah. I sent it to Atlanta, Georgia. You send it to Columbus, Ohio. This is true. This is true. So, it's like this place doesn't exist at all. You're just sending these post office. Ronco. Ronco. Focainment commercials. Well, the things with Mr. and Velveteer, they've got the Whippet machine coverings. I taste that, just such great tacky products that you can pick up from $995. The Popeyeal Pocket Fisherman. The chop-o-matic, slice-o-matic. What is it? The slice-o-matic. Slice-o-matic? Chop-o-matic, I don't care. It did everything. It slices, it dices. It gets up and cooks for you. Joc'n fries. Joc'n fries. Wings up in the morning. You put them right in there and shooff. Yeah, you've got just a bucket full of fries. Come on, you can feed a whole army. You can feed a third world country with this thing. That's right. There you go. You've got enough fries for now until the family. For the rest of the year. And then you can cut the ginsu knife. Right. The ginsu, yeah, another ginsu knife. You can sit there, you can cut through a can. And still you can slice a tomato. Right. You just need to cut to the can. Who knows? You lost your phone opener. Oh, yeah. Yeah, slice through the whole can. By then you're spilling whatever you wanted to get out, unless it's like a jelly to cranberry sauce or something. That stuff is out there. It's already on the floor. But you can cut through a can, though, by golly. And you can, that's the knife stays sharp enough to cut anything. Yes, by golly, those ginsu knives, they slice. They dice. They do everything. And they're still, they've got an indestructible plastic handle, an indestructible hard plastic handle. And with it, you get the, what is it? The steak knives, you can see. You get the steak knives. You get the large ginsu knives. You get the steak knives. Instead of steak knives, you get the spiral slicer. Spiral slicer, there you go. Where are those things now? Stuck in people's in the back of their kitchen drawer. Never to be seen again. That's right, that ginsu knife, it's sharp enough to last forever, but then they came out with better knives, the bonsai knife, or whatever it was called. Probably a ginsu knife. It is, well, yeah. You've got a new bone handle instead of the gillie plastic. Then you get the laser knives now, and you just. Do you remember cigarette commercials? Oh, wow, cigarette commercials. Now, this is the thing. There are no cigarette commercials anymore. They were. Have been cigarette commercials for two decades. They were banned by the surgeon general. We grew up when there were cigarette commercials. There were cigarette commercials. Do you remember the big Winston taste good, like a cigarette shit? As a cigarette shit. What do you want, good grammar or good taste? I'd rather fight and switch. Those Terryton commercials. The great, the 100s, Benson and Hedges 100. A silly millimeter longer. The Benson and Hedges 100. Those Benson and Hedges where they'd be on the elevator and the guy would be lighten up and the doors would shut on it. They were so long. They were so long. You couldn't do anything. They'd close doors on them. They would pour drinks on them. They would go through revolving doors. And we'd just go, oh no, my cigarette is going to stuck in the revolving door. What am I to do? I've got a whole pack. I'll just light another one. Virginia's limbs. They still have them on the ads on the magazines and everything. Yeah, it's from a long way, baby, to get where you've gotten the game. You've got your own cigarette now, baby. You've come a long, long way. I've got a son of a bitch, but I'm real happy to hear that. Well, hey, hey, any woman that wants to suffer a shit. Anyway, then you had the Marlboro. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And that's the. The Marlboro commercial was the magnificent son of a bitch. But they got that from the magnificent son, which came out and didn't, was Tom Selleck in those? It was somebody like that. At some point, yeah. That he was the Marlboro man. Tom Selleck was the Marlboro man? He was the Marlboro man for some years. No, he's not old enough to go to the Marlboro. Yes, he was. Really? Yeah. Tom Selleck was the Marlboro truly. Digging through some archives now. Yeah, there's those in, oh. Hey, well, there's, let's jump to shaving. Oh, the Joe Namath. Take it off. Take it off. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Yeah. Joey, how'd they take it? Um, various. Well, she was, um, well, she was after a while. But this was like. Susan Anton was, I think, at some point. Yeah. Just anybody who's somebody possibly now, basically. But that was like, she had a, the original lady had an accent. Yes, take it off. I don't, I don't know who she was. It was somebody from the new Germany. I don't know. Sweet issues. Somebody from across the movie. They've just got an accent. We just know they're foreign. Anyway, they, um, they were, they did those commercials. And let's see. Then, um, well, we talked about characters on commercials. Like, well, the Marlboro man could be considered a character. We've got people like, uh, Mrs. Olson. Yes. Great. And her coffee. Josephine the plumber. Yeah, Josephine. Yeah, yep, um, well, the Maytag repair man, but he's still around now. What's it do? It's a new Maytag repair man. That's true. They did get a new Maytag repair, though. Or jumps now. But Madge is still so good. Oh, and hey, there was, uh, Jack, Jack Gilford that did crackerjacks. Yeah. So many years. And I didn't do it. I was doing the school jack. Yeah. Yeah. And the kids just eat up all his crackerjacks anyway and might leave him one little crumb. The Fago guy. Yeah. What flavors you got? Oh, he got all rockin' round. Rockin' round, rockin' round, rockin' round, rockin' round. Man, red pop. I'll take red pop. I'll take red pop. Bam, takin' out of the store, too. And there's, uh, well, let me see. The, uh, the crackerjacks guy that just reminded me, who goes back to serials, the Tricks Rabbit. The Tricks Rabbit is still around. He's still around. And he hasn't gotten any tricks. Why didn't he just go buy some? Come on. Go to the store. Come on, Tricks Rabbit. Rabbits don't have any money. Well, if he can sit here and pretend to be all these other things. Remember the big, uh, remember the big vote thing, vote, do you think he should have some? Well, they did that like every election here. Yeah, give the damn Rabbits some tricks. Come on, give him some tricks. Is it too much to ask for this rabbit to have just one bowl of tricks? Come on, kid. I don't think so. I mean, if he's talking to you, give this rabbit some tricks. Oh, and that's a trick within himself. Rabbits talking to you. That's right. Give him some tricks. Well, then there's the, uh, we're very popularly 60s serial products that came and went. Quisp and Quake. Oh, hey. Quisp and Quake. Yeah, they were. Those of you who don't remember Quisp and Quake. They were Quaker, right? Quaker and products. Quisp, well, Quake was a, um, an underground, he was a minor. A minor kind of guy. And he, uh, he started off wearing a hundred hat and he had this little grain. And he was down there and he's chunking out this, this cereal. He's like in a cereal mine. Yeah. He's chunking out these rocks of cereal. Those funny gear shaped chunks. Well, not, it wasn't in gear shape yet. It was, it started off in just chunks because they were like, um, well, he had Captain Crunch first. Right. And then they, yeah, it's like the Captain Crunch that didn't come out in the pillow shape. It came out in chunks. And so they decided to make these new characters and they had Quisp and Quake. And Quisp was this, uh, bubble headed. He was a saucer guy like, uh, like the two guys on Rocky and Bowenville kind of. And they, and he had this rounded, well, no, he's was saucer shaped. It was shaped like little bowls. In fact, I've gotten Quisp in the past decades. It doesn't taste the same because they need Quisp to leave. Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, yeah. So it tastes like Quisp light. Quisp light. And then see Quake went through this whole thing where, um, they were changing the shape of the cereal to these gear shapes and he falls into the machine and he comes out as a nice slim trim guy with a, uh, a safari head on in a little cape. And it was the new Quake. And then they just went kind of downhill from there. I mean, Quisp, but they had, you could order guns. You could order a gun off the Quisp. Quisp Cosmic Clouder. Yeah. You poured baking soda in it and shot it every day. So it's like, I don't know where mine is. That's probably another reason why they disappeared because they kept these great toys that left them. That's true. Captain Krushen and King Vitaman. Well, King Vitaman, he started out as a cartoonist. King Vitaman, have breakfast with the king. King Vitaman, have breakfast with the king in a sweet corn taste. And all the vitamins you need. Yeah. And now he's like a real guy. And then he became a real guy. And they had King Vitaman. They had Sir Laffalon. They had the Not So Bright Night. They just had all these characters. That was great. But he's gone now. And then there was another one of my favorites, the Freakies. Oh, yeah. We are the Freakies. We are the Freakies. And this is the Freakies tree. We never miss a meal, oh no, because we love our cereal. I had all the freaky little. I had all the freaky little. Cal mumble. Cal mumble. Goody goody. Grumble. Gargle. Ham hoes. They're probably still in my mom's refrigerator. That's probably where they are. But I had every single one of them. They were just great. It's like these little characters convinced you to be part of their club. You eat their cereal and they'll be your friends for life. Why? It's because they didn't put a deal. There was a commitment there. And the Freakies cereal grew on trees. Yeah, it grew on a freaky tree. It grew on a freaky tree. That's, that's real believable. Those came back a little while ago. But it wasn't the same cereal. They used nurture sweets. They were all like cool in California. And they all had on surfer shirts. Yeah. They changed their names. They flew in from outer space. You see what's happening here. Now with the Wall Street Purinist doing this. They're buying whatever property that's hot at the moment. And putting out a product. And the product like doesn't change. And it's in a different box. Like they had the Batman cereal. Yeah. And I think they had like a Jetson cereal. I think. It's still out right now. And it's like whatever, whatever is. Buy it now. It'll be gone. Boom. It's the same cereal. It's a turtle cereal. Yeah. It's the same cereal. It's the same cereal. The same cereal. Boom. Get the thing out there. Soon as kids get bored of it. Soon as the sales goes down. Boom. It's gone. Don't let cereal. They're like. Now they're eating nutrition. But these are like leeching off of established characters. Where we had, our serials had characters. Original characters. No, original characters. Yeah. But then the commercials were just original ones. Yeah. We sang commercials. Just think that. We sang commercials. Yummy, yummy. A dig, a dig of boffo. You get a good good flavor. Oceans of inert and called galaks puffer puffer rice. I was a great singer. I was a puffer, puffer, right? And we used to meet like the parodies of our other commercials. Oh, yeah. You know, like the Chef We Are D, What Are We Having For Lunch? Well, What Are We Having For Lunch? Chef We Are D, commercial? It had a nice little... Swag parody. I don't think I'm allowed to sing. There was a whole Comet thing. Yeah. Comet cleanser, yeah. Make sure your teeth turn green. Coming. This was like a soothing... Yeah, that's right. Chef We Are D don't know about the other one either. I'm sure they don't. They're kids singing or something. They're kids coming in and saying, you know, come on. It's just sad that we don't have real original jingle commercials. Hardly anymore. Like you said... Commercials are commercials now. Back then it was more like it was pop art kind of. Well, yeah, they had to impress you. They're really competing against the shows now. Before they were... The show depended upon the commercials, so they knew people would watch. Even though on the show, they would not allow them to show products. I can remember watching many episodes of Beverly Hillbillies. They'd be eating Kellogg's Corn Flakes. You'd know they were Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Jethro's pouring them into that bowl. He's munching them up. But they've got the name covered off on the box. They had it taped right over. Black tape, in fact. It just looked so... It was there. Generic Corn Flakes. What do they do now? You can go to the store. You can buy generic food. Because of the fact that they used to not show names on shows. So they say, okay, we'll make generic food. And now they can go ahead and show the names. So we've got all this generic food that's out there, which is the same stuff. Because they'd rather have the branding to think it's on the show. What you see today is... When you get a chance to see older commercials, let's say pre-1980s, the speed of the commercials they'd say, boy, these commercials are slow. Because now we're geared for this MTV thing where we can watch commercials. I'm convinced if you showed somebody from about, say, 1970s commercial made today, most of them made today, they'd just be like, I got nothing out of that. It was just random images. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. What was that? I don't even know what product it was. There's a lot of wine-o-video out there. Yeah. But it's just... MTV, I think, in future generations, they're going to say that that video was like pre-MTV and post-MTV. It's going to actually be broken into those two eras when everything just sped up enormously. And shots went from being like a minute shot or a 30-second shot to a two-second shot. And it was like, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. Well, I have seen the old Ruffles commercial, with the little baby. And yeah, it is slow. Oh, we can pick it up a little, no, I mean, growing up with those. Right. I'm like, good-bye, this product. Look at how stylish you are. I'm not using the original voice. The old Sun Kiss Man. The old Sun Kiss Man. Right. But now he's got another voice. Because it's like, nobody knows who W.C. Fields is anymore, I guess. Oh, I had W.C. Fritos. W.C. Fritos. The Frito Bandito? Right. All right. Who are these people? What are they talking about? Well, anyway, we're giving them the signal that it's about time to get out of here. Next time on Bass Wasteland, we're going to be looking at, it's going to be another of our big cartoon shows. All right. Warner Brothers, Terry Toons. I think we're doing some Harvey stuff. Well, just whatever, you know, we're just going to do a cartoon wrap bag kind of thing. Anybody that isn't Hannah Barbera, which we already did. We do that big two-party in a Barbera, so we're just going to see what else we can get into. How many cartoons we can mash into that have. That's right. So, remember, again, we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, Thursdays at 3 on ACTV. For all of us here at Bass Wasteland, we'll see you next time. Okay, ready?