# Fab ads of the past.



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I know people get annoyed by advertising - see http://www.talkclassical.com/15890-tv-ads.html for example or the way people complain about the ads on Classic FM.

Back in 1950's Britain when ITV was just kicking off, often the adverts were the best part of the schedule. They were written as earworms and designed to stick in the memory, for example:

You'll wonder where the yellow went
When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.
Pep-so-dent.

The Esso sign means happy motoring,
The Esso sign means happy motoring,
The Esso sign means happy motoring.
Stop at the Esso sign.

Don't forget the fruit gums mum

You're never alone with a Strand - commercial shot by Carol Reed who directed the Third Man.

Murray Mints, Murray Mints, too-good-to hurry mints

I suspect we all have our favourite adverts - the long running Hamlet cigars or Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter being sophisticated. What are yours?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I'm a sucker for adverts featuring animals. This one, from British TV in the early 1980s, is a classic:


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

A finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat

Just one Cornetto ...


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I initially read the title as "fad abs of the past." I feel like this is the closest I'll come to making a worthwhile contribution to this thread, so I shall be off now. Toodle pip.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Borrowing Gregor Fisher for a Hamlet add.






A superb take on Sir Walter Raleigh


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Yes, I think those Hamlet ads are absolutely my favourite. Such a wonderful satire on the stiff upper lip attitude - so British! 

It is always revealing to see the advertisements of other nations & what it reveals about different cultures. I do hope non-Brit TC members will let us see their favourite or cleverest ads.

When ads become a popular success & spawn sequels, they seem to lose their charm. I loved the 'Meerkat' adverts when they first came out, but they are a little tedious now.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

I liked the ones which spoofed other ads. Like this which was a spoof on the Gold Blend ad.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Simon Pure beer TV ads featured Buster Keaton and a Chaplin look alike.

And then there's James Mason's ad for Thunderbird, in which he calls it "unusual" twice and then pours it over ice.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

TV only arrived in South Africa in 1975. The government very strictly controlled it, so predictably much of it was paralyzingly boring. I often watched just for the advertisements. Sundays were especially boring because for the first years of TV here, there were no ads on Sundays. 

On the positive side, in those days they did sometimes show excellent dramas on TV, and quite a bit of classical music, which is something you seldom see nowadays. Not that I pay much attention to TV anymore anyway. The web is rapidly killing it.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

One series of advertisements that really encapsulates an era (the 1950s & 1960s) is the 'can't tell Stork from butter' campaign, where we were assured that nine out of ten could not tell the two apart. 

But Stork tasted nothing like butter; it had a strong taste of its own, unlike the blander & smoother margarines nowadays. If they were telling the truth, how did they do it? Spread a scrape of whatever on a strongly salted cracker? Use language in setting it up that made the trier think they were getting what they weren't?

Those were the days when many households could not afford to use butter in cooking - when we believed what we were told on TV - and when there was no advertising standards authority to complain to if false claims were being made.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Before my time, but this commercial is a classic.


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## Chris (Jun 1, 2010)

I'm with George Orwell, who said the work of the advertising industry was like the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. Seeing some of these old ads again makes me shudder. They're dead but creepily alive...like tarantulas pinned in glass cases in a museum.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

# 'nuts, whole hazelnuts - huuurrggghhh!!!! Cadbury's take them and they cover them with chocolate!'#


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