Thursday, January 15, 2009

Because What Eight-Year-Old Boy Wasn't Itching for His Own Recording of "Waltz of the Flowers"?

Back in the 1970's in the suburbs of New York a certain commercial would play repeatedly throughout an afternoon programming block of Looney Tunes, The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. And precisely what was that ad that was deemed to speak directly to the consumer needs of a viewership comprised almost entirely of elementary school kids? Why, the following, of course:

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Maybe the '70s were the last time that advertisers assumed that the basic nuclear family unit was still more or less intact and parents kept an eye on their kids while they were watching television. Now, of course, we know that kids are parked in front of the TV precisely so parents can go do something else, like make basement meth or get gay married or whatever.

Beth said...

They showed this in Florida, too, during my Little Rascals reruns. And not a parent was around to be seen.

We had this collection, or a very similar one, on 8-track. It must've been a similar one, because we were not wealthy, and $12.98 was about $72,000 in 2009 dollars!

Charlene said...

They sold the same records on Canadian TV, but we didn't get a lecture from a snotty old guy with an egregiously fake upper-crust English accent.

Incidentally, didn't LPs hold about 24 minutes of music per side? At 120 songs, that's 15 per side, or just over 90 seconds per "song".

Robert Gidley said...

Charlene's cracked it! My Dad actually bought one of these records and each track consists exactly of what you hear in the TV commercial--about 30 seconds of music. Although I think for the "William Tell Overture" you got the entire Lone Ranger theme song (because you would notice if that one came up short!).

On the plus side, they took out all the dull bits of classical music.