It's been said before, and I'm saying it again.
The 1970s were crap. Crap and miserable and all the
people who appear on the 'Aren't the 70s Wonderful' shows
on TV should hang their heads in shame, be forcefed Spacedust,
Cresta and Vesta curry.
Anyway, I'm bothering to write about this because I
have proof. I have discovered an old video tape full of adverts
from 1980, and they hint that even the early '80s were rather
awful as well. (It's also the mother lode of Public Information
Films, but more of them later).
So here are two MPEG4 movies - you
might need to download
QuickTime to view
them -
of two truly dreadul adverts, one for New Potato Griddles, and the
other for Kleenex Boutique tissues. The key thing to note here is
that I knew the Griddles advert was crap at the time - that's why
I kept it. Back in 1980, aged 13, my friend Bruce and I watched
this and howled with laughter - and we were, presumably, the
target audience for these savoury snacks...
As for Kleenex Boutique... well, am I to believe that in 1980
people were really truly impressed by the fact that these tissues, like,
came in - get this! - different colours?! Maybe we were.
As the late Kenny Everatt once said, 'Kids today, they think
colour TV is boring...'
