Tell a friend

Alan Hamel used to do commercials for one of the local grocery stores, the now-defunct Alpha Beta. The tagline in every commercial was "Tell a friend."

So to 5- or 6-year-old me, he was the Alpha Beta "Tell a friend" guy. I didn't find out till later that he's married to Suzanne Somers.

While poking around on YouTube today (I've been finding a lot of good stuff lately, so I figured I'd look for more), I found an old Alpha Beta commercial from 1981, and sure enough, right at the end, BAM -- "Tell a friend."



A popular joke at recess in those days:

Did you hear Alan Hamel died? Tell a friend.

And if that happens someday, I'm ashamed to say, that's the first thing that will come to mind. Does that make me a bad person?

Alpha Beta had the cool-ass carts that had enough room so you could sit on the bottom, and there was the bank of machines near the front of the store that you had to use if you were going to pay by check. I guess it was like a preauthorization thing. My Google-fu couldn't turn up any pictures, alas.

I'm actually surprised the store name hasn't made a comeback. I'm thinking online grocery store with a little geek factor, plus retro nostalgia. The logo, I bet, would likely look something like this: