YouTube as educational tool

Sometimes, I really could just spend hours checking out videos on YouTube. For example, as regular readers are abundantly aware of, I'm obsessed with old TV shows and commercials.

Now what's great is all the people who had VCRs back in the Stone Age top-loader days are uploading samples of their collections to share with everyone. I love this, because it's one thing to read what shows were on during a certain time, but it's another to watch the opening credits to them, because there are shows that you just don't remember because they weren't syndicated or they didn't last particularly long.

Thanks to uploader videoholic2008, here's a sample of what you could find on TV if you tuned in in early 1977, which is about the earliest I can remember any TV shows specifically.

Here's something I never thought I'd say...

Check out this cool Tesla video:




(via Kotaku)

They've got what I'm looking for

Old Bay Area TV stations came up in conversation yesterday, and it got me thinking of the promos TV 20 used to do that featured various pets from people in the area.

As luck would have it, I found the best one on YouTube:

From the "Who gives a crap" department...

At least now I have proof that I wasn't hallucinating it. Back in the early to mid-80s, it seemed like everyone wanted to capitalize on NBC's TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes, so there were specials every now and then, and of course, the shameless imitation.

On ABC, I think it was (I could look to be sure, but I'm lazy), to compete with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon, they paired Steve Lawrence (8-year-old me: Who?) with Don Rickles (8-year-old me: Oh, that CPO Sharkey guy who calls everyone a hockey puck). And if that team-up wasn't magical enough, there was the name: Foul-Ups, Bleeps and Blunders.

Note the way it flows off the tongue.

If memory serves, the two shows even competed in the same time slot for a while. I'd check out the ersatz Dick and Ed during the terminally long practical joke bits, which were rarely if ever funny.

I don't know if the show even lasted a whole season, but it is for some reason locked indelibly in my memory.

And now (at least temporarily), I can inflict it upon you, loyal reader. The clip is a little bit of Star Trek blooperness, brought by the Shat himself.



And while on the subject of inflicting, here's a clip I found from the Steve Allen-hosted Life's Most Embarrassing Moments, which I think was a special, also on ABC. And wouldn't you know it, it's the one clip that I will never be able to get rid of.

Straight out of the box

As we all know, presweetened breakfast cereal is one of the four food groups. Getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings wouldn't have been as fulfilling (or as possible) without it. To this day, I still prefer my cereal straight out of the box, dry, the way God intended.

In lieu of sharing boxes of sugary cereal with all of you, here is an assortment of cereal commercials.

Count Chocula

Count Chocula just plain rules. Aside from a slightly different texture, this is essentially Cocoa Puffs with marshmallow bits (or marbits, as General Mills likes to call them). That different texture makes a big difference, though. Cocoa Puffs are crunchier on the outside. Count Chocula is the most readily available of the Monster Cereals, often on the shelves even outside of Halloween.

When I see Frankenberry or BooBerry on the shelves, my first impulse is always to buy it, but then I remember that I don't actually like eating them, so I leave them alone. I don't remember getting the much lamented Fruit Brute, but I know I got Fruity Yummy Mummy (what I'm assuming was an attempt to make another go at a fruity Monster Cereal), and my brother and I thought it tasted like a pile of ass.



Croonchy Stars

I could watch the Swedish Chef all day. Before Emeril, before Giada "I am apparently unaware that the camera is constantly aimed at my cleavage" de Laurentiis, hell, even before Martin Yan, I loved watching the Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show. So when they came out with a cereal supposedly concocted by the Swedish Chef, even though I hadn't watched the show in years, I felt obligated to try it out. It was pretty good--not too sweet.



And here's one of my favorite bits, in which the Swedish Chef makes Brussels sprouts:



C-3POs

I'd be willing to bet that they picked C-3PO for a Star Wars cereal just because his name already ended in O. Presumably, they could have come out with Landos, complete with free 40-ounce Colt .45 in each box. Or Greedos, or--well, I guess 3PO was the best-known character whose name ended in O. Another not-too-sweet cereal, great for out-of-the-box snacking.



Post Super Heroes Create-A-Villain Contest

I almost entered this when I was a kid. Alas, the paints on the back of the box, to put it delicately, sucked. I couldn't get the villain to look the way I wanted, so the box ended up in the trash instead of in the mail.

The commercial was a bit jarring the first time I saw it, because while they used the voices from the Superfriends show, they looked a bit off-model. In fact, this was the first time I saw Wonder Woman's then-new double-W chest emblem. It would be a while before the show caught up with the new look, and by then, they got a new voice for Wonder Woman, so this was the only time I know of that the original voice artist, Shannon Farnon, voiced Wonder Woman with the double-W emblem.

And I'm sure there's someone out there who gives a crap about that. Somewhere...



Cinnamon Nut Cheerios

I had to include this, because I have no recollection of seeing this cereal, and I was inspecting the cereal aisle every time we went to the grocery store (okay, I still do that). I wouldn't have gotten it because I don't like nuts, but I'd think I at least would've remembered it.



Donkey Kong

For a few years there, video game characters were everywhere: cartoons, cereal aisles, pencil toppers, folders, enemas, you name it. Oh, and the arcades, too. I first saw this while on vacation visiting family, and I was mildly disappointed that it tasted pretty much like Cap'n Crunch. I liked Cap'n Crunch, but I thought this would've been a bit different. Donkey Kong Jr. was at least a fruity cereal that wasn't exactly like Trix or Froot Loops.



Pac-Man

Speaking of video game cereal, here's another one. This was a favorite jingle on the playground, if only for the fact that by swapping one letter (a "t" in place of a "b" -- you guess where), it was instant hilarity. The cereal was sorta like Kix with marshmallows. Meh.



Cheerios

Cheerios ended up having more sugar in it than the presweetened cereals because you had to dump a pound of sugar on it before it tasted even close to good. But I liked this ad campaign with the yodeling stick figure guy. Good times.



Corn Pops

I didn't include this because it features a young Kirk Cameron--who looks like he's enjoying this a bit too much--but because my brother and I always thought the exploding Pops sequence would have been better used in a commercial for something like Ex-Lax.

At long last...

I have roughly 3 anjillion tapes of old TV commercials from the 50s through the late 80s. That includes just about any compilations you've seen at the store, and darn near most of the offerings you might find on eBay. There are actually a few that I always get outbid on, but I'm sure I'll nab them eventually. How else will I have a commercial for the "Sgt. Pepper" movie with Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees?

I could watch nothing but commercials for at least an entire weekend without repeating a tape or disc.

Why do I have so many? Honest to God, I can't give a good reason other than that they interest me. The older ones, pre-me, are fascinating in how things were marketed. The ones from my childhood are interesting because I remember jonesing for those toys and snacks.

Out of the thousands of commercials in my collection, there is one (aside from the "Pepper" spot) that has eluded me thus far: the famous "Who Broke My Window" PSA produced for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Despite not having seen it since its heyday, I can still sing the whole thing -- stone sober, mind you.

My exploring on YouTube and other video sites were likewise bereft of satisfying the itch. It's not even that I like the thing so much, though I kinda do.

I haven't been able to get it out of my head. Part of collecting all this stuff (and writing about it) is a kind of exorcism of sorts. If it's on tape or written down, I don't have to keep it stored in my head.

Well, about five minutes ago, I made my weekly check, and holy cow, it was there.

So here it is (as long as it stays up on YouTube -- your mileage may vary):

More stuff

Just added a new widget to the sidebar that pulls videos from YouTube and Google Video. Right now, it's using the keywords for 80s commercials and 70s commercials. I may change it from time to time.

Give it a shot -- it looks kinda neat.

The fever for the flavor

Did she just say "Once you taste the fluffer?" Discuss.

Silly marketers, Trix used to be round already...

Wow. According to the commercial I just saw, Trix now comes in a "new" shape: puffs. I guess it's new to General Mills' target audience, but we immature types who still eat sugary cereal straight from the box (milk is for sucks) know better.

Let's take a look at Trix commercials, shall we? Somewhere on a video tape, I've got a commercial for Trix that predates the rabbit, but I can't find it right now.



He actually gets to eat some in this one:



This one is from TVDays.com, where I've gotten a metric buttload of commercial tapes. I love them all. If anyone ever needs gift ideas for me, that's the place to go.



This one is from my prime Trix-eating days. My first voting experience (and still most satisfying, alas) was when I voted for the Trix Rabbit to get some Trix.



I guess this shows you how old I am. I still think of the switch to fruit shapes is a relatively new change, but apparently they did it back in 1991. Oh well. I still feel like Bob Barker let his hair go white only a few years ago. Shows you what I know.

Open your eyes and hear the magic

It's been a good few months or so for the old craphunter. I already found a copy of the Sgt. Pepper movie soundtrack with the swanky poster inside.

And now, while at the antique mall with my parents, I managed to find another crap movie artifact -- one I didn't even know existed.

I play a little bit of piano. Not well, but good enough that my son can recognize songs. Well, now I can wow him with my own renditions of the songs from Xanadu.

W00t.

Check it out:

And for only three-and-a-half bucks, I couldn't pass it up.

I don't know if I've ever explained my love for the stupid movie. When I was younger, we babysat a girl from my class. She was a little older than me, and consequently, bossy. Third-graders, you know? Our class was structured so we didn't have homework, and every now and then, we'd watch a movie, because we were one of the few families who had a VCR at the time.

My favorite movie was Superman II, where hers was Xanadu. So to avoid arguments, we alternated who got to pick the movie. In truth, it wasn't torture for me to watch Xanadu, even though I certainly made her think so. I liked the ELO songs in particular, and I also thought Olivia Newton-John was a fox.

So over the course of a few weeks, I ended up watching it roughly 70,000 times. I owned the soundtrack album, to boot. It took up permanent residence in the nooks and crannies of my brain, where it lives today, over two decades later.

I'd go into more detail, but I have to save it for when I get up to X for Bad Movies From A to Z. Hey, it was either that or Xtro.

To whet your appetite, here's the trailer.

To the moon!

I forgot about the Super Bowl until just after halftime, and the only reason I remembered at all was because I wanted to check out this year's crop of ads.

Some of them I'd seen before (one of the Coke ads, I saw in the theater before "Clerks 2" months ago), and most of the others didn't impress me very much.

I checked out the rest of the ads later on the Intarwebs, and when I saw the FedEx spot, the first thing I thought of was, "Oh man, I have to check Bad Astronomy for this one."

Phil Plait does not disappoint. Check it out. Feel free to read more while you're there. Lots of good stuff. Here's the commercial if you missed it.

Fine, have it your way

I tend to dwell on McDonald's commercials when I wax nostalgic, but I am reminded that Burger King had commercials, too. Whereas McDonald's relies mostly on Ronald McDonald and friends, Burger King uses, well, just about anything they can think of.

Here's the old-school Burger King. I saw him on the side of my local BK a few months ago, and I was quite surprised, given that they seem taken with the creepy Burger King head guy these days. Note the "make me a shake" gag was also used in one of the "Time for Timer" spots ("Could you make me a banana?" "OK, you're a banana.")





The next big push was The Marvelous Magical Burger King, who may look a little familiar these days. This is the Burger King I remember. The kids' meals tended to have magic tricks that I royally sucked at. The MMBK had his own Burger Kingdom, which I suppose was like McDonaldland in its own way. The one that always bugged me was Burger Thing, a burgery face on a wall that talked. I think this is why Thomas the Tank Engine still creeps me out when my son watches it. You be the judge.

Not only was he magical, he was cool. Would you believe (Holy The Search for Animal Chin, Batman!) skateboarding? Oh, believe it.





One thing you could count on in Burger King commercials was seeing lots of familiar faces. A lot of them you saw before they were familiar, but still...

Here are Andrew McCarthy and Elisabeth Shue in a spot that tells the world that Burger King was now selling Pepsi.



As my dad is a staunch Pepsi drinker, we ended up going to Burger King an awful lot once they switched to Pepsi. And I think he was bummed out when they switched back to Coke.

I could tell the story of the time we were in a Burger King parking lot and he took a drink of his Pepsi, tried to suppress a carbonation-induced sneeze and ended up making a very loud "HHHHNNNNNNNNHHHH!" noise, but that would be embarrassing and not very sporting of me.

I could also talk about the time we got to the drive-through and saw that someone had strategically placed a dog turd around the top of the speaker, but that would be gross.

Here are some other famous faces:

Mr. T



Christine Taylor



Sarah Michelle Gellar (if memory serves, McDonald's sued over this spot)



Emmanuel Lewis



And then they had Herb. Herb was supposedly the last person in America who hadn't tried a Whopper, which as David Hofstede points out in his excellent book, What Were They Thinking: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, must have come as a shock to vegetarians.

So the search was on for Herb. If you found him, you could win money. The problem was that initially, no one knew what he looked like. Hilarity ensued. Finally, they showed Herb during a special commercial during the Super Bowl, and he was a stereotypical nerdy looking guy.

In fact, when a classmate drew a scathing Mad Magazine-style parody of our class, I was drawn with a button that read, "Not Herb." It was the only positive thing about my likeness.



By 1992, there was Dan Cortese and BKTeeVee, which looks an awful lot like the stuff being parodied in "Reality Bites."



Of late, Burger King commercials are often just plain odd. This isn't necessarily bad, but it doesn't really make me want to buy Burger King.



The so-called "Creepy Burger King" has gotten a lot of grief. I think he's growing on me, though. Not so much that I wanted to buy the Halloween mask, but he doesn't bug me.



This makes me want to go to Burger King even though it's not a real commercial. How about you? (Mildly NSFW; there are birds a-flyin')

It's a family game...

I was going to rip this off of an old VHS tape just so I could talk about it. I even dug it out of the Siftin' archives and got it cued up.

Thankfully, someone has done the hard work for me.

I saw this years ago on a compilation of old Mego toy commercials (it also had the superheroes commercial that featured "The Falcon -- that great black superhero!").

The commercial is for a game called Ball Buster. Being the perennial 12-year-old that I am, I snickered at the name. And I chuckled when the announcer said that the aim of the game is to "bust your opponent's balls."

But it was the bit at the end that really got me. Not surprisingly, this is on my personal list of best commercials ever.



While searching the Intarwebs for more information, I found that the commercial was posted here only a few days ago. Great minds think alike.

YouTube Monday

I'm still just too darn tired of late to seriously pontificate on pieces of pop culture, so I offer you one of my favorite commercials for that rainy-day recess favorite.

"Pret-ty sneaky, sis."

Pac-Man fever

I think it will be hard to explain to my son when he gets older just how popular Pac-Man was in its heyday.

You had your Pac-Man cereal, which was essentially sweetened Kix with marshmallow bits. The Star Wars cereal a few years back was similar to Pac-Man cereal -- or at least was close enough for my brother and me. After it had been out for a while, General Mills made a concession to all the Ms. Pac-Man fans out there and added marshmallows with a "shocking pink bow."

I don't know that I was as excited as this commercial would expect you to be, but it was still pretty good.



There was, of course, a Pac-Man cartoon, which featured Marty Ingalls as the voice of our hero. I'd love to say that it was a groundbreaking cartoon worthy of many repeated viewings, but, well, it was teamed up with the Rubik the Amazing Cube cartoon. That right there shows you the state of Saturday morning cartoons in the mid-80s. Cool song, tho.



Yes, there was Pac-Man pasta. Another brief offering from Chef Boyardee, I don't know if I ever got this as a kid. The only Chef Boyardee product that I really liked was UFOs, which had giant cheese ravioli motherships along with the regular pasta spacecraft. But if you ever wanted to see a cartoon character based on a video game shill for bland pasta, hey, all you have to do is click play.



"Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner and Garcia, was a hit single that was the first big indicator of the yellow one's fame. Imagine someone writing a song about Monopoly.



My favorite Pac-Man tie-in was the board game, which you can read about in great detail at X-Entertainment.

And I've already mentioned the cool Super Pac-Man scratch-off cards.

The hardest part, though, will be explaining how a game this popular was one of the worst games for the Atari 2600.

Robble robble

I realized the other day that as advertising mascots go, Ronald McDonald is a little unusual.

Not because he has his snappy clown ensemble that gets updated every decade or two, but because he likes to share. Ad icons I grew up with seemed to revolve around greed. The Trix Rabbit wanted Trix but couldn't get it, Lucky the Leprechaun had Lucky Charms but wouldn't share it and Sonny the Cuckoo Bird had a mental episode if he managed to get one spoonful of Cocoa Puffs.

While Ronald was pretty free with the food (like the old adage, "The first one's free..."), there were a few in McDonaldland who didn't share Ronald's food, folks and fun philosophy.

There was Captain Crook, who mainly just wanted Filet O' Fish sandwiches, which, honestly, is like someone who wants to steal nothing but Michael Bolton CDs. Really, how much of a criminal mastermind can you be if they pick you to be the catcher at an exhibition game with the San Diego Chicken?



There was also The Evil Grimace, whose ethically challenged rehabilitation I speculated upon previously.



But mainly, when you think of McDonaldland criminal genius, you're talking about the Hamburglar. If you go to the official McDonald's site, you can check out what they're passing off as Hamburglar these days. Just to prove how much thought went into it, the main Hamburglar page has him welcoming you to his page: "Who's there? Who are you? I'm glad you found my secret hideout! Come on in!"

Awfully wordy for a guy whose entire vocabulary consists mainly of "Robble robble" and sometimes "cheeseburgers." Why he wasn't called the Cheeseburglar is a question for another day I can't think of a proper subject to write about.

Because I care (somebody has to, darn it...), here is a retrospective of how Hamburglar has changed over the years.

Here's the old-school Hamburglar. Far from the cute and cuddly version around these days, the early Hamburglar looked quite creepy. I like this one. But then, everything in McDonaldland back then looked bizarre.



And then there's this version, which I think of as "my Hamburglar." He's still a little creepy looking, but he looks a little younger than before. Maybe old Ham opted for some plastic surgery, or better yet, conned The Professor into creating some kind of youth potion.



Then something went wrong. The youth potion appears to be working a little too well. From this point on, Hamburglar looks like a little kid. He also seems a little more chatty, which just isn't Hamburglary.



By the time my son starts writing pointless essays about half-forgotten pop culture, Hamburglar may be an infant in a black-and-white stiped onesie.

Hopefully he'll still have the floppy pimp hat.

...form of a hopeless dork

Some time ago, I was talking about superhero cartoons and mentioned that somehow people were under the false impression that the Wonder Twins activated their powers by touching their rings.

Then I talked more about it, coming up with a possible reason why this might be the case, even supplying pictures. To make a long story short (too late...), there was an earlier Hanna-Barbera cartoon called "Shazzan" that featured two teens who summoned a genie by touching two rings together and saying his name.

They've been showing some of these on Boomerang lately, and when Chuck and Nancy touch their rings together, they use the same sound as in the Wonder Twins' transformation. Technically, that should be the other way around, since "Shazzan" predates the Superfriends shows, but you get the idea.

I've dug up some video clips, and while you get to see Chuck and Nancy's ring thing, the familiar transformation sound is different in the opening credits.

Shazzan

Wonder Twins (as seen in the opening to the Superfriends)


I figured I may as well go nuts here with the anal-retentive superheroey clarifications, so something that sometimes gets confused with Shazzan is Shazam, the magic word young Billy Batson says in order to change into Captain Marvel. Honestly, I lay some of the blame on Hanna-Barbera for using such a similar word for such a similar circumstance.

Another part of the problem is that to a lot of people, Captain Marvel is Shazam, thanks to legal weirdness. I tried explaining this to my wife the other day, and I'm sure I'll screw up somehow, but here's the gist of it: Back in the '40s, Fawcett Publications unveiled their hero, Captain Marvel. DC Comics (then called National Periodical Publications), publisher of Superman, sued Fawcett in the '50s, saying that Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman, and in 1953, Fawcett stopped publishing the adventures of The Big Red Cheese (best superhero nickname ever).

In the early '70s, DC Comics licensed Captain Marvel from Fawcett and began publishing new stories, which would've been swell but for the fact that between the '50s and the '70s, Marvel Comics (home of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, etc.) had published their own Captain Marvel, which meant that DC couldn't use the name "Captain Marvel" in the title, so they went with "Shazam!"

DC later bought the rights to the characters, but Shazam remains in the titles of the comics. Here's the opening from an episode of the Filmation cartoon from the early 1980s:

Shazam

Because of their red costumes with shared lightning motif, Captain Marvel is sometimes confused with the Justice League of America's resident speedster, the Flash. Here's the opening to his show:

Flash

And just to be petty, I should mention that one of my biggest pet peeves as a kid was when people referred to the Flash as Flash Gordon. Here's that guy, again from the folks at Filmation. If you like it, the show was just released on DVD, so knock yourself out.

Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon teamed up with The Phantom, Lothar and Mandrake the Magician on a later cartoon called "Defenders of the Earth," which was supplemented by a line of action figures. I got a few of these as a kid and picked up a Flash Gordon figure at an antique store a few years back. The figures were different in that while the rest of each figure was plastic, the forearms were cast-iron, which I guess gave them a little more heft when you used the power-action knob on the back. The cartoon also featured the heroes' children, Rick, LJ, Kshin and Jedda (not to be confused with the Volkwagen Jetta). This show is also on DVD now.



Flash Gordon should not be confused with

Chef Gordon Ramsey,


who should not be confused with Tootie Ramsey,



who should not be confused with Tutti Frutti,



which, of course, should not be confused with Scritti Politti


Is everyone clear on all this now?

Sick and tired

It's time for some more YouTubery here at Siftin'. This stupid cold is almost gone, but since hacking up a lung makes it hard to type, I'm sticking with something a little easier.

Take today's items, for example. The first one, a commercial for Cock o' the Walk Low-Calorie Fruit, really needs no extra comment from me. I think you've probably got a few in mind yourself. You should be ashamed.



The second one is a pretty standard McDonald's commercial. It's not particularly funny, but those of you readers out there who happen to be my brother (and you can probably smell if you are) will likely find this disproportionately funny for reasons that I'm really not going to go into.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some DayQuil with my name on it. Or it would if I legally changed my name to DQuil, which, at this point, could happen without me noticing. Enjoy.

Can you tell I'm hungry?

Today, in lieu of actual content, it's Jeff's Cavalcade of Lamented Snacks.

Hostess Pudding Pies


I got a Safeway-brand vanilla pudding pie when I went shopping recently, just in case my beloved Hostess pies were hiding under an assumed name.

Nope.

Wacky Fruit Bubble Yum


If I had to put a name on which fruit was represented by Wacky Fruit, I'd have to say peach. Why call it Wacky Fruit? How many guys would go asking for peach gum?

Okay, besides me.

Pepsi-Free


Added this just so any youngsters reading this would understand that joke in "Back to the Future."

Cookie Crisp


I know they still have it, but they don't use Cookie Jarvis as the mascot anymore. It's a travesty.

Banana Frosted Flakes


Because we really need more banana cereals.

OJ's


I had this commercial when I taped the last season of the Superfriends -- until someone taped over it, even though I had labeled it clearly.

The cereal tasted like orange-flavored dog butt, anyhow.

Do something, Fruit Pie the Magician!

Here we see my pal, Fruit Pie the Magician in action. Clearly, not his finest moment.