I’m back with more of these anime commercials! Let’s see what other products Japan tried to sell to its public.
Polick
Meiji is primarily known for making snack food, but they also produce pharmaceutical products. Here’s an amusing commercial for Polick, an itching cream.
Produced by Nittei in 1966. Animated by Kimura Masao, with song by Taku Izumi.
Lotte Koume
Since 1974, candy company Lotte has been selling Koume candies, featuring a girl named Koume-chan in the bag and in advertisements.
Produced by Nippon Movie. Seiichi Hayashi designed and directed, with animation by Katsuji Yamaoka.
Here’s an early commercial, possibly the first one.
New Guromont
Here’s a 1971 commercial for an energy tonic. Animation by Yasutoshi Nakamura.
Nichibei Blinds
Yes, this is a commercial for window blinds, featuring cartoonist Ko Kojima’s stylized sexy lady. From 1988.
You may have noticed the music credit in the beginning. Since the 1980s, that’s has become common in Japanese commercials, especially today.
Meiji Scotch Caramel
A very stylized commercial for Meiji’s brand of Scotch Caramel with extremely limited animation. From 1959.
New Rohto Eyedrops
1962 stop motion commercial from Japan for a brand of eyedrops. Directed by Takafumi Okuma at Shiba Production.
Meiji Curl
A 1976 commercial for Meiji’s Curl, a brand of cheese-corn puffs. It’s mascot is a bearded fellow named Karl. The character still appears today, virtually unchanged.
Norio Hikone, veteran animator who worked at Toei and Mushi Production, created this commercial.
Shiseido Soap
A 1973 commercial for Shiseido soap. Very unusual style. Animation by Takashi Ooyama.
Tory’s Whiskey
Yet another commercial for Tory’s Whiskey from 1958. Produced by TCJ (now Eiken). Designed by Ryohei Yanagihara and directed by Kiyoshi Oonishi.
Guard Hello
A 1974 commercial for toothpaste. Nice catchy music. Designed and directed by Shingo Ozaki. Produced by Toei Animation.
Charles Brubaker is a cartoonist originally from Japan. In addition to his work for MAD Magazine and SpongeBob Comics, he also created Ask a Cat for GoComics. You can also follow him on his Tumblr page.
A good batch. I love how Suntory makes no bones about its product. No sophisticated James Bond types sitting by the pool, sipping Scotch. No, just some frazzled, bagged-out wage-slave who wants to get blasted after work. Honesty is refreshing.
Wow! These are great! A little weird, but not TOO WEIRD like everyone says about Japanese commercials…..it helps to give background information before clicking “play”.
I know one reply gave me some nice TMS commercials in your last post in the comments section, but could you please find some Tokyo Movie Shinsha-animated commercials for your next post? It would especially please Jerry because TMS animated some Looney Tunes-inspired Warner Bros. cartoons like “Tiny Toons” and “Animaniacs”.
Part of it is that I only know of some commercials TMS did, and even then they seemingly didn’t do many (or theyre hard to find).
I know TMS did a Bugs Bunny Mitsubitshi commercial in the early 90s but other then doing commercials for shows that they do TMS does not lean on them as the money they get from Conan is enough to pay the staff.
Still, heres another TMS commercial with Bugs Bunny in it, it uses some footage from a Friz Freleng short, but TMS did the original animation for it and Hiroyuki Aoyama was the director for it (its also a live action X animation commercial as well).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMgio1ttaOA
Here is TMS’ pre-2013 list of project as after that the studio redid their site and got rid of the list.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110912085610/http://www.telecom-anime.com/telecom/sakuhinreki/nenpyo2_i.html
I know TMS did a Bugs Bunny Mitsubitshi commercial in the early 90s but other then doing commercials for shows that they do TMS does not lean on them as the money they get from Conan is enough to pay the staff.
I bet (also with Anpanman as well). Not to say they’re too good for ads, but I often feel like their best strength is doing something more than 15 seconds at a time (yeah I need to cut that out).
Still, heres another TMS commercial with Bugs Bunny in it, it uses some footage from a Friz Freleng short, but TMS did the original animation for it and Hiroyuki Aoyama was the director for it (its also a live action X animation commercial as well).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMgio1ttaOA
Typical, promoting someone’s album, but what you can do, it’s a job.
Here is TMS’ pre-2013 list of project as after that the studio redid their site and got rid of the list.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110912085610/http://www.telecom-anime.com/telecom/sakuhinreki/nenpyo2_i.html
Well, at least we still got archive.org to help us out.
I’d just be mildly curious as to the translation of the songs from each of the commercials that use lyrics, but yeah, these are interesting ads. I can only imagine the visuals, although we, too, have had some very strange stop motion ads in our history…and strange ads that have no animation in them at all!
The singing in the New Guromont commercial reminds me of LocoRoco.
I love those Meiji Curl ads, amazing they can keep that going as long as they have. Though I think as more and more ads seen on Japanese TV tend to favor 15 seconds overall, I wonder how much tends to get lost because they have to cram it all in these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5yah-vsHi4