I can’t even recall how many times I’ve said things are busy as heck here when writing here. There’s a bunch to do, and when I’m not really tired I’m having a great time making all these various puzzles come together. I can see a time in the next year where there will be a lot more ability to concentrate on just one or two projects, with help doing others.
The Thunderbean MeTV deal is lovely in that there’s about to be a whole lot of people seeing things they’ve never seen before; I love the accessibility of all these films once again finding an audience bigger than the little cartoony community. I really love the channels and their support of classic animation, with even more to come soon.
My friend Milton Knight has a Kickstarter up for his independent animated film “Cat and Mouse”. Spread the word and support this film if you’re able. It’s dark subject matter for sure, exploratory and exploring new territory for him as an artist. [Click Here to help].
As we’re working on more licensing and streaming possibilities, we’ll be turning away from the special discs that we’ve had so much fun producing. Several people requested we have them up a few more days, so we’ve done so- and there’s a discount at the shop right now as well at the Thunderbean Shop. [Direct Link]
And onto today’s subject: What are some of your favorite vintage animated commercials?
I’ve always loved collecting commercials in 16mm. There’s a lot of prints of commercials out there, and they used to be incredibly cheap on the collectors market since people would keep the shows and often cut out the commercial interrupting them, or sell the little boxes and tiny reels with them on, or sell big reels of them.
Over the years it’s been fun to borrow a bunch from various collectors as well as mulling through my own collection and scanning the ones I really like. Here’s a few of my favorites from over the years. Find some of yours if you can and put a link in the comments.
In this week’s and last week’s animation history class at the College for Creative Studies, we showed quite a few from the Thunderbean commercials set and the Mid Century Modern Blu-rays. It was a lot of fun to see them through their eyes.
1) A Smattering of Spots (Storyboard, Inc). This commercial reel from the Huibley Studio is one of my favorite things to show in class. There’s so many styles and so much fun animation by so many people that worked at most of the big animation studios over the years. This is just the standard definition version. It’s on the Mid Century Modern, Volume 2 disc that we’ll get back in print at some point…
2) Coo Coo Wheats commercial (1974)
Mark Kausler animated a big chunk of this spot back in the 70s- and maybe he can tell us a little more about it too! It was a favorite of mine when it showed on WKBD, Channel 50 in Detroit. This copy is from my not-so-great telecine transfer that made it onto the first commecial disc we did- and further compressed from YouTube re-uploading— one of these days I’ll get a better copy!
3) Freakies commercial (1974)
I guess I’m taking a trip back into my childhood a little bit with this one too. Freakies was my absolute favorite for about a year and a half as a kid— then it vanished off the shelves! I still have my Freakies figures and magnets all these years later. This spot was largely animated by Preston Blair at Jack Zander’s Animation Parlor. I have a drawing from the opening shot.
4) Kellogg’s Corn Flakes with Woody Woodpecker
Is there anything better than Woody suggesting children almost get hit by cars in their pursuit of cereal? I wish there were more of these around with Woody honestly. I have no idea how many were made.
5) Dick Williams Harlem Globetrotters animated spot
This animated spot from the mid-70s was used for many years, and really highlights what was especially wonderful about Dick’s studio and animation. Wish I could find a 16mm on this one and do a really nice scan.
6) Mickey Mouse Nash Spots
These always have to be on the list of favorites for me. Again, Mark Kaulser plays a role here, having lent these prints twice to me, once for a standard def scan, then later in HD. Here’s the standard def:
Ok— so, now, some of yours! I’m hoping we can all sit back and watch some things we haven’t seen before…
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
I guess I’m showing my age, but my top picks are all from the early 1970s.
1) Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo. A naked girl washes her hair in a waterfall surrounded by flowers, birds and butterflies. It’s breathtaking, the most beautiful commercial ever made, animated or otherwise.
2) Wyler’s Lemonade, and Wyler’s Root Beer. Made in a trippy, psychedelic style reminiscent of Yellow Submarine, with a folk rock musical soundtrack: “Walla-walla-walla-walla-walla-walla-Wyler’s! Shobba-lobba-dobba-doo-BOW!” The colours were stunning, but unfortunately surviving prints all seem to be in black and white.
3) Nesbitt’s Orange Soda. This must have been a regional brand; I only saw these commercials when my family were on vacation in Traverse City, but man, did they leave an impression. They had an underground comix vibe combined with surreal retro animation, sort of R. Crumb meets Max Fleischer. At the end of each commercial, a bunch of anthropomorphic soda bottles would ask a soda bottle in a top hat what he thought of it, and the top-hatted soda bottle would say: “Dumb!”
Honourable mention goes to Home Hardware, an Australian chain, for its long-running series of clay-animated commercials featuring two dogs, Rusty (a brown dog with pointy ears) and Sandy (a yellow dog with floppy ears). These commercials were well-made and very clever. I’ve long believed that Rusty and Sandy deserved their own show; who knows, it might have been as big as “Bluey”.
Paul, I remember all three of those commercials.
Another one in the “Psychedlic Peter Max Style” was one for Good & Fruity candy. (The Good & Fruity Rainbow Band, singing about the rainbows in the flavors of Good & Fruity candy.) Searching for it on Youtube, all I can find is the audio -but found out that the singing in that commercial was done by a then-unknown Carly Simon. Funny, the things we learn in the process of looking up other things!
Until recently, I was never aware that any of the major theatrical animation studios lent their talents to commercials. I’m referring, of course to the Walt Disney commercials, some of which were featured throughout the Walt Disney‘s treasures collections that came out a number of years ago. Sure wish they continued. Otherwise, my favorite commercials are pretty mainstream.
At the top there were the Jay Ward commercials for classic kids cereals. CAP‘N crunch commercials were high on that list. Somebody just wrote on Facebook about them, and I didn’t realize they went on through the 1980s. The earliest ones are the most fun, and I wonder how many very good quality prints are still available. I look forward to them as much as I look forward to the television shows where they could be found. Back in the golden years of classic television animation, the late 1950s through the early 1970s, you didn’t have a such thing as a MeTV TOONS or Cartoon Network, where you could find 24 hours of classic cartoons.
The MeTV TOONS channel does not feature classic commercials, and I often wonder why. They were, as I just said, as much a cherished part of our childhood. Imagine seeing some of those classic commercials again, especially for products that are no longer. I remember trying to taste every cereal out there, with all its sugary, marshmallow bits, and some of them I actually liked. I remember Banana Wackies, and of course, I remember, Lucky Charms, and even the form mentioned CAP‘N CRUNCH cereal had marshmallows in them, but I never got to taste those. I don’t know if they still bother to put that kind of stuff in the cereal, aside from Lucky Charms, which still does exist.
These kind of cereals exist more as snack food these days then sold as the first meal of the day for kids. I am always reminded of other characters who did TV commercials for certain products. There were the Mr. Magoo General Electric lightbulb commercials.
I recently was watching the WarnerArchive collection of “Cheyenne“ which was sponsored by General Electric. I almost expected to see a Mr. Magoo commercial slipped in there somewhere, but I don’t know what channels Warner Brothers would have to go through to get a good copy of the TV commercials.
We are, of course, now privileged to see classic Hannah-Barbera commercials for various sugary cereals, thanks to the Warner Archive Collection’s full issue of “The Huckleberry Hound Show“ and possibly even a future release of “the Yogi Bear show“.
Again, I bring up theatrical animated commercials, which I was never aware of. We are getting a complete. “Tom and Jerry“ collection very soon now. Makes me wonder whether the cat and mouse was ever featured in such theatrical commercials, and what did they sell? If anybody knows, please let me know. MGM animation was some of the best out there.
And of course, “Linus the lion hearted“. Boy did I like that show! Yes, I sought out everyone of those cereals! My favorites, of course were crispy critters and Alpha bits cereal. Who doesn’t like little animals floating around in their cereal bowl in the morning? there were other cereals that had a very, very short lifespan. Maybe they just didn’t taste so good. Among these was Baron Von Grapefellow! Anybody remember tasting that one? There were way too many candy commercials, and of course I had a major sweet tooth for some of those. There was fruit, stripe gum, with the zebra of many different colors. Then there was Choo Choo Charlie commercials. The Good and Plenty candy, which I really do not like now! But I digress…
My favorite and best-remembered animated commercials were the ones that featured well-known characters. The one that first pops into mind is Quick Draw McGraw for Sugar Smacks. I still remember the lyrics to this day:
First, we go puff, puff, puff until they’re big enough
Then we go tweet, tweet, tweet until they’re good and sweet
Then we go smack, smack, smack for Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks!
I also vividly remember the Flintstones ads for Welch’s grape juice, particularly one in which Fred poured out a pitcherful for Wilma and Pebbles, but ended up crying because there wasn’t any grape juice left over for him! Then of course several years later there were the ads for Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles cereals, also featuring the Flintstones, and which evolved into a very formulaic and repetitive format for a couple of decades. Some of the Flintstones vitamin ads also included character animation. Later in life I was introduced to a program length commercial for Busch Beer that also featured the Flintstones.
In the late eighties/early nineties there was a fascinating series of nicely-animated ads for Chevy Lumina that featured the Disney characters–Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, as well as some of the features characters such as the Fairy Godmother and if I recall correctly the Seven Dwarfs. These ads were circulating right around the time of the grand opening for Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park in Florida.
Bugs Bunny had a great gig advertising Kool Aid that lasted quite a while (“Make friends with Kool-Aid, with Kool-Aid make friends!”) And who can forget the Peanuts characters advertising Met Life? (“Get Met–it pays!”)
Other cartoon characters I remember hawking products were Linus the Lion-Hearted for Crispy Critters (“the one and only cereal that comes in shapes of animals”), Lovable Truly for Alpha Bits, and of course Sugar Bear for Sugar Crisp. And we all fondly remember Tony the Tiger for Sugar Frosted Flakes.(“They’re grreat!!!”) I also liked Choo Choo Charley who advertised Good and Plenty candy.
Then there were the “generic” ads, such as “Western Airlines–the only way to fly!” And a product called Choc-o-bread which featured a pretty nifty animated commercial. Also, the running gag in the Hawaiian Punch ads–“How about a nice Hawaiian Punch? Pow!”
I just realized there are so many I couldn’t begin to list all my favorites. But this list includes a fair sampling of the ones that I remember best.
My favorite is an Alka-Seltzer commercial designed by R. O. Blechman wherein a jittery-lined guy is arguing with his jittery-lined stomach.
This just reminds me how much I miss Mike Kazaleh’s Saturday columns.
Huh? Oh, uh, the classic Tootsie Pop commercial, I guess.
I’m interested in what Mike Kazaleh has to say as he’s offered some excellent ’50s commercials before.
I’m partial to the Heinz Worchestershire Sauce spot animated by Art Babbitt at Storyboard which I’m sure everyone here has seen.
Having leafed through the pages of Television Age with its frame grabs of animated commercials of the late ’50s and early ’60s, there is so much that remains to be seen if it’s still out there.
And the book Design in Motion (on archive.org) has examples of commercial designs of that era. https://tralfaz.blogspot.com/2017/03/assorted-1950s-commercial-cartoons.html
In addition to the ones already mentioned, I always liked the claymation Hubba Bubba Max ads, and the animated Pop-Tart commercials. There were also some nice stop-motion ads for Planters featuring Mr. Peanut at one point.
Oh, and who could forget the stop-motion Hershey’s Kisses Christmas ad?
Let’s see now… It’s already been mentioned, but the Bugs Bunny spots for Kool-Aid done by Tex Avery are great, his Raid commercials are good too!
This commercial for Hersey’s Kisses featuring Rocky and Bullwinkle are probably the best they looked outside of the original cartoons — for some reason even during Ward’s lifetime they insisted on making Moose and Squirrel ugly for everything made after the series (like the scene cels where Boris has red eyes), but here, they look like they did on the show with fuller animation!
https://youtu.be/i7VcUvHnlh4
Speaking of “looking like they do on the show”… The J.J. Sedelmaier Speed Racer commercial is really cool, very closely replicating the look and feel of the show — including the bad parts!
https://youtu.be/W8wpBdM9ATE
I really love the designs and expressions on the Yogi Bear sunscreen PSA — again by Mark Kausler. I wish we got a full Yogi show like this!
https://youtu.be/1NWS753hsfQ
Of course though, all of these have been, y’know — good. How about one that’s so laughably bad that it circles around do being good? The lips move, so technically it’s animated!
https://youtu.be/tmT1xFAlM8k
Sorry Yang, I didn’t animate that Yogi Bear Sunscreen PSA. It’s not a recognizable style to me, so I can’t guess who actually drew it. Mark Kausler
The Yogi Bear sunscreen spot was directed and animated by me. Scott Shaw! did the storyboards and layouts.
This commercial (shot film, really) from the Soviet Union for a Quarz camera featuring the characters from the state’s ever-popular Ну, Погоди! is a fun one. Includes the Hawaii Five-O theme.
https://youtu.be/XH-JJUPJIM0
As a collector of TV recordings and especially commercials, I just don’t know where to begin, but nonetheless, I’ll share a few of my favourites from my tape archive.
First, this beautifully animated spot for Breton Crackers from 1985.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxTh6Suqor7lq4GzYDJrK6KnEbxFxvFISy?si=FTqrgaxwBTGTJkKm
This Terry Gilliam inspired Alpha-Getti spot from around 1990.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxVsbFAbvygGaR5Fna_1zpAy7LaZUES47l?si=iWiHr_VZQ6T1AzrY
M&Ms “Milk Chocolate Vacation” from 1988.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxUxNJuS-STVMfl-Ela7_a0G7wZNrVdlV9?si=44M0_YoDlXwy7J8V
This one I fondly remember from my youth: Rainbow Chips Ahoy with “Kevin” from 1990.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxvHZpjnTR4vuT1Vv_bCd7sCZ6n_sD_6PX?si=WLnxpb25VD2zcEPx
And this fun little duo of spots for Ziploc, which look like they just might be animated by the Will Vinton Studio, also from around 1990.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxhwhRssYZcjRj2og_oVP8SBXvlYek0l-1?si=c3yLYk0aGjb1MXQN
I’ll also share a couple of my favourite animation/live action hybrid spots here as well.
Purrr Cat Food with Garfield (basically a modified Alpo Cat Food commercial) (1989)
https://youtu.be/1xa8h9F2mJ0?si=eAb2X5XrKrTjfVRK
Pop-Tarts spot with the late Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of the desperate toaster (1994)
https://youtu.be/H6nETgvzTJM?si=tOYU8WiIgiEIuTW-
These commercials were quite good even though they sometime make me feel old.
I remember some 1960’s commercials that ran in Rhode Island for Old Stone Bank, a local financial institution, that featured Fred Flintstone, that ended with Fred yelling, ‘Yabba Dabba Doo, love that bank!”
Here are some more:
https://youtu.be/hLmEyTW51gg
https://youtu.be/q35YGuY78M0
https://youtu.be/Apq5OJ521BA
https://youtu.be/mQVGqHY-4rU?si=0qbVV3Smsm-ToVx3
Tex Avery’s Raid insects and Bugs Bunny Kool-Aid spots get my vote. Tex, who got stressed out near the end of his theatrical cartoon career, found that turning to the one-minute commercials was a great relief to him personally, because he could toss them off in a relatively short time rather than laboring over a seven-minute short for months to get it just right. Tex’s workaholism was wonderful for his audiences, but was pretty hard on him. It’s nice to know that he got to slow down a bit in the twilight of his long and brilliant career.
Being a true Mr. Nice guy, Tex would bring cels of Bugs home with him when he was making the commercials, and give them out to the neighborhood kids (this according to Joe Adamson’s biography). I wonder if any of them— now in late middle age— still have some cels? They’d be worth some serious money today!
One I never got out of my head since seeing it in the late ’60s looked like a typical kid cereal ad of the time. A kid is walking along and suddenly gets surrounded by signs officiously declaring “Stay off the grass! – No dogs allowed! – No fishing! – etc.” The kid runs screaming “Sugar Pops Peeeete!!!” Even as a kid I got a laugh out of such anxiety generated in a kid’s ad, and that one would run to Sugar Pops Pete in such a crisis.
Maybe these don’t count, but I was absolutely blown away by the amazing “Uncola” commercials that Robert Abel did for 7-Up using slit scan techniques and early motion control technology in service of a psychedelic, 1920s-style retro effect. Just amazing. I’d be riveted to the TV when ever one of these appeared.
My favorite. I want my Mayo.
https://youtu.be/sz7IdA11n3U?si=1neYcxIa_oFZYyKM
The “Smattering of Spots” collection is a powerhouse bonanza of amazing “cartoon modern” animation…glad to know it’s on YouTube 🙂 And thanks for the “vault” sale — I’m excited to get that rare Sam Basset Blu-ray 👍
My favorite: National Drink Jell-O Week!
Does anyone besides me remember the white-on-black Welch’s ads that were tacked on to the end of the Flintstones’ opening titles when they aired on ABC? I only remember them because when the show went into syndication, “The Flintstones” in stone-age typeface was missing at the end when they zoomed into the black drive-in screen. I’m sure the as-aired opening titles (with the ads) for the last 2-3 seasons exist on kinescope somewhere.
I’ve always had a soft spot for a series of ads for “Happy Soup” – rather generic Heinz soups with Disney character noodles and labels. I don’t know who did the spots… I think Diz made them in-house. 8 flavors were made, but I’ve only seen two ads show up, with production bits for two others.
Here’s the Pluto spot: https://youtu.be/ji7kxqNVZj8?si=rkOkvyj4GDvzFRBl
Hopefully the other ads turn up someday. And either my hearing is worse than I thought, or that’s Sterling Holloway narrating the spot.
I know these barely count as animated, but there were the ads for Kent Cigarettes. Which leads to a version of the Kent jingle my brother sang in 1966: “To Chief O’Hara, it’s a “Saints be praised”/ To the Commissioner, it’s a big fat raise/ To the Batman, it’s where the Joker went/ To a smoker, it’s a Kent.”
I also liked the Jay Ward commercials for Cap’n Crunch (early ones when he had that all child crew) and Quisp & Quake (wasn’t the joke they were the same cereal?).
The Co-Co Wheats commercial was designed and directed by Roger Chouinard at Duck Soup Produckions in Santa Monica. I did the opening shot of the train on two field pan paper, highly complicated design with the little boy engineer and the whistle characters. There are a few too many shots in the spot for viewing comfort. When you have such a complicated character design, the cutting rate must be slow enough so that the details stand out. I remember working a lot of late hours to get all the drawing done, Kunimi Terada was the inker, and she did her usual brilliant job. Kunimi was so good that she could ink cels and clean up a rough animator’s drawings as she inked them at the same time! I also animated on the Nesbitt’s Orange soda commercial at Duck Soup, directed by Duane Crowther and designed by Roger Chouinard. I remember animating the sniffing dog at the beginning, and a few other shots. I like the pin ball machine scene, maybe Gary Mooney did that one. Duane animated the big boss soda bottle saying “Dumb!” Glad that Paul Groh and Steve Stanchfield like these spots. Commercials in the early 1970s featured full animation that Filmation and Hanna-Barbera didn’t do. They were a lot of work and good training for we animation lovers.
was that ray Charles singing the jingle?
I remember Woody Woodpecker being the spokesman for Rice Krispies back in the 60s, but I never saw that one.
The one I remember is with Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda (Woody keeps eating Andy Panda’s Rice Krispies until Andy calls him out on it-I remember him saying “You Rice Krispies crook, you!!)
Off the top of my head, one favorite animated film is this claymation commercial for Reiner Beer done by Will Vinton and Bob Garnier (before they split up) parody a certain Coca Cola ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvr_I_Wi7pA
Note the set and some of the characters were shortly after reused in Vinton’s short “Mountain Music” (where the set ends up getting destroyed).