Comparing Retro Ads to Todays Commercials (Part 1)

Growing up in the 80's, T.V played a big part of my childhood. As I've mentioned before, I was weird, (was?), and I would tape the commercials I liked on blank Vhs tapes. They ended up getting erased later on as at the time I thought it was more important to re-record over them with my homemade porn movies. (Opps. Did I just say that?) However, thank God for the internet where I have found almost all of those old classic ads again. Commercials aren't a big deal but after seeing how many views a lot of these older commercial breaks get on youtube, I thought it would be interesting to compare the ones from now to what they used to be. So, here are just a few I randomly picked.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Old Jell-o Pudding Commercial

 2011 New Jell-O Commercial

 And Here's the new Commercial

for  Jell-O Pudding. As you can see, Bill Cosby is no where to be found. I could live without Bill Cosby and the magical aspects of the ad, but this is just creepy. It's not just creepy to me but also very annoying. I just want to punch the father's ugly face in. Why? Just because... that face is just too stupid for me. I mean, those faces worked on Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" music video.. but not so much with a Jell-o ad.

    OLD kEEBLER COMMERCIAL

Here's a commercial for Keebler Cookies from the mid or early 80's. I knew from an early age that the Keebler Elves lived inside a tree & that they had really cool ways of making cookies. They used a scale to measure Chips Deluxe Cookies to make sure there was enough chocolate chips on it. They had a magic spoon to pour chocolate into the magic middles cookies.   I just thought that they were really neat, hard working elves. I wonder if they ever got paid for their work?

New Keebler Commercial

Here's the newier commercial for Keebler and as you can see, they decided to blend cartoons with a more family oriented based realism. And maybe it's just me, but the older blond kid seems more like an eighteen year old. She kind of reminds me of Rachael Taylor from the movie "Shutter." Maybe this kid makes similar faces that she does on that movie.

Later, we see the Keebler Elf leader, Ernie, hiding on the kitchen counter, which is weird since I'm used to seeing him inside the tree. I guess they decided to take the Keebler Elves out of the box, or in this case, out of the tree. The end is a pretty close remake to the original elves, working inside the tree. Still, I liked the simple old cartoony state they were in. Their remakes are a little too computer graphic for me.

The Toys R Us commercials were one of my favorites growing up. This is exactly why:

OLD Toys R Us Commercial

I think if you were a kid in the 80's you had to love these commercials. How could you not? It was a commercial for Toys R Us & all us kids of the 80's should remember how awesome Toys R Us was back in the day. It was just a awesome place. Grant it, I loved going to Kaybee or any other toy stores back then, but Toys R Us seemed to be the mother of all toy stores. Even the "boys aisles" seemed cool to me then. Toys R Us had just about everything a kid could dream of, which made this ad more believeable.

2005 Toys R Us Commercial

Then there's the newer Toys R Us Commercial which, thank God, is ridiculously short. You can see some shots of Jeffery the Giraffe, but oh dear Lord, what have they done to him? The "I wanna be a Toys R Us kid" has now been replaced with "Toys R Us, where kids are a big deal." That jingle/slogan was classic and they did away with it. That's just so wrong.

Old Cinnamon Toast Crunch Commercial

To be fair, I picked an old commercial that I was never really crazy about. To me whenever I think of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I will always think of the three bakers. The three bakers were known as Bob, Quello, and of course the white haired one Wendell. I never liked them. The only reason I can give as to why is that they creeped me out. Certain cartoons back in the day just did that to me. I wasn't really scared of them, I just got a creepy feeling from them. The movie "A Mouse and His Child" gave me this creepy feeling, especially during a particular scene where it shows reoccuring can of dog food over and over again. (Unless you have seen this movie, you will have no idea what I'm talking about and it's easier to just google the movie.) Another good example is a scene from the movie "The Brave Little Toaster." There is some freaky nightmare scene on there also but what got me creeped out was a scene where some appliance is dismantled or killed in front of the other appliances eyes. Shit liked that creeped me out, as did these bakers. Good thing for me the baker Wendell sold out leaving the other 2 bakers behind and went on to advertise the cereal by himself in the early 90's. They even started to draw him different and gave him more of a cereal mascot personality. Eventually, Wendell got canned also. Which brings us to today.

New Cinnamon Toast Crunch Commercial

I remember the first time seeing this during a commercial break for SpongeBob. (My explanation for watching the show is that I have kids and no life.) I thought this was pretty cute until I seen one of the crazy squares punture a hole into another one's body with it's tongue. After that I was all like, "Holy Shit!" Still though, this doesn't creep me out like the three bakers did, which says a lot about my mental capability now. This is now, but I still think that if this commercial was around back then, that I would still like these squares better then all three of the bakers together.

That concludes my opinions of retro commercials to what they have become today. More for next time.

My Favorite 80's Toys* {Kuddlee Uglies}

Back in the 80's all the way up until around 1992 or so, I loved my toys. Like most kids though, I had my favorites like the ones I am going to tell you about now.

"Kuddlee Uglies"

Me, my brother, & my cat oreo with a Kuddlee Uglie

Up until now I never knew these guys had a "real" name. I ended up with a little collection after I went over one of my Bff's house and seen she had one of them. Of course I had to over do things and one would just not do, so I got as many as I could. I probably had my poor mother run out to Jamesway that same day to buy me a few. They each came with a plastic chain around their necks. Once I had a few of them, I decided that the girl monsters needed boyfriends, so I would pair them in couples.
Then they each got their own outrageous name, which explaining why I named them what I did is a story within itself. My favorite monster happened to be the first one I got. She was blue with one eye and a little pink lop sided bow. Her name was Grinjetta which I cannot take credit for giving her. That same Bff who had the monsters originally named her. (Some days I wish me and her remained friends. It's sad how some friends drift away.) Not only did my imagination allow the monster's to receive some pretty unusual names but I also gave each one their own personality. Grinjetta was a loud big mouth, out going type of girl. (Little did I know that her personality is what I grew up to become.) Now, Grinjetta's boyfriend sidekick was a pink and blue monster with horns; a shy little monster known as Wallster. I'm not quite sure on how his name was invented but I'd stretch out on a limb to say that it was reinvented from the name "Webster." Then there was the boy and girl monster pair ChimeSlimedom,(a green boy monster), and ChimeChaindom, (a purple girl monster.) Now it just seems like a bunch of mumbled ridiculous words to me but back then I had a pretty good reason to name them this. I like wind chimes, (hence the "Chime" at the beginning of their names), I liked Slime, (thank you Nickelodeon!), and they came with a chain.(that's were the "Chain" came in on the girl's name.) Those two were like Siamese twins and would get into trouble together. My brother also had a green monster identical to Chimeslimedom that we called "Slimeball." I made my brother put this little Hawiian shirt on Slimeball so he wouldn't get mixed up with my monster. I always thought that Slimeball was like my brother, kind of like someone who thinks farting is funny. I always thought as Slimeball as crude and a terror, just like my little brother. Then there was Gretan. Gretan was purple with yellow fuzzy hair that felt horrible and itchy with her bow wrapped around it. Her personality was best described as Claire from the Breakfast Club. Gretan was the monster my Bff owned which was named the same thing. So technically, yes, I stole the name. Her boyfriend was a class clown wacky monster with big ears that went by the name Tango. He got his name when I was eating Sweethearts, (you know, those heart shaped candies with sweet messages on them.) and I picked a heart that read "Take Two To Tango."  I loved Tango too because I pretended that he could fly using his big ears as wings. The final monster was a tough guy with orange fur and purple horns that I named Lighting Spark. I loved the name "Sparky" because it was the name of a villain from Mario Brothers 2  but I resorted to "Lighting Spark" because I had already named my dog "Sparky." I made Lighting Spark the leader out of the crew. The Jamesway in my town, (Hammonton, N.J.), didn't have a large quantity of merchandise so the only Kuddlee Uglies in the store I had already bought thought Lighting Spark didn't have a girlfriend. So, I added a few more "non Kuddlee Uglies" to their crew. Lighting Spark received golden Retriever for his girlfriend that had a blue ribbon and originally came in a dog house. (I guess Lighting Spark had a dog fetish.) I named the girl dog "Golden Winner" since she had a blue ribbon and she acted like a pageant model in my eyes. I'm almost sure now that Golden Winner was a "Kennel Kuddlee" which I had a few of also. I added some hard plastic monsters to my collection to when I bought two Milton Bradley T.H.I.N.G.S games. The one was a Game called Eggzilla in which there's a Godzilla looking monster and you have to put his egg back together with him inside before the timer stops, and Eggzilla pops up destroying the shell. I kept him the name of "Eggzilla" and added him to the monster family. The other T.H.I.N.G.S game was called Astro-nots and it came with a blue monster that had a small monster inside it's mouth. It kind of looked like those aliens from the movies "Aliens" and it was budattached to the side of the game. It didn't care for the game to much so I cut it free giving Eggzilla a girlfriend and a baby.(The monster inside her mouth.) I named her Deepens because I saw her coming her from "deep" within space.  It's so funny how kid's minds worked, especially mine. It amazes me even more than after a few pictures I was able to remember these things now as an adult. My collection of monsters was complete and I referred lovingly to them as "The Gang" as a whole group. I took each and every one of them everywhere with me. I loved them to death. They were my buddies and were always there for me each day. As I entered my teen years my gang was stored away into a trash barrel in our cellar which recently would flood. I believe it was during my rebellion teenage years when downers was all that mattered when my mom threw out all my childhood toys including my beloved gang. All I had left was a few pictures that I had took myself as a little girl of them posing in various poses. I had even wrote captions for each picture to try to explain them on the back of the photo. Most of the pictures came out fuzzy since I was only like an eight year old kid trying to be a photographer. I miss my little monster gang. You can imagine my surprise when my oldest came home with a Gretan monster. She found her at Goodwill and gave her to me. She was lonely so I had to find a Tango for her again. That's all I have now is the two but I'm glad I have them. Maybe one day I'll have my whole monster gang back again.


the caption on the back reads "After- "Burp!"- There was a before picture too, that I can't find,
which shows the same monsters with their drinks & food before they ate it.



Caption on the back reads "The Gang but where's Deepens?" I probably couldn't find her in time for the picture.

The Caption on the back reads "Maybe we can climb to the top of this things to reach the V.C.R! Cowabunga!"
(as if I was making the monsters speak & my grammer was bad....this should've been these) Cowabunga...there's
one I haven't heard in a while.

Caption on the back reads "The whole gang!"

Caption on the back reads "Fools in Love". I don't know understand the caption for this pic
at all now. Maybe it would have helped if I knew how to use the flash back then so I could have
actually seen the picture!

The Caption reads "Slimeball! Don't do that!" "Hee hee hee!" & there's a circle with the words snacks in it with a line through it.
I finally remembered why I wrote this. I wrote those words as if one monster is yelling at Slimeball because he put a cross through
the snacks sign, (which you can't see but do see the pen in his hands) which he did because they ate all the snacks at the snack bar...
leaving "no snacks".

Caption on the back reads "Ok now we need Robbi to pour the coffee." (the caption
was supposed to be a monster talking. I am Robbi by the way)

The picture is of my Kuddlee Uglie Tango and he's giving a (fake) flower
to my mom. The caption on the back reads "Thanks Tango" as if it were my mom
saying it. (my poor mom for having to pose for these silly pictures for me)

The picture is of Tango laying on my pillow with a Kleenex, Pepto Bismol, & some other medication things around him
including a container of "Pearle Drops" because I ran out of medication things to use. The caption on the back reads
"I knew this was going to be a bad day. I'm sick! Too much pizza at the party last night!" (what a weirdo kid I was!)

I didn't include a caption on the back of this one probably because I got really mad when I seen that it didn't
turn out at all. It was supposed to be a picture of the whole monster gang sitting on my porch, blowing bubbles. I had even
propped the monsters to hold the bubble blowers & I blew a few bubbles in the air, ran, & took the picture.

No caption on the back. Just another picture of all my monsters except for the one named Deepens. Maybe
I hadn't bought her yet?

Me,my brother, & my kitty oreo with the monster gang, including Slimeball

This was a picture of Eggzilla floating around on a tube. That green swamp was our pool believe it or not. We had those
cheap plastic pools that the water would turn green after a few weeks.