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.