TVSquad

Feel like wasting your entire day? Watch this batch of commercials Giant magazine put together. They claim these are the "50 Greatest Commercials of the '80s," but I think that's a bit of a stretch. First of all, a few of the ads they show are from the '70s, like a Colt 45 commercial starring Redd Foxx (everyone knows that the Colt 45 ads from the '80s starred Billy Dee "Works Every Time" Williams). Another '70s ad is the Tootsie Pop ad where a kid asks "How many licks does it take to get to the center?", which seemed to be on TV for about twenty years.

Another flaw of this list? Well, it's right there in the introductory paragraph: they were going to list the best five, but they just kept finding more and more good ones. Problem is, by the end of the list, I was straining to remember some of the ads they were talking about, and I watched a hell of a lot of TV in the '80s. One of the ads, where Batman and Robin use a shitty little econobox car to chase down the Penguin, was only shown in England, for crissakes.

But there's lots of good stuff, like Jason Alexander, flush with hair, dancing and singing about one of McDonald's dumbest products ever, the McDLT (Remember the McDLT? It came in this huge container that kept the "hot side hot and the cool side cool." I've always wondered why they thought "crisp lettuce" would be the main selling point for a burger). Other good stuff was the ad for the compilation album "Freedom Rock," the "I learned it by watching you!" anti-drug PSA, and a Phillips light bulb ad where a meek guy accidentally hits on a Teamster.