TVSquad

I'm a sucker for commercials. I think they're needed, and when they're done right they can sometimes be better than the shows they're inserted into. I also think they can tell more about a certain time than the shows themselves.

After the jump is a bunch of commercials from the 60s, 70, and 80s. Some you'll remember instantly, and some you'll see for the first time. Another reason to love the internets: commercials you thought you'd never see again can live on forever!

Remember those commercials for the Encyclopedia Britannica, the ones that ran in the late 80s and early 90s and featured the kid with blond hair and glasses? His name is Donavan Freberg, son of veteran advertising man and comic Stan Freberg, and he's still in the business. He's done voiceover work (Charlie Brown and Linus in various commercials, The Weird Al Show, cartoons), is an artist and filmmaker, and he has a blog that has acheived some cult status.

Now, you'll want to click on that link above but please note that the guy loves boobs. No, I mean he really loves them, and I counted approximately 11,000 pics of naked women on the front page alone. But it's an interesting site.

One bit of trivia: he didn't even have a name until he was five years old. He was just called "Baby Boy" for the first 5 years of his life. After the jump, one of the commercials.

Some TV commericals just fade away, and you can't even remember what product they were pitching. But some commercials are just burned into your brain.

This is one of those commericals. It must be on dozens of videotapes I have of old TV shows. I remember this like it aired yesterday, even though it's 20 years old. It's a Heinz ketchup commercial, with an-oh-so-hip-in-an-80s-way guy tilts a bottle of ketchup on the roof of a building, then walking all calm and cool down the stairs to the street and getting a hot dog in his hand just before the thick, rich ketchup falls from the bottle. He even gets the girl at the end! Oh, and the dude went on to have a role in a TV show you might have heard of. (And the music! "Jane's Getting Serious!" Whoa, flashback.)

Personaly, I think the ketchup pours a little bit too neatly, considering it fell from a few stories. (Check out the video after the jump.)