Child Of The 1980's

Picture this. As a child, you’re outside playing and your Mum calls you in for dinner. After ignoring her a couple of times you finally come in when you’re told it’s getting cold, so you run inside and sit to the table to find Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummers sat there on your plate. Joy! Now you wish you’d come in sooner!

Well, I always felt that way anyway.  In the days before Chicken McNuggets the humble Turkey Drummer (and even humbler Turkey Burger for that matter) were a staple part of most kids diets during the 1980’s.  Made from bits of turkey reformed into shapes that roughly approximate a chicken drumstick, and covered in bread crumbs, they really were, as Mr. Matthews would put it, bootiful, and served with chips and baked beans you had a meal fit for a king!

They are still available today, and I still love ‘em, although don’t go near the new healthier versions Bernard Matthews has produced labelled with a Big Green Tick.  They may look the same but they seem to have had all the moisture sucked out of them and taste like cardboard, whereas the originals were always fairly moist (probably due to a far too high fat content!).

During the eighties Turkey Drummers enjoyed a very successful ad campaign (it was never off the TV or so it seemed) where a boy scout returns home from a week at camp to a plate of Turkey Drummers, peas and mash.  Yum!  The young scamp tells his Mum how exhausting camp was, although it appears quite relaxing thanks to the selection of flash back moments we see.

The two things I find most odd about the ad are that the boy takes both a bath and a shower, and that his mother looks and sounds like a Catherine Tate character. You can see it below, although the quality of it unfortunately isn’t the best.

This entry is filed under Sweets and Snacks, TV - Adverts and was posted on May 25th, 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.