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These days they just don’t seem to make television adverts with sing along jingles at the end, do they? I’m racking my brain to come up with some examples and the only one I can think of is “Compare the Market (pause) dot com“, and even that isn’t really a jingle but the name of the company set to music.
One brand that did have a classic jingle when I was little was Fairy liquid. You know the one:-
with mild green Fairy Liquid.
It seems the people from Fairy washing up liquid must have noticed this too, because they’ve brought back the classic jingle from their old ads, although it has been twisted a little. It’s the one with the kiddie with the dirty scooter who tries to put it in the dishwasher at the end. It’s a nice attempt at reuse, if a little confusing:-
but unfortunately you can’t get your scooter in.
Why talk about hands washing dishes if it’s advertising dishwasher liquitabs? I don’t get it… Here’s the ad so you can see it for yourself.
Anyway, this all got me thinking about some of the old Fairy liquid ads from my childhood, and I distinctly remember two styles of advert that were used back then.
The first type featured actress Nanette Newman extoling the dishwashing liquids long lasting virtues, compared to the next best brand. This was illustrated by showing a massive stack of washing up which the “next best brand” had managed to wash up. Nanette then slyly smiles at the camera with a quip of the “pretty impressive, eh?” variety, before revealing a much larger stack which the bottle of Fairy had cleaned. Here’s an example I managed to find on YouTube:-
The other type were the ones where a mother was washing up and their little kid would come up to them and ask why the mother’s hands were so soft. These were actually fairly well observed, with the mother patiently explaining all about Fairy and its mildness whilst the kid came about with a barrage of questions like “What’s milder?“.
The child was normally playing a pretend game as well, my favourite of which was the door-to-door salesmen offering dishmops in “pink and yeyyow” which the mother declined because she loved washing up with Fairy so much. Unfortunately I couldn’t find that particular advert, so here’s one with a little boy pretending to be a policeman instead.
August 27th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
The old bottles were the weapon of choice in our water fights, but could be deadly if they weren’t rinsed out properly and got in the eyes
August 27th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I remember they were also good for making balloon powered cars. A couple of axles through the sides with corrugated cardboard wheels and a balloon held on by the stopper. Great fun!
May 30th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Just been shopping at Tesco and the old familiar white bottles are back. Selling at 2 for the price of 1. Due to being their 50th anniversary
May 31st, 2010 at 10:06 pm
That’s interesting to know. I’ll keep my eyes open for them next time I’m shopping. Thanks for the info Alex.
June 12th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Being in the US I never saw these commercials, but whenever I’d watch some British program(me)s from the 70’s up ’till now, I’d see a bottle of that and wonder what it was, only once or twice actually seeing the word “FAIRY” in large friendly letters. All I knew about it was that A> it was probably a dishwashing liquid, and 2> that Benny Hill had done a couple of parody commercials on his show where he was supposed to be a celebrity a housewife recognized and asked him to autograph the bottle, wherein he would and squirt her in the face, and in another he’d squirt himself in the face.
I always wondered what the brand name *was* — I’m almost a little disappointed to find out that the word I could never make out since the 70’s was simply “Liquid”
June 12th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Yes, Fairy Liquid dish washing, er, liquid, is a bit of a British institution. They changed the bottle design quite a few years back, but they’ve recently released limited edition bottles shaped like the original for Fairy’s 50th anniversary.