It’s been around 20 years since SodaStream last advertised their range of fizzy drinks makers on television, and no expense has been spared on the new ad. Indeed it has an almost movie feel to it, starting with images of sad and dejected people whilst a voice over talks rather ambiguously about lost loves and things of that ilk.

The advert then changes to shots of people being happy because their love is returning, and it is revealed that this love is none other than the good old SodaStream machine!

That said, as you can see in the image the brand new SodaStream model looks rather more space age than the original yellow and white plastic affair that I remember having in our family kitchen.

The new machines certainly look the business, and one aspect they are being sold under is that they are greener than buying bottles of fizzy pop. After all, you just use tap water to make the drink and the gas cylinder is returnable when it has expired.

The thing that pleases me most though is that SodaStream have wisely decided to retain their old slogan in the new advert, so get ready to “get busy with the fizzy” once more!

Carling Black Label used to run a very successful campaign, spread across numerous adverts, which were based on the idea of some bloke doing something extremely well, and a couple of onlookers watching him and commenting “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label“. They had many great adverts using this theme, but the cowboy one was definitely my favourite.

It starts with a cowboy clutching a bag leaving a western saloon bar. A posse of riders appears and the cowboy runs away, but is lassoed by some of them. The cowboy continues to run, pulling those who lassoed him from their steeds, and dragging them along the ground as if they were being dragged along by a stagecoach.

We see the cowboy continue through rivers and desert before running off into the sunset, still pulling along the other men, before we hear the tag line and cut to a picture of a pint of Carling accompanied by a jingle.

“Is that all?“, I hear you say. Well, this is where it gets clever. The next advert comes on, or so we think. It’s an advert for a compilation album of love songs, with two lovers walking through a beautiful landscaped garden. Next thing you know the cowboy, still lassoed, bursts through a hedge, followed by a horse jumping the hedge. The cowboy has apparently invaded the next advert!

The cowboy makes his escape, after destroying much of the garden in the process, and the young lady being wooed is scooped up onto a horse, leaving her Romeo looking a little dejected.

But it doesn’t end there. The screen goes black and we cut to two women in a supermarket talking about washing powder. One of the women takes a box from the shelf, and who should be peeping through from behind but our cowboy friend, pushing a trolley but still wearing the lasso.

After trashing the supermarket in much the same way as he trashed the garden, the cowboy leaves the supermarket, bumping into the jilted lover from the love songs advert at the checkout. He manages to escape to a pub for a pint, whereupon we’re treated once more to the proper end of a Carling Black Label ad.

I’ve spoken to many people over the years about this advert, and have only received blank looks, but it definitely did exist, the proof being this video clip of the advert which you can see below.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that they’ve done the right thing and got Jenny Logan, the original actress from the ad, to come back and “do the Shake ‘n’ Vac” one more time. The new version of the advert sees Jenny dancing round with a new fancy pink hoover and some funky new moves, but it seems the soundtrack is just as it was before – well, you can’t improve on perfection can you!

One nice touch is that the revamped ad starts with a snippet of Jenny from the original ad, which then morphs into her as she is today, so you get a bit of a before and after effect! Check the new advert out below…

If seeing the advert again has got your feet tapping then you might also be interested to know that Glade, the makers of Shake ‘n’ Vac, are also running a competition in conjunction with The Mirror to win £1000. In keeping with the advert, all you have to do is upload a photograph or video of yourself doing the Shake ‘n’ Vac dance! You can enter the competition here.

And as if that isn’t enough to keep all you Shake ‘n’ Vac fans out there happy, I was also given the opportunity to ask the Shake ‘n’ Vac lady herself (her words, not mine!) a few questions about the adverts. Many thanks to Jenny for answering my questions, and you can see what she had to say by watching the short video below…

With that unpaid for advert for Sky out of the way, today I’m remembering the TV ads for one particularly brand of blank videotape – Scotch. Scotch videotapes were often one of the more expensive blank tapes you could buy, but they were supposed to be of a higher quality, or at least that’s what the adverts told us.

For many years Scotch used an animated skeleton to extol the virtues of their videotapes, with probably the following ad being the one most people will remember:-

The bit in particular that (unsurprisingly) sticks in my mind is the repeating phrase “re-record not fade away”.

Were the tapes any better than their rivals? I’m not sure, but the advert obviously had some kind of psychological effect on me as I did tend to trust any Scotch tapes I ended up with more than most. I’m certain I never had a Scotch videotape that ended up getting chewed up in the inner workings of my video recorder, but I have no evidence to vouch for the re-recordability factor.

Scotch themselves obviously had faith in their product though, claiming that “you can watch Scotch forever” and guaranteeing that if you should have a tape that started to fade, you could get it replaced. This was claimed as a lifetime guarantee, and apparently Scotch are still being true to their word, as this post from 2008 on the IanVisits blog shows – except amusingly they no longer make videotapes so the replacement one is made by BASF, meaning you technically can’t watch Scotch forever…

Watching the adverts today is quite amusing, especially this one, which shows the skeleton telling us all about a Scotch tape that he bought in 1983 which is presumably still going strong in 2021 as he watches that years Derby race. There’s Mr. Skeleton sat in his modern, plush apartment, which still has a video recorder… Mind you, kudos to them for realising that TV sets would one day be hung on the wall – they just needed to make it a little bigger is all.

There was a little bit on there talking about some bloke called Colin who was the official Bird’s Eye potato guru (what a job title) who has apparently been making sure Bird’s Eye only pick the best potatoes so that Potato Waffles are as good now as they were when launched in 1981.

Suddenly my Eighties sense was tingling, and it made me realise I hadn’t written about a food related subject for a little while, hence the subject for today’s post.

Bird’s Eye Potato Waffles are basically mashed up potato moulded into a rectangular lattice shape. They’re the kind of food that could only be manufactured in a factory somewhere, as you’d never bother to even try and make anything similar from scratch, it just wouldn’t be worth the effort.

They’re tasty enough (especially if you cook them with a bit of cheese on top, that’s my tip) but to this day the thing that always pops straight into my head whenever I catch a glimpse of a Potato Waffle is the TV advert, in particular it’s jingle which gets lodged in your brain and refuses to budge.

The song is sung in a nasally kind of voice, and in it’s lengthier form provides you with several ideas about how to serve them, most of which are little more than dumping some other food type on top of a waffle. The bit about how to cook them is also quite informative, instructing you to “grill ‘em, bake ‘em, fry ‘em, eat ‘em“, although I’d suggest you only do one out of the first three, not all of them.

The music accompanying the words was quite bouncy in nature, and for some inexplicable reason had a cuckoo sound in it, perhaps used to try and convince us that Potato Waffles were a fun loving party animal of a potatoey meal accompaniment.

Probably the worst part of the ad is that were told several times that they are “waffly versatile“. On it’s own this makes very little sense, until at the very end of the advert this phrase is displayed on screen and the ‘W’ and ‘A’ switch places to yield “awffly versatile“. Yes, I know that’s not a real word, but it’s pronounced the same as “awfully“. Clever, those marketing guys, eh?

To finish off then here’s the advert for you to watch, but be warned, if you do watch it you’ll probably go around for the rest of the day singing “grill ‘em, bake ‘em, fry ‘em, eat ‘em” to yourself.

These are the bars that I’m sure you all remember loving as a child, but for some reason as an adult you find yourself ignoring them when you’re looking at the chocolate shelf in a newsagent or supermarket.

Milky Way, Chocolate Buttons and Smarties are three good examples (although poor old Smarties have been somewhat usurped by M&Ms now, and they’ve got rid of the old round tube with the plastic lid with a letter on it) but today’s post is about the Cadbury Fudge, or Finger of Fudge as I always believed it was called when I was little thanks to the TV advertising.

It’s a simple but effective sweet. A long thin log of fudge coated in Cadbury chocolate, it had a nice creamy taste and best of all wasn’t an expensive chocolate bar. The TV advert embedded below claimed the cost to be 10 pence, but I’m not sure what year this would have been. The good news is that the Finger of Fudge doesn’t appear to have raised much in price over the years either, as it still only costs 15 pence today. Indeed you can buy a box of 60 from A Quarter Of for less than a tenner!

So to the TV advert, which still makes me think of my Mum coming to collect us from primary school. There were a number of different ones I believe, but the one I remember most is of the two little boys playing conkers. It’s the end of a school day and one of the lads can see his Mum giving his little sister a Fudge bar, so his mind isn’t really on the game. Just as the other boy is about to smash his conker, the little chap runs off to claim his own Fudge bar, leaving his little mate fuming!

It’s the jingle that will probably bring the memories flooding back most though, so here’s the advert for you to watch and join in with. Ready? A finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat…

The advert was aimed at cyclists young and old, telling them to take care when riding at night that they were as clearly visible as possible. I do cynically wonder though if perhaps the manufacturers of those highly reflective yellow and orange vests and bands were actually behind it in order to increase sales of something which can make you look a bit silly, let’s be honest.

What makes this particular ad so memorable was the song accompanying it, which was a very jolly little song informing you of the various ways you could improve your visibility. The afore mentioned yellow and orange vests were just one way. One lad in the film even goes as far as to wear what appears to be a jump suit made entirely out of tin foil. I think I’d rather wear the embarrassing vest thanks.

Probably the most drastic measure suggested was to paint your bike a brighter colour. “Take a brush to your bike, add some tape if you like“, said the ad, whilst a young man painted his racing bike with white emulsion and stuck on some reflective tape.

I guess if your bike was a wreck this might not be a bad option, but I certainly wasn’t going to paint my Grifter. Mind you, given it was silver I didn’t really need to paint my bike as it was bright enough already.

Anyway, here’s the ad so you can watch it again and reminisce!

There were also many ways in which the message could be put across, for example using cartoon characters such as the brilliant Charley Says adverts, a dramatisation of some dangerous scene, or the good old celebrity endorsement.

The Green Cross Code was the name given to the rules of crossing the road, and I believe the name is still in use here in the UK to this day, although I must admit to not having seen any evidence of this. The Green Cross Code can be distilled into three main actions – Stop, Look and Listen – although quite often Think got tacked on the end as well. All good advice and simple enough for kids to understand and stay safe on the roads.

Anyway, you all know how to cross the road safely I’m sure, but just in case here are a handful of my favourite examples of Green Cross Code safety films. This first one dates back to the late seventies, and I certainly remember it being shown when I was little. The celebrity of choice here is Alvin Stardust (thank God it wasn’t Gary Glitter, eh?) who lets two little girls know that they “must be out of their tiny minds” when they walk in front of a car. OK, he’s right, but all that glam rock gear doesn’t mean he has a right to go round speaking down to kids.

Probably the most famous Green Cross Code adverts are those featuring The Green Cross Code Man, played by Darth Vader himself, Mr. Dave Prowse. Somehow Dave manages to still look manly despite being dressed in a suit that makes him look like a packet of Pacers (remember them?). However, in this particular advert someone decided Mr. Prowse’s dulcet West Country tones should be dubbed over. A shame, but it’s not a bad piece of dubbing.

Sticking with the Green Cross Code Man, here’s another where Dave has actually been allowed to do the talking, well, to a certain extent anyway. Some wag obviously thought it would be funny, what with Dave being Lord Vader of the Sith and all, to give the Green Cross Code Man a robotic sidekick. Looking like a cross between R2D2, Metal Mickey and Dusty Bin, this little chap actually did most of the instruction this time round.

This next one is a true advert of the 1980’s, as you’ll be able to tell from both the visual design and the music, which was quite a catchy rap telling you not to “step out when you’re close to the edge, otherwise you may find that you lose your head“. Quite direct and to the point really!

And so onto my final example, which features Jon Pertwee of Doctor Who and Worzel Gummidge fame. Now, I quite like Jon, but in this case they lumbered him with possibly the most over-complicated way of remembering how to cross the road. It was an acronym – SPLINK! I think the ‘S’ stood for Stop, but the rest escapes me. Somehow I think Jon knew this was a bit daft though, as his final comment is “well, maybe now we’ll all remember the Green Cross Code“. I’m sure he’s being sarcastic.