Child Of The 1980's

“Ambassador, with these Rocher you are really spoiling us!”

Any article about Ferrero Rocher would be incomplete without the above immortal line and a picture of a giant pyramid of those golden balls, so I thought I might as well get those bits out of the way to start off with!

Introduced in 1982, and despite (or perhaps because of?) some truly terrible advertising, Ferrero Rocher have somehow managed to become the after dinner party treat of choice, usurping previous king the After Eight mint. If you want to give a little gift to a more discerning person, somehow Ferrero Rocher seem to fit the bill perfectly.

To be fair, they are actually quite nice to eat, with their perfectly roasted hazelnut, crispy outer shell and that lovely gooey creamy stuff in the middle. They do give off a certain air of luxury, especially with their elegant gold foil presentation, but the thought of that TV commercial is still never far away, is it?

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In my entire life I’m pretty sure I’ve only tried R White’s Lemonade a handful of times, yet if I was asked to name a manufacturer of lemonade I have no doubt it would be the R White’s name that I would mention first.

I’ve really no idea whether R White’s is any better or worse than any other brand of lemonade (though I suspect it is one of the better ones) so why is it that the mention of lemonade instantly conjures up the R White’s name for me? Quite simply, it’s because of the TV advert for it.

The “Secret Lemonade Drinker” ad was first used to advertise R White’s in 1973, and was used until 1984. It featured a man creeping downstairs in his pyjamas in the middle of the night to go and feed his addiction to a certain fizzy lemon flavoured beverage, all played out to a brilliant backing song, which starts off in hushed tones and ends up building to a rock ‘n’ roll crescendo, which wakes up his wife who comes down to investigate.

The song was written and performed by Ross MacManus, with help from his teenage son Declan, who went on to change his name to Elvis Costello and have a successful music career!

Here’s the ad in all it’s now-slightly-faded-looking glory…

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Todays choice of TV advert is one of those ones which has just stuck in my head for some reason due to the song in it. I may not be able to play an instrument or have a good singing voice, but I’m sure I’m not alone in finding that certain pieces of music just seem to lodge in my mind.

The advert in question is one for chocolate bars manufactured by Mars, including Milky Way, Marathon (yep, we hadn’t gone all global at this point), Bounty, Topic (they’re getting increasingly more difficult to find, and have disappeared entirely from the Celebrations mini chocs I believe) and of course the good old Mars bar itself.

The advert ran in the summer months and was intended to encourage you to eat the above chocolate bars during the summer months. “Are you crazy”, we all said, “it’s the summer, the chocolate will melt!” (yeah, right, this is the UK we’re talking about). “Ah! No!” came the man from Mars’ advertising agency’s reply, “put them in the fridge! Cool ‘em, if you will!”

Cue several million hands slapping their owners foreheads. “Why didn’t we think of that!, we chorus. So we march to the shops, buy up all the chocolate bars we can get our hands on and stuff them into the fridge, grinning wildly as we think about the lovely chocolatey goodness to come.

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One of the most familiar names in kitchen gadgetry, SodaStream, is set to return this summer. Actually, I don’t think it really ever went away, but with a new TV advert just appearing on our screens the name is set to become a household name once again.

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!

Have you ever remembered something from your childhood that when you mention it to other people they look at you strangely and think you’re mad, and that you must be making it up? Today’s post is a good example of this phenomenon.

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!

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It’s not unusual for films and TV programmes to get remade years after they were first released, but it is a bit uncommon for television adverts to get remade, which is why I was surprised to hear that after 30 years Glade have decided to remake their old advert for Shake ‘N’ Vac!

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…

Back before recordable DVDs and Sky+ came along, if you wanted to record a TV programme to watch later you had to use a videotape. Actually, I’m sure that many people still do use videotapes, but I heartily recommend you get hold of Sky+ or some other hard disk recorder as it beats all that faffing about waiting for tapes to rewind.

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”.

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I picked up a box of Bird’s Eye Potato Waffles when doing the shopping the other day, partly because I hadn’t had any in ages, but mainly because they were on a special offer. A day or so later said box of Waffles was taken from the freezer to be cooked for dinner, and whilst waiting I was idly reading the packaging.

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.

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