Thursday, June 14, 2007

One of my favorite commercials, EVER (psychedelia from the old blog)

See the light, man!

I have literally hours and hours of vintage commercials on tape, but I decided that this little item should be the one I first preserve in this format [the original blog], as it presents the groovy psychedelia that permeated some corners of 1970s TV (particularly anything aimed at kids or even teens, who you’d think might’ve moved on by that time), a sort of leftover from the rupture that was the Sixties. This commercial aired in the mid-1970s (or so says the narrator of this commerial-comp, the dubiously-named David Leisure) and it engrained itself into my childhood consciousness. It obviously is modeled on the Peter Max artwork that was literally every-freakin’-where during the early ’70s (up to and including the NYC phone books, which all featured covers by PM — anybody remember those?). My animation and psychedelia-minded chums would of course want me to note that Max was popularizing the super-psych style of art masterminded by Heinz Edelmann who developed the designs for Yellow Submarine. I still hold this to be my personal fave ’70s ad (the visuals are what burnt into my brain, but that catchy song has never left it either), but did discover that another intrepid collector produced an earlier Seven-Up “trip” commercial, and deposited it on the all-inclusive (until the hammer comes down) YouTube:
Click here.

I of course ain’t endorsin’ 7-Up by putting this up, that goes without saying. I’d also note in closing that the Elvis-impersonator voice of course preceded the King’s kick-off, so we can mark this up to the era (all through the 1960s and ’70s) where celebrity impersonations were used all the time in TV ads.


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