"The Lost Art of TV Guide Advertising" Talkback

[Peter Paltridge]

http://www.platypuscomix.net/bored/tvguideads3.html

I promised a third, and here it is. I also promised another 265,887, but I'll get to those eventually.

 

[Greg1]

Another awesome addition

 

[David Gerstein]

CARBON COPY seemed like... well, a "carbon copy" of the antiracist LOOK WHO'S COMING TO DINNER concept, albeit advertised crudely enough to seem racist itself. Maybe, maybe not; but this period review reveals something else—it seems to have been Denzel Washington's screen debut.

 

[Chris]

I have a couple TV Guides from 1979. Makes me want to go through them to find something interesting. Should I send anything interesting your way, Pete?

 

[mobo85]

Are you joking about the Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer title, or just confused? Because Spillane did create the character.

 

[madhair60]

That Webster ad could be the best thing I've ever seen.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

http://www.platypuscomix.net/bored/tvguideads4.html

Now there's a part four! I'll just make this the talkback for this series in general.

I love these V paintings, even though I've never seen V. I wish they sold them as posters.

 

[J. B. Warner]

With advertising like that, I'd probably get hooked by "V" too.

And wow, I never realized how ugly Jim Carrey can be when you capture a single frame of one of his facial expressions. My first reaction was "Why is he melting?"

I envy your TV Guide collection, man. I collected the magazine for a while in 2003-2004, but my mom threw 'em all out when I went to college. Given my fascination with the pop culture of the past, something like your collection would keep me occupied for weeks.

 

[Jeff Harris]

Terrific series, man.

Looking at that At The Movies ad, it's kind of hard to believe that, at the time, Ebert was enjoying him some sweet, sweet Oprah.

I kid you not.

BTW, I saw most of the shows in the articles. Hart to Hart was classy. I don't recall seeing that A-Team pilot movie without Dirk Benedict as "Faceman" or any idea who that lady was. Duck Factory . . . probably the only time Americans had a sitcom centered around an animation studio (and a legitimate animation legend, Don Messick, on screen as a voice-actor to boot). The 80s and the mid-90s only had shows centered around cartoonists (Too Close For Comfort, Bob, and Caroline in the City). Nowadays, cartoonists and animators are not seen.

Except in Japan.

You have any of those Fall Preview Issues with the Saturday Morning ads?

 

[Peter Paltridge]

I do have the Saturday Morning ads, but they're for later.

http://www.platypuscomix.net/bored/tvguideads5.html

Look at all this crazy stuff. All of this came from only six weeks of the magazine, from March and April of 1980. I think I can now do for TV Guide what Superdickery did for comic books.

There was one I saw that I really wanted to use, but it wasn't from 1980, so I just stuck it in this week's logo box. Scope it out on the main page. I've yet to find a Diff'rent Strokes ad that isn't hilarious.

 

[J. B. Warner]

Man, "Pink Lady and Jeff" looks even worse than everyone says it is. I'd look for clips on YouTube if it wasn't for the fact that the search term "Pink Lady and Jeff" would always be in my browser's memory for the rest of eternity, popping up every time I click on a search bar anywhere.

"It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown" seems kinda bottom-of-the-barrel, yeah, but it's significant nonetheless - it was the last "Peanuts" special that Vince Guaraldi composed the music for, as he died shortly after its completion.

It's also worth mentioning that "Fridays", despite being a bad SNL ripoff, is also significant, as it's where Larry David and Michael Richards first worked together in their pre-"Seinfeld" days.

Oh, and you get bonus points for the Don Henley reference.

 

[mobo85]

J.B. Warner already said most of the things I wanted to, so I'll just say that CBS "We're Lookin' Good!" logo makes me laugh for some reason.

The ad for the first Strawberry Shortcake TV special was interesting- I was just reading a book called Saturday Morning Censors which devoted a chapter to Ms. Shortcake and her ilk. In 1980, it was still illegal to do a regular series based on a toy character, but there was nothing that said you could do a special every year or so like Charlie Brown and his friends did. Eventually, the FCC would become more lax and the airwaves would be filled with 30-minute adventures of He-Man, the Transformers, and other characters you could find in your toybox or Toys "R" Us as well as on the screen. (The book also quotes another book called Boys and Girls which was a study about how boys and girls differed in terms of interests, etc. Two boys were being interviewed about Strawberry Shortcake toys and why girls liked them. They said it was because they smelled like sweet things- which was the point. The boys said boys like smells, but more like vampire smells and volcano smells. I didn't even know they had smells!)

 

[Peter Paltridge]

http://www.platypuscomix.net/bored/tvguideads6.html

Chapter six is up this week. So many cheap TV movies....

 

[J. B. Warner]

Man, what was the deal with all the homelessness?

Say, how far forward does your TV Guide archive go? If it extends into the early '90s, it might be cool to see whatever advertising they did for the premieres of shows like "The Simpsons" or "Seinfeld".

 

[Peter Paltridge]

Man, what was the deal with all the homelessness?

Say, how far forward does your TV Guide archive go? If it extends into the early '90s, it might be cool to see whatever advertising they did for the premieres of shows like "The Simpsons" or "Seinfeld".

Unfortunately there are holes in a couple of places. I get cut off around March 1989 and it comes back in at 1993.

 

[The Nameless]

EEEEEEEE-WWWWW!!! Magically aging yourself 16 years does not make this any less creepy! In fact, turning yourself into Alan Thicke in the process makes it even creepier! Don't stand so! Don't stand so! Don't stand so close to me!

Amen.

That movie wouldn't last five seconds by today's standards.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

A new one's up this week.
http://www.platypuscomix.net/bored/tvguideads7.html
I've mostly been keeping to the 80's until now; time to shake things up.

Note: due to a family emergency (that thankfully was not serious) this update is late.

 

[The Nameless]

Good article, but the ads scanned weren't as wacky as the '80s stuff.

And about the first installment: I'd pick "Bring Them Back Alive" over "Grey's Anatomy" too.

 

[J. B. Warner]

I am so going to shout "But he's REALLY a ROBOT!" the next time I go grocery shopping.

Bill Cosby's list of variety show guests reads like something "Mystery Science Theater 3000" would have come up with. "Welcome to Tom Servo's Video Deposition! With special guest stars Tom Scarrett, Bell Biv Devoe, and the leggy Czar Nicholas II!"

Yeah, I think a Wonder Woman movie might be cool, but not very likely. Especially if Warner Bros. is still upholding its plans to not make any more movies where women are the heroes.

HOLY CRAP, an ad for "The Gemini Man"! Speaking of MST3K, if you want to see just how awful that show was, you need to watch episode 814 "Riding With Death" - it's two episodes of the show smashed together to form something resembling a movie, with a lot of bad ADR to fill in the plot holes. And yes, the special effects are just as crappy as the ad makes them look - "Okay, so the gun remained perfectly still and he hit him with a six-foot arm?"

If Frosty's heart melts, shouldn't that kill him?

Why is Nigel the Conductor front and center in that ad for the premiere of "The Muppet Show"? You'd figure that, since Kermit was going to be the host, they'd start promoting him. (I know Kermit didn't achieve Muppet superstardom until after he became known as the host of the show, but still.)

I heard people complain that the Charlie's Angels movies didn't stay true to the spirit of the TV show. If anything, that seems to have been an improvement.

I find it funny that the ad for "The Brady Bunch Variety Hour" advertises it as featuring "The whole bunch". For those who don't know, Eve Plumb wisely opted not to appear in this piece of trash, so they had another actress play Jan in the hopes that nobody would notice. This is also what "The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour" parodied in "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" from Season 8 - hence, the fake Lisa.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

HOLY CRAP, an ad for "The Gemini Man"! Speaking of MST3K, if you want to see just how awful that show was, you need to watch episode 814 "Riding With Death" - it's two episodes of the show smashed together to form something resembling a movie, with a lot of bad ADR to fill in the plot holes. And yes, the special effects are just as crappy as the ad makes them look - "Okay, so the gun remained perfectly still and he hit him with a six-foot arm?"

There was another TV series that was made into a movie and then made into an MST3K episode--"The Master." This is an ad that I have yet to use, but it's inevitable. It contains the tagline "He's the deadliest ninja alive. Even his eyes can kill you."

It's also one of the only MST3Ks I've had time to look up and watch, because I was curious about that show. I didn't finish it, though, and I can't remember what the movie was retitled (JB probably knows).

Is 814 a Joel or a Mike episode?