While searching for something completely unrelated, I came across this television spot Betty White made for Fantastik — in an aerosol can.

Just wait until the end of the commercial, and watch how she lets those CFCs fly!

My friend Linwood wrote an entry in his journal with a headline that took me back about 25 years: “I ate all the Frusen Glädjé.”

Frusen Glädjé was an ice cream product from the 1980s with a series of goofy commercials, like the one below.

As the ’80s wore on, Frusen Glädjé evaporated from the super duper megamart freezer section. No one’s really sure how it disappeared, though.

I was a Lego maniac — still am to a small degree, actually — but “Fredo the Lego Maniac” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

In the 1980s, I saw this commercial for Polly-O String Cheese a lot. My cube neighbor Paul reminded me of it when I returned to my desk with a different brand of string cheese. (Mine was organic, but it’s just not the same as Polly-O’s — now Kraft.)

One of the niftiest videos I’ve seen in a long while: a commercial for Madrid’s Metro system.

While we’re on the subject of computers, and specifically Apple computers, here’s an amusing commercial from 1982 for the Commodore 64 computer. In the ad, Commodore touts its advantages over the Apple ][, including its price point. (Sound familiar?)

And I don’t say it’s amusing to be smug, rather it’s because I hadn’t really thought about the old C64 machines in a long time. Commodore went bankrupt in the mid-1990s and rights to the name were passed around like a hot potato for years. The brand was apparently resurrected last year with the introduction of a range of gaming PCs in Europe running Windows Vista.

Even as I inch closer to 30, I still enjoy watching those Rankin-Bass (Turn your speakers down for that link.) stop-motion animation Christmas specials. They bring a sense of intense nostalgia to me not only because they tell classic stories, but also because I’m instantly transported back to my childhood, when times were simpler for me and the world was still in analog.¹ You know, the Lego bricks were real and not on my computer screen.

I guess I’m not the only one who feels that way. Take my beloved Food Network, for example. This year, the channel is airing “Season’s Eatings” bumps featuring six of its cheflebrities — Paula Deen, Giada De Laurentiis, Rachael Ray, Alton Brown, Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri — that are very Rankin-Bass-esque. (One blogger even refers to them as bobble heads. And seriously, if Food Network ever produced bobble head collectibles like this, I’d be all over them! Except for Rachael [who is not pictured below] and Bobby’s; I don’t really care for them all that much.)

I’m disappointed there’s no Morimoto.

And now it looks like Apple has also gotten into the act. It’s latest commercial in the Get a Mac campaign features Justin “Mac” Long and John “PC” Hodgman standing on either side of Santa Claus himself. Santa blows into a pitch pipe and the two begin singing a verse of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

Maybe next year around back to school time we’ll see some take-offs on “School House Rock.”

¹ This is my version of something my roommate’s been known to say frequently, “When the world was still in black and white,” referring to a time when color film, television and movies were a novelty. Never mind that he was born at a time when they were relatively commonplace.

Greenpeace infiltrated a Kleenex commercial shoot in New York, the results of which are in the video clip below:

If you forward 3 minutes and 27 seconds into the video, one Greenpeace guy asserts, “even the box that it’s sold in is, you know, 100% virgin pulp.”

Okay, fine. So I grab my box of Kleenex, which happens to be next to me, turn it over and find this on the bottom:

Notice the recycling symbol accompanying the following text:

This box is made from 100% recycled paper.

I repeated this examination on three other, unopened boxes of Kleenex I recently bought. All of them also have the same recycling claim.

Alright Greenpeace, let it out: which one is correct?

Now, I’m not saying that Greenpeace’s mission here is bad — I’m all for recycling — but I’m of the opinion that even the tiniest bit of misinformation can hurt one’s credibility in an argument. It’s time to kleer some confusion.

(Greenpeace video and campaign links via Laughing Squid)

Within the circle of blogs and journals I keep up with, a lot of people are lately getting themselves lathered up over two things: Bear411 and Snickergate.

Bear411

For my readers (all three of you) outside the bear contingent, Bear411 — 411 for short — is arguably the most widely used site for chat/hookups/whatever among husky, hirsute gay men and (a few of) those that admire them. For some time, rumours circulated about the owner’s tendency to censor or even delete messages and profiles, and about people being denied access outright because they’re not “bear enough.” Things finally came to a head last week and now there are organized efforts to show the man how much his service sucks.

I’m all for fighting for your right to party, but really, why wait? If you hate 411 that much, just dump it from your bookmarks and be done with it already. This isn’t a city street where you need a permit to march — it’s a frickin’ web site!

Snickergate

At the outset, I wasn’t outright offended by the unfortunate Snickers ad. Truth be told, I kinda rolled my eyes at it, and winced when it came to ripping out chest hair. (A natural reaction as the owner of a hairy chest.) Yes, it used an old, lame ass joke at the expense of gay guys everywhere to promote itself, but a lot of the reaction I’ve seen — to the ad and to others reacting to the ad — is really quite overreaching.

Say what you will, but that campaign was probably worth every penny to Snickers and its parent company, even if they quietly removed the ads from their site. There’s big bucks in controversy.

Doth we protest too much?