You have to be, what—at least forty years old? to remember this kind of stuff:
So many TV shows were totally owned by tobacco companies (and, to be fair, soap, candy, car, soft drink…). Jingles like “I'd walk a mile for a mild, mild Camel,” “L.S.M.F.T. (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco)” rolled off the lips of young and old alike. “Use Ajax (boo boom), the foaming cleanser (boo ba boom-ba boom-boom boom) Floats the dirt right down the drain! (boo ba boo ba boo ba boom!)” I can’t describe the tune that all the boo-ba sounds made, but I also can’t forget the melody. Are today’s commercials as effective at burning eternal messages into our brains? Don’t think so. Or are old, rotting minds just full of no-longer-meaningful junk that has somehow taken over jingle-remembering territory and can’t be expunged?
7 comments:
Having an even older mind, I find that your last sentence, in the main, holds true. But live a little longer and you may find that even the no-longer-meaningful junk grows fainter and fainter. DANG! Now I've got the Winston Tastes Good ditty stuck in my head!!
Is it legal for us to even watch that cigarette ad? I'm looking over my shoulder, nervously.
Don’t worry, Pete, the Cigarette Police have been re-assigned; they’re now examining the contents of your laptop at the airport.
Well, who would have thunk the Flintstones smoked Winston cigarettes?? How come my (relatively younger) mind doesn't remember them peddling coffin sticks??
Maybe the mind rots at a faster pace these days, since the pace of life in general seems to have picked up speed.
Susan, I also don't remember Fred and Barney selling out and making cigarette commercials.
I'm remembering something else though (a temporary reversal in mind rot). As a kid, lying in bed before getting up in the morning, I could hear the radio news from the kitchen where Dad was eating breakfast before work. One of the radio ads had a little song singing praise to "Kent with the Micronite filter." Of course I later learned that "Micronite" was asbestos.
The Kent ads I saw in magazines showed nuclear power plants in the background as the copy said something like "Kent’s Micronite filter is made from the same material used in the air filters in atomic power plants.”
Oh, Pete, and to think we used to think all that was a GOOD thing.
I remember Dad smoking Lucky Strikes and Camels. I don't think they had filters at all. He never got lung cancer, anyway. He later switched to Salems. I know they had filters. Wonder if they were the asbestos kind?
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