Saturday 3 December 2011

Boggenstrovia's 12 Bits of Christmas - Number Two... An Eerie Presents...

As we stumble our way towards the 25th, the same sort of things come up in everyway... We've been to the panto, not literally.. I don't think I would have a bus big enough for everyone! So what's next on the list?

Well maybe some presents for a start, but with so many stores out there there so much choice and Christmas is a time to hear those cash tills a ringing or beeping as they go. With enough beeps, it would send Dale Winton into a buying frenzy as he goes. But at this time, everyone of them is trying to scramble for cash. With Bruce Forsyth laughing at a weak Andrew Flintoff pun as they go around and around, a lesser man would say that they are disappearing into the abyss of the celebrity merry-go-round. But not me, they are flogging food for a supermarket. Though who's been wanting us to get our cash out of our wallets, well partly to pay for their massive wages, let's take a look...

1. Anita then Harris...

Woolies, gone from the High Street but they new how to lay it on thick to get the wallets out. If there was any more stars in these adverts, it surely would have Sir Patrick Moore complaining they are getting the way of Uranus. In 1981 two of the Goodies, namely the beardy one and the shiny shows one were elf helpers to a woman who had lost her skirt for comedy only a decade and a bit earlier. In looking at they look like they are thinking about the money already as they film the ad during the hottest day of the year, plus with more oriental girls than on a dating site and a load of cossacks as well. It can't be said that effort hasn't been taken in doing the ad, but I suddenly think I want a Bontempi B226 Electric Organ...

Motorway Cops.... The early years.



2. There's a big Boots up the rear...

Boots, the chemist who thought they could do anything they wanted and went back to selling Corn Plasters. Now there was a time when they could do anything hence me being able buy a board game based on the BBC News and a Gameboy during the 1980's there, but the sort of let's all buy a teasmade idea seems odd now. Boots was an Aladdin's cave of gifts, on one floor would could get a new set of saucepans along with a toy kitchen as well. In most adverts it seems people are happy to being getting the items they are getting, compare and contrast to a wet and drizzly Saturday afternoon in Portsmouth. It doesn't seem so glamourous then and if anyone had any of those clothes, it would be like aliens had landed in Commercial Road... Not a case of take us to your leader, more like "I think you need to go to Mr Clive, mate..."

"Oh.. Its a camera.... I wanted a nuclear fission reactor instead!"


3. There's No-One Quite like flogging some carrots...

The St Winifred's School Choir, the mini Nolans... After their Grandma, we love you success. Its seems like the funds were low, so they were trotted out by the Co-Op to flog carrots and swedes with what you would call a medley of songs. But they aren't flogging anything at all! Come on, Co-Op put up a few prices or something. as how are we going to know how much your fruit flans are this year. Nana maybe thiking it all nice and cute, but do they realise that Sally Lindsay is in there? From selling potato waffles to waffling on Loose Women, some career paths take strange routes but surely that's taking the Danish Cookies... In which that a supermarket can show the way towards the cheeseboard, it can get annoying very quickly. By that effect, they might as well pump my veins with chocolate sauce now...

Tri-angling for a daily chat show...

4. "Pull a whopping cracker!"

George 'Doctor' Layton installing the vertues of getting a Telstar record, for the measly price of £3.99. If you want your party to go with a swing, get these! A half of mild, plus Charles and David tinkling on the ivories. Now that sounds like my type of party, atmospherics made to be improved with a knees-up from London's finest. In itself, that sounds like a good idea. But any party made real during the 80's, a equation of Chas and Dave plus stale Sausage Roll equals good times. Looking back on it, it seems surreal really or maybe it was a test of character to be able to see in a nuclear war the masses could survive Chas and Dave records being played as entertainment. As we know they along with cockroaches are the only things that can survive a nuclear blast...

"Its The Sleighriders!"

"Who?"


5. That SWEB Shopping Surprise! 

Lastly, a taste of the regions... Before Mr Big Business got his hands on the Electric Companies, they had shops where you could go and buy your electrical goods there. You not only used their products, but you brought them off them too. But who else could encourage you to buy them than Tom Good, yes Richard Briers lends his vocal talents to this commercial and you could say its the only thing that's glamorous about it. The ripping of the paper almost like there's only one person filming, directing and producing the advert, adding to this effect the sickly santa doll which appears on top of the washing machine makes it seem like an ITV ident put together in the week before Christmas. In that it seems like something has been put into the advert and that is love, love for an advert which seems a reminder why simple is better...

That's the presents sorted then, join me on Monday as we find another load of clips to fill the stocking with...







No comments:

Post a Comment