Monday 9 April 2012

Old Commercials (Part I)

Where would advertising be without the '90s? They marked the transition from the wooden, boring commercials of the '80s to the wooden, in-your-face commercials of the early 2000s. They compelled you to buy everything from board games to air conditioners. They didn't care you how little you were interested, they were making damn sure you saw it and wanted it. Take this commercial for the game "Perfection" for one:






Nobody plays board games anymore because they're lame (actually nowadays we play Jenga at the pub and it's 1000x more fun) but back when I was a kid those fifteen seconds made me go screaming bloody murder at mum to buy the thing!


As part of the period aesthetics, everything had either rich, primary colours or bold, secondary colours with awesome shading (only usually hand drawn stuff for Ring Pops or skateboards or whatever though). If you were a girl you might remember Lisa Frank, whose warm, tropical design was plastered all over trapper keepers and the like. Times New Roman was for those adult type ads (not for porno or anything, that's not what I meant) to give a bit of class before it started looking dated towards the turn of the millennium. I haven't actually picked up a magazine in years so I can't speak for today's modern page advertising, but this stuff popped out and enticed you.


Tomorrow we might take a look back at those Concerned Children's Advertising commercials. We could turn this into advertisement week or something.

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