Few people would disagree with the notion that advertising has changed dramatically over the years. The types of ads the fictional execs on Mad Men came up with in the 1960s were pretty representative of their time, as hard as that may have been for modern audiences to believe. However, even more relatively recent ads, like those from the 1980s, are quite amusing to view from a 2018 lens.
If you’d like to take a walk down memory lane – or you’re too young to remember firsthand but you’re curious about what commercials were like in the 1980s – you’ll find a slew of them on Brighteon.com.
Zest soap
If the phrase “zestfully clean” sounds familiar to you, you’ll definitely enjoy revisiting the old commercials for Zest soap. This one opens with a woman kicking her feet in the bathtub and splashing water all around her bathroom. You’ll see people scrubbing up with a bar of impossibly blue Zest and enjoying their showers entirely too much; what exactly was in this soap? Everything about the ad screams 1980s, from the hairstyles to the music and the camera angles.
Sure deodorant
“Confident, confident, dry and secure… raise your hand if you’re sure!” is certainly one of the more memorable jingles to come out of the ‘80s, and this commercial has a lot of the same vigor seen in the Zest soap one. Cheerleaders, waitresses, golfers, teachers, and fishermen are all depicted raising their hands confidently thanks to their use of Sure deodorant. These people seem quite happy about not smelling, and there was little to worry about back then, before deodorant use had been linked to cancer.
Colgate Gel toothpaste
We don’t think that toothpaste can put you in a trance, but the makers of Colgate wanted you to “get under the spell of Colgate gel” back in the ‘80s. It looks extremely low-budget by modern standards, with some blue sparkle graphics placed around people who are ostensibly happy about having brushed their teeth with the toothpaste, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they shelled out a pretty penny for the ad at the time. Two young boys are seen walking down the street and talking about how “awesome” their toothpaste tastes. It contains “proven MFP fluoride” – MFP apparently stands for “Maximum Fluoride Protection” – a quality you definitely don’t want in a toothpaste now that it’s been proven toxic, of course.
Curad bandages
In a commercial that is clearly aimed at moms, an assortment of stuffed animals and dolls are seen at the foot of a little girl’s bed wearing Curad bandages, whose selling point appears to be the fact that they are flexible and move as the body bends – which is pretty much a given on bandages these days. It’s safe to say that lots of uber-sensitive liberals would find a reason to be offended by the “Mother ’em with a Curad” tagline today, but it probably worked pretty well in its time, creepy-looking dolls notwithstanding.
These and many more old commercials were posted to the Sirveroldj channel on Brighteon.com. There are plenty of commercials outside the personal care realm on the channel, too, such as clips for Cool Whip, Stouffer’s food, Mountain Dew and Kool Aid – foods most of us wouldn’t dream of touching now but that enjoyed a lot of popularity back in the day. If you have fond memories of this era, you’ll also find some video clips from the openings of shows like Another World and Dynasty.
Brighteon.com is a free speech platform that is proud to offer videos about topics YouTube doesn’t want people to know about, like natural health, gun rights, and CBD oil, but you’ll also find all manner of other types of videos there as the site starts to catch on with an audience that is tired of Google deciding what they can and cannot watch.
Sources for this article include:
