I am a person that typically hates commercials, usually avoiding anything that forces me to watch them. If I watch YouTube on my TV I will repeatedly start and back out of a video until it lets me play it without that unskippable ad at the beginning. I may or may not have found a way to modify my phone apps so ads don’t play. On my PC I use a VPN and ad blockers that eliminate ads whenever I do anything online. I just can’t stand them!
So why do I find myself watching hours upon hours of old commercials from the 1980’s and 90’s? How can I be so hypocritical, andstill look at myself in the mirror in the morning? Well, that’s easy. I don’t look at myself in the mirror anymore, and the commercials are from my childhood so that makes them good by default.
These compilation videos, featuring upwards of two hours of decades old commercials, open up a part of my brain that brings me back to some really niche good times in my life. It’s like a digital dopamine hit the second I turn them on. I know it’s cliche to say, but it really was a different time when it comes to the type of media being created. The amount of creative freedom that was able to be had back there is pretty astonishing, especially when you really go down the rabbit hole of how much was being created for television every year back then.
Everything seems very “cookie cutter” these days. Is there some sort of pre-made corporate flow chart of things that need to be checked off that is given to every writer and director now? It’s that lack of cut-and-paste media creation that lets these retro commercials really shine. They were quirky, weird, corny, and some were borderline experimental. They had jingles that are still burned into the farthest depths of our minds, and mascots that are still instantly recognizable. The great George Costanza couldn’t have said it better…
While I am still enjoying my 5,000th viewing of Ghostbusters and Back to the Future, these retro commercials are filling a void that I did not know I had. I never realized how many memories I had attached to them. I can remember times when I watched them, and times when I talked about them with friends. Sometimes I can remember the feeling of excitement I got when seeing a new toy or video game that was coming out. I can remember times I was sitting on the couch with my family, catching the latest episode of our favorite shows.
As I write this post, and think about it a bit more,I guess what they are really doing is bringing back that feeling of wonderment that Iseem to have lost as a middle aged adult. It’s no secret that I have become a bit of a curmudgeon with my old age, blurring the line between cynicism and being realistic at times. These hours long commercial compilations are allowing me to replace all of that, and give me that dose of wonderment that I have been lacking.
As a kid, I always thought it was weird that my dad would watch black and white movies. Old westerns, cheesy monster flicks, war epics, documentaries, and everything in between. I would always ask why he would watch that stuff when there is awesome new stuff coming out. Well, I think I understand. My dad would have been roughly the same age as I am now, and these commercials are about as old as the stuff he was watching back then. Maybe he was getting that same dopamine hit from those, as I am with old commercials? I can’t really say for sure. All I know is that I cherish those old memories, as the older I get the more they fade. It brings me great joy to watch these, and I highly recommend you take a little time to maybe get them a watch. Who knows, maybe they will unlock some good memories you forgot you had.
