Our brains are stuffed with all sorts of nonsense. Sure, some of what's in there is useful. Your Social Security number. Your cousin's birthday. How to parallel park. Your preferred towel brand now - maybe, maybe not - on sale at Bed Bath & Beyond. How to compute the tip.
But an awful lot of what's beneath the cranium is pretty darned useless.
Oh, I suppose it's there for my amusement, but what good is it that I still remember the theme song to the Quick Draw McGraw cartoon? And maybe I'll make a deathbed confession and it will come in handy, but 'til then, it matters not that I can still reel off the Seven Gifts and the Twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost.
And then there are all the ads of my youth. Spedy Alka-Seltzer, come on down! Choo-choo Charlie flogging Good 'n Plenty. Atsa spicy meatball. Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself.
None more indelible, perhaps, than the info commercials for all sorts of crap that we didn't know we wanted or needed, but which suddenly we craved.
Who didn't want a Veg-o-Matic in their house? It slices! It dices! All the things my mother did with the handy little black-handled kitchen utility knife her father (a butcher) gave her when she got married, and which she was still using - even with nips out of the blade - until she died. But my mother's knife wasn't advertised on TV. It would have been a lot cooler to have a Veg-o-Matic.
If we couldn't have a Veg-o-Matic, why not a set of Ginsu Knives. How great were the Ginsu Knives? You could slice the ham so thin, your in-laws would never come back. How. About. That.
Mr. Microphone ads probably couldn't stand the scrutiny of our more woke era, when women just don't put up with the crap they used to. But, in my family at least, we have a call and response around the ad where the car full of kids are out cruising in their convertible, hassling people they slow-drive by, making remarks on their very own Mr. Microphone.
Call: Hey, good-lookin'.
Response: We'll be back to pick you up later.
IRL they probably wouldn't have been back later, especially given that the girl city in the back seat with the Mr. Microphone guy whacks him in the arm when he calls out to the good-lookin' chick.
I don't know whether these were all products sold by TV (UHF, non-network, cheeseball channels only) pitch master Ron Popeil. But they were sure sold in his spirit.
Anyway, Ron Popeil has died, taking his food dehydrator, bagel cutter, smokeless ashtray, and - of course - the Popeil Pocket Fisherman with him to the Great Beyond. Because, what's a heaven for if you can't evenly slice a bagel. Or spray hair on your bald spot. (Not that I have a bald spot, but, who knows, I may (non)sprout one by the time I push off to the GB.
Popeil and his confreres, including the latter day uber-hawker, Billy May of OxiClean fame, have been widely parodied.
There, in the far reaches of my noodle stuffed with oodles of useful gunk, is Dan Aykroyd pitching the Bass-O-Matic on SNL. Just looked it up. That was 1976, almost 50 years ago.
This Honeymooners episode aired in 1955, so it actually anticipated, and perhaps even inspired, Ron Popeil, who did his first TV ad in 1956.
With the death of Popeil, should we now be saying that the promise of But wait, there's more is broken?
Nah.
After all, there's still plenty of Yankee Swap-worthy items pitched on TV. Who can forget the Snugli? And I have to say that one of my go-to kitchen gadgets is a small Foreman Grill that a friend gave me for Christmas ages ago. It's so ancient, so first-gen, that there's no off-on switch. You plug it in, it's on. You want it, off: pull the plug. But it's incredibly useful for roasting asparagus, or peppers, or a solo chicken breast. I use it pretty regularly.
Still, it's the ads from the way-back that are really lodged in the recesses of my brain. Where they more or less belong. Until I need to dredge up a memory with no muss, no fuss.
Any stupid ad, theme song, or catechism answer I'd like to retrieve? Hey, good lookin'. I'll be back to pick you up later.
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