Cassi Creek:
When I was a
child, a six ounce bottle of Coca Cola was a rare treat. Whether it was a fountain drink in a
pathognomic class. or a bottle pulled from a tub of icy water, so cold that
your hands cramped upon contact, The “Coke”
bottle and glass were both easily and quickly identifiable whether one could
read or not. One might find
advertisements for “Coke,” 7-Up” or other soft drinks painted onto the sides of
barns, old brick buildings, in aging down town areas, and on outdoor
thermometers.
Funeral homes
and insurance agencies handed out thousands of paper fans at county fairs, tent
meetings, and, of course, funerals.
I don’t
recall to much product placement during the prime time shows, They made the sponsors known at the
beginning, middle, and end of every program.
But the after school – evening news and Saturday morning time slots were
a steady string of animated and otherwise kid oriented advertising that left no
second of air time without the host or the cartoon character pushing some
sugared cereal, or even worse, some unpalatable product like “Ovaltine” or
Malt-O-Meal at the under-aged viewers.
If the manufacturer couldn’t create a market for the food-like
substance, they’d add a cheap, very, very, cheap, toy to the box or
package. I can recall “Wheaties” boxes
with small license plates inside. “Get
all 48 state plates!” Handicapped by my
lack of taste for milk, cereals were bad marketing plans to encourage me to ask
for such additions to the grocery list.
Such was
product placement as I recall it in the early- middle 1950s. By the 1960s, I was already fed up with advertising
for most products.
I am an early
boomer. I managed to escape the big
marketing programs of the 60s and 70s.
The Brady Bunch, any McDonalds’ talking food, Twinkies, cast or
injection-molded toy cars and all the other nostalgia items that induce
salivation in many of the older boomers are simply landfill material for
me.
While I
succumbed to some forms of advertising, nothing like baseball cards, marbles,
comic books, or other such items now considered collectible can be found in my
personal possessions. I do have the
first fly I ever tied a red buck tail streamer that taught me a lot about force
vectors, velocity, and fear as it slipped off the rock holding it and came
flying back at my face, propelled by a fully curved fiberglass fly rod that was
suddenly straight again. I don’t fish
that fly anymore. I keep it above my
vise to remind me that glasses are often the difference between vision and no
vision.
Some where in
the house there are miniatures of Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale, and Fearless
Leader. They remind me that subversion
of the young is possible. There is still
a baking soda powered U.S.S. Nautilus – veteran of some cereal box give away
hanging on a book shelf over my desk. It’s
not an original. I bought it in 2002
when Gloria and I toured the U.S.S. Nautilus Museum at Groton Connecticut.
So much for
nostalgia.
The practice
of product placement is now horribly out of hand. Every minute of broadcast television and
nearly as much of cable programming is filled with cans, bottles, cups, cars,
trucks, and any other item that can be pimped for sales.
The
approaching Mayan calendar predicted end of the world, 21 December, this year
is of course so much hype and fantasy.
But if it were to be true, it is fair to say that there would be at
least two companies planning to emblazon their soft drink’s logo on the face of
the last rising sun.
For what it is worth, I can tell the difference between “Coca
Cola” and its rival. I, by far, prefer
the former.
Things,
including, end of the world scenarios, go better with “Coke!”
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