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  • Advert memories from 1992

    The Queen thought that 1992 was an Annus Horribilis, probably because on top of Royal events in that year, it was the final year of Thames, TVS, TSW, and TV-am, but on the other hand, I thought that the same year was an Annus Mirebilus - my nephews were born and I was doing so well at school - Year 9 was the best one. And I suppose one thing that I do remember from 1992 when making use of my parent's licence fee were the ad breaks - I was probably trying to escape from hours of sport and Eldorado, and bumped into them quite a bit during the summer while seeing Euro 92 and the Olympics from that year.

    These are the ten main adverts that I remember from 1992 - most of them are on YouTube in order to jog one's memory:

    1) TETLEY TEA BAGS (Theme Park / Fun-Fun-Fun) - Not too long after the revolutionary round teabags were introduced, the advert had reminded me of my day trip to Alton Towers on the penultimate day of the school term prior to breaking up in July. The animated Tetley Tea Folk characters explore a theme park and have ride on rollercoasters, dodgem-alike tea cups and so on to the tune of the Beach Boys' Fun-Fun-Fun. Was on the TV, mostly during Coronation Street from the summer until the end of the year - around six months. Brian Glover was still on duty to do Gaffer's voice.

    2) ANDREX (Kid on a toilet) - The classic kid on a toilet - the famous Labrador steals the half a mile long distance of toilet paper, spinning around on the holder - the paper gets thinner and thinner until only the carboard tube is left on the holder. Cue young kid going "Mum!" "MUM!" when he realises he's in trouble when he finishes what he was doing.

    3) PERSIL MICRO (Jackie Wilson song) - Great tuneful advert which was Jackie Wilson's Reet Petite (the 1950s song which became the 1986 Christmas number one) with Persil Micro sung to the lyrics. I suppose that as I was about to be an uncle around that time, I had the feelgood factor of singing it when it came on the TV.

    4) FORD ESCORT - Ford had a brand new body design for its Escort models and the advert blew me away at the time. It looked so modern and updated back then - the then new K Reg cars looked a treat! Around the time when they had the "everything we do is driven by you" slogan. Ford used the design for its Escort until 1995 at least.

    5) WEETABIX (Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd) - The ITC didn't permit actors appearing in adverts adjacent to the shows that they appeared in back then, but the rule didn't extend to cartoon characters - Bugs Bunny was made an exception when he appeared in the Weetabix advert which Central at least had scheduled during the premiere of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in which Bugs also appeared in. The characters were reminiscent of their cartoons while singing a version of Run, Rabbit Run. I think that it had been a couple of years after they had to ditch the "Skinheads" series of adverts due to political correctness and the comparisons with far-right groups and that Weetabix had struggled to find a replacement advertising campaign such as the Robin Hood one. The advert was also the first one to be shown on GMTV on New Year's Day in 1993.

    6) PRETTY POLLY LEGACY (clock "hands") - A woman who was wearing a black wide-brimmed hat sat down on the surface of a clock face while wearing the aforementioned tights on her legs, and made her legs look as if they were the hands of the clock, going from one hour to another until the finally met each other at the 12 o'clock point at the top, while the tune of All Day and All of the Night (cf The Kinks) played quietly in the background. Very impressive and memorable for a number of reasons. A guest came on Des O'Connor Tonight and made reference to the advert, saying that he would like to see her at a quarter to three!

    7) PUSH POPS - Seen during Children's ITV ad breaks. A lollipop-alike sweet that looked like a lipstick where one would need to push it from the bottom in order to lick it. The adverts had a girl on a swing saying: "don't push me - push your Push Pop!" One assumes that they were marketed for the female market, but they did come in a number of flavours.

    8) LUCKY CHARMS - Also seen during Children's ITV ad breaks - a cereal that was not made by either Kellogg's, Nestle or Nabisco, and had coloured pieces of various things which made it to the cereal bowl. The adverts were cartoons with stereotypical leprechauns in them. They seemed to disappear after 1992, but a Tesco store close to where I live still sells them in the "World Foods" section and the price of them are a bit too expensive compared to Kellogg's cereals!

    9) VESPRE SILHOUETTES PLUS - Claire Rayner's finest hour (or should I say 30 seconds). I don't think that we would have had the Vanessa, Trisha, or Oprah Winfrey breed of daytime talk show if it wasn't for this advert. Cue a lot of women in the audience going on about how it makes good feminine body tarpaulin at least once a month - of course due to product placement rules this wouldn't have happened in a real talk show. Around a decade later Esther Rantzen (during her BBC 2 "Esther" era) almost did the same trick by using a mock talk show audience in order to flog the "have you had an accident in the last three years?" ambulance chaser deals. Cue the blue liquid proving how waterproof the towel was when worn. Just like Paul McCartney was 15 years previously, they were with wings.

    10) KELLOGG'S NUT FEAST - Inside a door which says "Kellogg's Nut Feast - Casting Inc" on the glass, an over-parodied American office setting consisting of a businessman going "nuts, nuts" and his dizzy Sandra Dickenson-alike assistant. After we see what a bowl of the cereal looks like, we get to see the female assistant on the telephone and eating a bowl of the cereal at the same time, looking as if she has taken advantage of Pretty Polly Legacy herself.

    An honourable mention should go to the late Dudley Moore who after over a year being advertising tool on behalf of Tesco, and had seemed to have found everything for the supermarket except chickens. The Kraft Cheese Slices advert with a boy called Malcolm getting to terms with a sandwich which has the cheese slices in them, and the tune of Workers' Playtime, while the same company's Free Choice salad dressing vouched that the condiment was either 97% or 99% fat free depending on which version of the advert was been shown, and it had the tune to You're Sixteen in the advert as well. While Jackie Wilson's song was loaned to Persil Micro, the man himself could be heard in the Immac adverts, targeting the Pretty Polly Legacy audience with his song "I Get the Sweetest Feeling" while a woman is so proud of how her legs look that she trims off her black dress before going out for the evening.

    Dolland and Aitchison (as a bifocaled Yours Truly I was a customer of them at the time) had a great, albeit lowkey advertising campaign with an unidentified cover version of Johnny Nash's I Can See Clearly Now - a Nescafe advert from around that time could also be heard with the more traditional version on there. Nash also lent his dulcet tones to the Citroen ZX adverts complete with cartoon cupid and arrow in the advert, although the original by Sam Cooke is usually played on the Gold radio stations. Speaking of opticians, I can see (so to speak) from YT that Michael Parkinson (just before he did Ghost Watch in the same year) was also the face (and eyes) for a branch of opticians based in the HTV region. PG Tips relaunched their advertising campaign, still with Molly Badham's chimps in the "Meet the Tips" series - in particular, the Blind Date parody Cupid's Cup. And Danny Baker started to harass housewives on behalf of Daz.

    Whilst there was to be huge changes on ITV in 1992, the ad breaks I think were ones which would be noticed many years later. Television advertising was in strong shape in that year with campaigns well remembered many years later, but going back to 1992, are there any adverts you remember in addition to the ones that I have mentioned above? Was it really 27 years ago from a 2019 perspective?
    I've everything I need to keep me satisfied
    There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind
    I'm having so much fun
    My lucky number's one
    Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!

  • #2
    Re: Advert memories from 1992

    Erm, i've slept since then and whilst i have several memorable adverts i really would not know what year they were shown... (George your memory is extraordinary)
    Ejector seat?...your jokin!

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    • #3
      Re: Advert memories from 1992

      I remember many of those adverts from 1992.

      Channel 4 used to show a long one for Samurai Chef kitchen knives a lot, it was almost an infomercial telling you how great they were at cutting various things, but only available to order over the phone. It seemed to be on every daytime ad break during Easter 1992.
      The Trickster On The Roof

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      • #4
        Re: Advert memories from 1992

        Originally posted by tex View Post
        Erm, i've slept since then and whilst i have several memorable adverts i really would not know what year they were shown... (George your memory is extraordinary)
        My memory of looking at YouTube clips for research in starting this thread is indeed extraordinary.

        But even then, I still have a great memory for things that happened back in 1992 - I often use the "Dominic O'Brien" method of remembering things such as associating the Tetley theme park advert with when I visited both Alton Towers and the American Adventure that year.
        I've everything I need to keep me satisfied
        There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind
        I'm having so much fun
        My lucky number's one
        Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Advert memories from 1992

          I used to deliberately record a lot of ITV movie premiere films in the early 1990s so that I could get around 12 minutes of adverts in the breaks. The Central region adverts of the premiere of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is on YouTube and it is brilliant to see again - quite a few pre-Christmas adverts for Boots and Children's World (also owned by Boots - remember that?)
          I've everything I need to keep me satisfied
          There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind
          I'm having so much fun
          My lucky number's one
          Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Advert memories from 1992

            One advert that was on in 1992 was one for Jaffa Cakes which had a very strange song on it - it had a very ethnic feel to it. when I started that End of the School Year thread on the School Days forum a couple of days ago, I mentioned that during our Biology teacher's farewell party, someone had brought Jaffa Cakes brought in with the other food, and upon seeing them on the table, someone there was singing the song in the advert. A fig roll was mentioned in the lyrics. I haven't found it on YouTube when I searched for 1992 adverts, but I assume that it will turn up probably during the break of an ITV movie premiere or somewhere like that.
            I've everything I need to keep me satisfied
            There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind
            I'm having so much fun
            My lucky number's one
            Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Advert memories from 1992

              Well, 1992 was a grand year. I was 16 and that was the year I left high school and started my A-levels at college.

              And this was when TV seemed to be a lot better and have a lot more 'soul' about it. I loved staying up late in 1992, watching ITV Night Time on the portable TV in my bedroom, feeling like a rebel as I watched random US TV shows and terrifying public information films (thanks for the trauma, Dark and Lonely Water).

              Here are a few of my favourites from 1992:

              - MERCURY
              Harry Enfield in his Mr Cholmondley-Warner persona, spoofing the 1940s age of excessive elocution. Perhaps telling that the adverts are still amusing, but what became of Mercury telecoms, eh?
              (Yes, I could find out online, but there is something oddly romantic in just not knowing...

              - COMMODORE AMIGA
              Spectacled nerd terrifies cheap Terminator rip-off via Deluxe Paint and Another World. I was saving up for the Amiga at the time, so this advert was just a torment for me. I wanted to kick the smud kid in the face, with his probably rich parents who bought him his Amiga.

              - MATES CONDOMS.
              The old man and his friend 'Geronimo'. The thought of it still plagues my nightmares. 'Like wearing a bike inner-tube'.

              - VODAPHONE (Christmas advert)
              A decade before being Theoden in Lord of the Rings, here was Bernard Hill dressed as Santa, plugging the 'new future' of mobile phones with a crappy reindeer puppet. Perhaps Peter Jackson based his casting decision on this advert alone?

              - HEINEKEN
              The coolest blues man in the world plays an amazing song as his wife leaves him and his life falls apart. Better remebered for the fat neighbour falling through his floor when playing his harmonica. Sadly, the lager still tastes like ****.

              - NATREL
              Almost naked sylvan folk run about in a forest and camoflage themselves against trees, thanks to the power of this deoderant. My friend and I were convinced back than that you could see the lady's boob. She was wearing a tight bodysuit, and we were just being young and delusional.
              (as an aside, there was an infamous advert in the UK about that time for some shower gel, maybe Neutralia, that did show a woman's nipple. It was obviously show in error and I only remember ever seeing it once on ITV)

              - PHILADELPHIA
              I don't remember much about the adverts, but the shrill accents of those two office ladies were infections. My friends and I imitated them for ages. We hope it might impress girls. We were painfully misguided. Also, I had a strange crush on the blonde lady from those adverts

              REMEMBER: cream first, jam second...


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              • #8
                Re: Advert memories from 1992

                I got made redundant late 1992. So it wasn't just anus horriblus for Her Maj!

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Advert memories from 1992

                  Originally posted by Disco_Puppy View Post
                  - NATREL
                  Almost naked sylvan folk run about in a forest and camoflage themselves against trees, thanks to the power of this deoderant. My friend and I were convinced back than that you could see the lady's boob. She was wearing a tight bodysuit, and we were just being young and delusional.
                  (as an aside, there was an infamous advert in the UK about that time for some shower gel, maybe Neutralia, that did show a woman's nipple. It was obviously show in error and I only remember ever seeing it once on ITV)
                  I read somewhere that on one day when that Natrel advert was shown on S4C and the station closed down after midnight, the Duty Manager rewound the day's adverts and paused on that advert, having a good look at the woman's naked part, freeze frame before rewinding the remainder of them. The rumour had it that the station was still on the air when he did that and most of Wales could have seen what he was doing! It might not have been true of course...
                  I've everything I need to keep me satisfied
                  There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind
                  I'm having so much fun
                  My lucky number's one
                  Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Advert memories from 1992

                    Originally posted by George 1978 View Post
                    I read somewhere that on one day when that Natrel advert was shown on S4C and the station closed down after midnight, the Duty Manager rewound the day's adverts and paused on that advert, having a good look at the woman's naked part, freeze frame before rewinding the remainder of them. The rumour had it that the station was still on the air when he did that and most of Wales could have seen what he was doing! It might not have been true of course...
                    Well, that's a new one on me! I love random 'urban myths' about TV and the like, and that one was an absolute gem.

                    At least, unlike most things like this, I actually SAW that Neutralia advert myself. It was not the friend of my friend's sister's boyfriend.

                    I did have a friend at school who swore blind that, one night on the ITV Night Time in 1989 or 1990, he randomly saw some hard German porn that was briefly broadcast in error. However, this was also the kid who claimed to have the 'new Nintendo' from Japan that, when we asked to see it, had conveniently been stolen from his house.

                    REMEMBER: cream first, jam second...


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                    • #11
                      Re: Advert memories from 1992

                      Regarding the German porn, I know that LWT in the London area, accidentally cut to a European TV channel which was showing a lesbian film during an edition of Richard Littlejohn's chat show at around 11.00 pm on a Friday night - the screen went blank and then went to an LWT caption with announcer Peter Lewis apologising and playing some music until Littlejohn returned around a minute later - could that be what you are thinking of? It is on YouTube.

                      The S4C thing might not be true, but I don't live in Wales so I wouldn't know. I read it somewhere.
                      I've everything I need to keep me satisfied
                      There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind
                      I'm having so much fun
                      My lucky number's one
                      Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Advert memories from 1992

                        Originally posted by George 1978 View Post
                        Regarding the German porn, I know that LWT in the London area, accidentally cut to a European TV channel which was showing a lesbian film during an edition of Richard Littlejohn's chat show at around 11.00 pm on a Friday night - the screen went blank and then went to an LWT caption with announcer Peter Lewis apologising and playing some music until Littlejohn returned around a minute later - could that be what you are thinking of? It is on YouTube.

                        The S4C thing might not be true, but I don't live in Wales so I wouldn't know. I read it somewhere.
                        Slight tangent ...

                        I work with Autistic teenagers in a secondary school ... a couple of years ago I was in a class with a temp supply teacher when suddenly a porn site appeared on the big screen showing about 20 small screens showing ‘ moving’ clips ( projected from the class teachers laptop ) .. she was obviously horrified when she realised and quickly closed the website down .... babbled her excuses to the pupils ... put me in charge whilst she went to explain directly to the headmaster .... but she immediately fainted outside the classroom and was carted off in an ambulance... never to be seen again !!




                        Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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                        • #13
                          Re: Advert memories from 1992

                          Originally posted by George 1978 View Post
                          Regarding the German porn, I know that LWT in the London area, accidentally cut to a European TV channel which was showing a lesbian film during an edition of Richard Littlejohn's chat show at around 11.00 pm on a Friday night - the screen went blank and then went to an LWT caption with announcer Peter Lewis apologising and playing some music until Littlejohn returned around a minute later - could that be what you are thinking of? It is on YouTube.

                          The S4C thing might not be true, but I don't live in Wales so I wouldn't know. I read it somewhere.
                          I was aware of that, but had not given that any thought for 20 years. Thank you for the reminder!

                          It IS in YouTube, you are right, and the clip is here:

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOLrnyUeMc4

                          Peter Lewis is the consummate professional here, with his emergency voice over, not even breaking a sweat. As if porn breaks happen on his watch every other day. 'We've gone into deep shock for a moment...' You're not wrong there, Peter!

                          And then the music that follows is just perfect. The typical 'BROADCAST WILL CONTINUE SHORTLY' music you get during TX issues, or when Wimbledon was halted due to the rain, back in the 1980s.

                          Slightly on topic, but one thing like this that I always find creepy is the Max Headroom TV takeover, from US TV in 1987 during a Dr Who broadcast.

                          Rather than me comment, watch this unsettling wonder for yourself:

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs

                          REMEMBER: cream first, jam second...


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                          • #14
                            Re: Advert memories from 1992

                            The Jaffa Cakes advert...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doSzK_z_KYU

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                            • #15
                              Re: Advert memories from 1992

                              Yes, that's the one! Thanks David.

                              That advert was going in July 1992 around the time my school broke up for the holidays because someone was singing the jingle on the final day of term.
                              I've everything I need to keep me satisfied
                              There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind
                              I'm having so much fun
                              My lucky number's one
                              Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!

                              Comment

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