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Butlins holiday camps have been advertised on TV ever since the late '50s, and produced a number of memorable commercials. But their main advertising campaign in the late '70s featured two blue aliens called Toot and Ploot, who arrived on Earth in their (extremely small) flying saucer and discovered the wonders of taking a holiday at the famed resorts.They were both identical, with oval bald heads and pointy Mr.Spock ears, and were not entirely unlike the Sontarans from 'Dr.Who'. They looked like they were both male, although in one of their ads they returned to Butlins with their offspring Bloot, which left things rather open to interpretation- either they HAD no gender and Bloot was created by genetic cloning, or they were haemaphrodite, or they were gay and had Bloot via surrogacy. Who knows? Bloot is sent to bed early for being naughty, but later teleports himself into the chorus line on stage during the adult's evening cabaret show (only to be teleported smartly back to bye-byes by Ploot). These somewhat characterless extraterrestrials appeared both in live TV ads and in cartoon form on Butlins publicity info, and proved to be a very succesful marketing creation before they were dropped in 1982 for a more up-to-date series of commercials. A later ad. (from the mid-'80s) was entirely animated, and showed families from various professions all enjoying themselves at Butlins- they were very much in the 'Happy Families' mould in that they ALL (even the kids) wore the clothes of their jobs- the teacher's family were all in caps & gowns, the builder's family all wore dungarees and hard hats, and so on.As a child I LONGED for us to go to Butlins, as it looked like it was such fun- I didn't understand at that age that you're never left in peace for 5 minutes there, and that the redcoats start marshalling you about as soon as you arrive! But Butlins remains a quintessential piece of British heritage, and nowadays has changed it's image so that it's become quite cool & trendy to holiday with them. Long may it thrive!
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I dont remember toot and ploot 
, but anything from Butlins in the 70's and 80's makes me smile!
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