Old Commercials

What ever became of the kid in the 70’s commercial who sang that he wished he was an Oscar Meyer Weiner? Is that seriously what he truly wished to be? I wonder if his parents were ever super disappointed. I guess to each his own. I think when his parents told him he could be whatever he wanted to, that’s not quite what they had in mind. I hope he was able to achieve his goal though. In the old commercials, was the guy who said it was time to make the donuts the same guy that was squeezing the Charmin in aisle 5? My memory is a little hazy. Any time I saw toilet paper with the middle cardboard squished, I always said it was probably that store manager who was always squeezing the toilet paper way too hard. I bet the donut guy was amazed that his commercial was the mantra for anybody going to work as we said, “It’s time to make the donuts,” even though none of us actually ever made donuts for a living. I always loved the Coke commercial where they “liked to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony” because when I was younger, I thought that would be a nice step towards world peace if they really could buy the world a Coke. I’m sorry that didn’t pan out. Coca cola is worldwide, but it’s done little in the way of improving international relations like their slogan said it would. You’re welcome too because now you’re singing that Coke jingle in your head all day. But I could definitely relate to the funny math that the tootsie roll pop commercial used to see how many licks it takes to get to the center of the pop, where the owl ripped the lollipop out of the poor kid’s hand. That would be me…not the ripping the lollipop out of the kid’s hand part, but the notion that I’m unable to determine an exact number it takes because I don’t have the willpower to see how long it takes for hard candy to dissolve. I’ll chew a tootsie roll lollipop or the kind with the yummy gum inside with the lollipop embedded in it, that’s how little willpower I have. We still quote the commercial “is it live, or is it Memorex” when we ask each other if what we’re watching is in real time or taped so we can fast forward through commercials. There are probably some kids today who are unaware that we couldn’t record episodes, and we didn’t have a pause or fast forward feature on the tv to deal with commercials. We either had to watch them…which is why they are so prominent in our memories, or use our time wisely by running to grab a snack or drink. If you didn’t make it back in time before the commercial was over, that was it. You missed that part of the show for all eternity. Sorry Charlie, as the Tuna fish commercial we never forgot would say. No Netflix binge watching. No YouTube video clips of what you missed. It was just gone. The soaps you technically could miss because they recapped every scene for several weeks. But other shows left you devastated. To this day I’m still in awe and thankful for the pause, rewind, fast forward, record feature on the TV. But by using that feature instead of watching commercials I hope I’m not missing out on anything amazing like the kid wishing to be an Oscar Meyer Weiner, or the poor exhausted guy who hallucinates that he’s already made the donuts, but my guess is I’m not really missing much and I’ll survive.