I Love 80’s Commercials Volume 1

I Love 80's Commercials. Great old TV commercials from the 80's featuring:
Metroid and Rad Racer for the NES Commercial
Cocoa Puffs Cereal Commercial
Pillsbury Dough Boy Cinnamon Roll Commercial (Poppin Fresh Dough)
80's Pepsi Cola Commercial
California Lottery 900 Line Commercial
Shake an Egg Easter Egg Coloring Kit

As one of the NES's premier racers, Rad Racer was met with favorable reviews and enjoyed commercial success; it ranked 8th on Nintendo Powers player's poll Top 30. It was condemned, however, for its extreme similarity to Sega's Out Run, released the previous year. In their article The History of Square, GameSpot conceded that "Rad Racer bears more than a passing resemblance to Out Run," but went on to say that "it's more than just a clone" and credited the game with "effectively convey[ing] the proper sense of speed." The article concluded that the game "stands on its own as a fine racing game." According to Sakaguchi, Rad Racer and The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner sold "about 500,000 copies, which was fairly good."

Cocoa Puffs is a brand of chocolate-flavored puffed grain breakfast cereal, manufactured by General Mills. Introduced in 1958, the cereal consists of small orbs of corn, oats and rice flavored with cocoa. Essentially, Cocoa Puffs are Kix cereal with chocolate flavoring. (Similarly, Trix was, for most of its existence, Kix plus fruit flavoring and coloring.) Kix cereal is produced in the same factories as Cocoa Puffs, but differs in density and circumference.

The mascot of Cocoa Puffs is Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, whose catchphrase is "I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!" was introduced in 1962.

On several occasions, Cocoa Puffs boxes stated that they are made with real Hershey's chocolate. Cocoa Puffs are sold in Canada, Latin America, Mexico and Europe under the Nesquik brand, thanks to a partnership between Nestlé and General Mills; Nestlé and Hershey are competitors in the chocolate business.

A cereal bar of Cocoa Puffs has been made. A layer of dried, sweetened condensed milk is added to the bottom, and marketed as a substitute for a bowl of milk and cereal.

The newest addition was introduced in the summer of 2008, Cocoa Puffs Combos, which consists of the recognizable chocolate puffs with vanilla puffs. Unlike original Cocoa Puffs, the Combos cereal does not contain cocoa. Instead, it contains artificial, imitation cocoa.

Poppin' Fresh, more widely known as the Pillsbury Doughboy, is an advertising icon and mascot of the Pillsbury Company, appearing in many of their commercials. Many commercials from 1965 until 2004 (returned in 2009 to 2011 and 2013 in a Geico Commercial) conclude with a human finger poking the Doughboy's stomach. The Doughboy responds when his stomach is poked by giggling (Hoo-Hoo!, or earlier on, a slight giggle "hee hee").

The Pillsbury Doughboy was created by Rudy Perz, a copywriter for Pillsbury's longtime advertising agency, Leo Burnett. Perz was sitting in his kitchen in the spring of 1965, under pressure to create an advertising campaign for Pillsbury's refrigerated dough product line (biscuits, dinner rolls, sweet rolls and cookies). Perz imagined a living dough boy popping out of a Pillsbury Crescent Rolls can. To distinguish the dough boy from the rolls, he gave it a scarf, a chef's hat, two big blue eyes, a blush, and a soft, warm chuckle when poked in the stomach. The Doughboy was originally designed by Milt Schaffer and brought to life using stop motion clay animation. Today, CGI is used. The first CGI commercial was directed by Tim Johnson who at that time was working for PDI.

Perz originally conceived the Doughboy as an animated figure, but changed his mind after seeing a stop motion titling technique used in the opening credits for The Dinah Shore Show. A three-dimensional Doughboy doll of clay was then created at a cost of $16,000. Veteran cartoon voice actor Paul Frees was chosen to be Fresh's voice. The first Poppin' Fresh commercials aired in October 1965. Since then, Pillsbury has used Poppin' Fresh in more than 600 commercials for more than fifty of its products. He also appeared in a MasterCard commercial, with the Jolly Green Giant, the Morton Salt Girl, and Count Chocula, as some of the ten merchandising icons, depicted as having dinner together.

In the fall of 2011, the Doughboy (in the guise of several live-action performers in full-sized Doughboy costumes) appeared with gospel music duo Mary Mary and several dancers in a flash mob appearance at Chicago Union Station, to launch the Pillsbury Frozen Breakfast product line (Mary Mary wrote the jingle for the products).

After Frees' death in 1986, Jeff Bergman took over. Today, the high-pitched giggles are done by JoBe Cerny.