For your viewing pleasure, the most abusive parts of 50’s and 60’s coffee commercials. For your commenting pleasure, an open thread.
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by $8 blue check mistermix| 94 Comments
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For your viewing pleasure, the most abusive parts of 50’s and 60’s coffee commercials. For your commenting pleasure, an open thread.
Comments are closed.
Villago Delenda Est
In the fifties and sixties, the frying pan (used to brain the dumbfuck bitching about his coffee, which was, btw, shitty by design) had not been invented to provide the proper percussion to a coffee commercial.
Needless to say, but I will anyways, I learned this from McMegan. Well, the frying pan part. She’s clueless about the shitty coffee.
Tonybrown74
The proper response would have been to throw the coffee in his face and then yell, “F*ck you! Make your own damned coffee!”
Tom
Is that the killer from Targets in the second-to-last clip?
Baud
I can’t wait to return to the good old days.
donnah
Gah! Those commercials are horrible! Really cringe-worthy.
Yet just this week there was a story about Penneys selling t- shirts about a girl being too pretty to do homework and letting her brother do it instead, so I’m not sure how far we’ve come in fifty years.
Had my husband ever said anything like that to me, he’d be curled up on the kitchen floor with a coffe mug wedged in his ass.
kindness
No it’s not. My coffee is damn good. Right now I’m sipping a cuppa Peets House Blend (not my favorite blend but that’s what the Peets shop was serving).
Peets rocks. Is this going to be another of those Mac/PC posts but with coffee instead?
@donnah: Man, isn’t that something that can wait till Friday night when it’s more appropriate?
scav
Ah yes, the cherished good old days to which we must return. And yet they still make fun of lattes.
PeakVT
Coffee can taste good? (looks down) Huh.
chopper
@Villago Delenda Est:
lol, kitchens didn’t have frying pans back in the 50’s.
jeffreyw
Organic fair trade dark Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Coffee Bean Direct is my daily brew.
Ooparts
I love offensive ads from the mid century. I remember there was some magazine ad – I can’t remember what for, but it had a tag along the lines of “is it always wrong to beat your wife?” Greatest generation, indeed.
JGabriel
TPM:
Of course the Teabaggers prefer Perry to Bachman. Perry has all the batshit crazy of Bachmann, but with none of the vagina.
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barath
FWIW, Just collected some of the thoughts about the economy that I had written as comments here yesterday and discussed them in the context of today’s not-so-good jobs report:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/02/1012804/-Big-Zero:-Why-Todays-Jobs-Report-is-Old-News
Roger Moore
Of course their coffee was shit; they were probably using (gasp!) percolators. You want decent coffee, you have to start with a decent way of making the coffee.
demz taters
@Villago Delenda Est: There was always the rolling pin.
Culture of Truth
I’ve heard of soda jerk but not a coffee jerk.
JGabriel
@kindness:
Kindness, for future reference, which blend is Peet’s best?
(Beatles pun unintended, but enjoyed nonetheless.)
.
scav
Open threads really are the only ones that stay on topic here aren’t they? Speaking of which, I need coffee.
Roger Moore
@demz taters:
And I think kitchens back then had knives, too, though I’ll have to check with The Atlantic’s expert to be sure.
Mr Stagger Lee
I would love to see a Quentin Tarantino, play with this, oh wait he did!
:-P
I work in an office that has free “coffee”… Folgers… blechhh! I can understand the reaction!
Culture of Truth
I’m sometimes informed through angry eyes, swats and vocalizations that my cat food sucks, had improper ratio, or is not being dished out with sufficient rapidity.
The Moar You Know
Do these men have no sense of protectiveness towards their testicles?
I ask only because that’s where the pot of coffee would end up getting poured if I ever said anything like that to my wife, not that I would, she makes a great pot of joe, but you get my drift.
Culture of Truth
@Mr Stagger Lee: Also heroin, as I recall.
jeffreyw
Day in, day out-this is the best coffee brewer. All others are pretentious or pretenders. There, I said it.
kindness
@JGabriel: Tastes vary. What your making makes a difference too. For morning brew, our house rotates between Major Dickinson, 101 Blend, Garuda, House & what ever specialty they have that month (occasionally a Sumatra). If you’re going for espresso that’s when the Italian & French blends work.
Not much a Mocha fan. As you can see though I do prefer the blends.
@jeffreyw: Most here prefer a French Press if I’m not mistaken.
jeffreyw
@kindness: Like I said, pretentious.
TheOtherWA
@JGabriel: I like Peet’s Arabian Mocha-Java and Major Dickason’s Blend®. Actually, I’ve never had a coffee from them that I didn’t like at all, just some I like more than others. YMMV.
ruemara
I think that physical violence in a relationship is sometimes appropriate, nay, required to make a point. The neo-pig douchebag generation has returned because women did not beat the shit out of these men.
adolphus
You know Don Draper would be all over ads like this.
Gunner
Here in Tennessee, we’re appalled by those commercials. Women should never speak to men before they’re given permission.
Roger Moore
@jeffreyw:
I really like my Chemex. You might call it pretentious, but it makes really great coffee and is easy to clean. If it ever breaks (heaven forbid) I think I’m going to get one of those little mug-top filter holders that use the same style of filter.
cleek
i feel the urge to start telling Dave Appell jokes
Toby Roan
@Tom: Yes indeed it is — Tim O’Kelly.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Of course not, they’re fictional characters created to make a dramatic point in a TV commercial, not real men saying that to their actual wives. Though I guess there are plenty of real-world men who are emotionally abusive, and experience shows that it results in damaged testicles a depressingly small fraction of the time.
Mike Goetz
I’m a French presser all the way. Though I will say that my grandfather’s old percolater made some good coffee, so there.
I’m glad to be talking about this instead of politics, which has been so brutalizing and dispiriting in this last month it’s not even funny.
burnspbesq
Our favorite Nobel-laureate Cassandra put up a music post on his blog this morning (probably because he couldn’t bear the thought of writing about the latest jobs report). The comments are worth perusing: a lot of data about bands you may never have heard of.
Going back to it later. Right now, I have an office to go set up. Have a great day, y’all.
shortstop
The third baseman makes all the coffee in this house, and he makes it damned well. But before I get all self-congratulatory…I do all the cooking.
Edited to remove idiotic and melodramatic frowny face. I don’t really mind doing all the cooking, since I love it and he hates it. And he is the most grateful audience.
Jay in Oregon
I liked this take on handling trolls in blog comments.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/09/02/what-to-do-about-the-dickheads/
Mike Goetz
@Roger Moore:
Frostbite would be the main threat to my testicles in this situation.
Chat Noir
Those ads are ghastly.
@kindness:
Back in 1998, a friend told me that once you have French press coffee, you’ll never prepare it another way again. And she was right! Been using a French press ever since.
scav
I’m rather enjoying that my 20+ year-old no-plug-involved French press is pretentious while a 124$ automatic drip is home-spun authenticity. wonder if it would help if someone rebranded it as a Freedom Press in which patriotic ‘mercan housewives waterboarded the ground up remnants of Arabian beans for their picky husbands.
Yevgraf
I can trump every 60s ad you put up, just with this one – James Mason and Thunderbird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xY7mBQrzXU
jeffreyw
@Roger Moore: Lol! Sorry, forgot my snark tag. I have no firm opinions on brewing methods.
Roger Moore
@scav:
Where would you like your Internet delivered? (Quoted just because it deserves to be repeated.)
jeffreyw
Ooh! I like that! Hee hee, a sound business plan with just a tweak or two!
gogol's wife
@Yevgraf:
James Mason for Thunderbird is of course the greatest commercial ever made, but you’ll be happy to know that DougJ front-paged it a few months back.
I love you guys. You make me laugh when it seems impossible.
eemom
Only on this blog, ladies and gentlemen, can one awaken to a coffee/sexism/1950s/domestic abuse open thread.
henrythefifth
@JGabriel: Do you think the headline is intentionally suggestive? Reads like it.
Yevgraf
Ice cold ripple…the new drink for lively people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciR7Fq2tqJ0&feature=related
Yevgraf
Ripple will never replace beer, but it runs in the same crowd…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHcA5dUEJHw&feature=related
JGabriel
@kindness: @TheOtherWA: Thank you! Tank yew very much.
Comrade Mary
If you want violence with your old coffee ads, search YouTube for the Wilkins commercials with Kermit. Yes, Kermit.
Yevgraf
Richards Wild Irish Rose – the happy wine for happy people…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfA7s5bTwA4&feature=related
JGabriel
@henrythefifth:
Hadn’t thought about it till you pointed it out. But, yes, it’s both, suggestive and intentional. Of course.
.
Yevgraf
Fred Flintstone sez Winstons taste good like a cigarette should…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qfmWWZ9uSE&feature=related
Roger Moore
I should also stick in a word in favor of Turkish coffee, or “Armenian coffee” as it’s euphemistically known in the Glendale/Pasadena area. Not necessarily what you want to have with breakfast every morning, but it’s really great with Middle Eastern food. And I’m surprised that there hasn’t yet been a great horde of Espresso fans claiming that anything less than 15 bars of pressure is incapable of producing proper coffee.
And, just because:
All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot,
I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot.
Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me!
If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!
Dead Earnest
It is tempting to see these ads and think, by comparison, things are significantly better today. But the goal of advertising remains the same. The manipulation of peoples hopes, dreams and fears continues but with greater skill and subtlety.
The old ads are akin to stones and spears, the new ones are stealth bombers and nanotechnology drones.
If I were a modern advertiser I’d like nothing better than to cause the old ads to go viral; “no rocks and spears here. Please enjoy our new, entertaining and respectful suggestions for goods and services to enhance your life. Thoughtfully created with your mind in mind”.
khead
SNAP!
JGabriel
@Dead Earnest:
Not even with greater skill and subtlety, just with the subtlety appropriate to the prejudices and insecurities of the time.
I have no doubt that in 30-50 years, today’s ads will be just as revealing as the coffee ads compiled above.
The sexism displayed in those ads was entirely unremarkable to the people of the time. One wonders what unnoticed prejudices or insecurities in today’s ads will look incomprehensible to the next generation or the one after it.
.
eemom
@Yevgraf:
omg. I am not the only one old enough to remember when cigarettes were advertised on teevee? And I totally remember that one in particular.
Bnut
Don’t know if this one has been posted yet, but it’s fucking scary.
Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American
maya
But..but…isn’t this the Merkin era Boehner, Bachmann, and the TBaggers want to time travel back to – bad coffee and the Beav?
shortstop
Does replying to three comments at once get one in hot filtered coffee water here? (I was admonished for my spammin’.) If so, I’ll just compliment scav, Roger and JGabriel en masse and without detail.
Violet
Wow, I just watched the video. Men really were free to treat women like crap. It’s amazing how far we’ve come, yet we’ve got a long way to go.
catclub
@Roger Moore: “Espresso fans claiming that anything less than 15 bars of pressure is incapable of producing proper coffee.”
I am pretty sure that bar is not an SI unit. Pascals and MPa are what the true European influenced espresso snobs are referring to these days.
(My advisor insisted on ocean profiler graphs in MPa rather than meters. Correct but highly pedantic.)
catclub
@eemom: Yep, four out of five doctors prefer Lucky Strikes!
NonyNony
@maya:
They want you to travel back to the era where you could jab your finger at your wife’s face like the jerk at 0:46 and she’ll stand there and take it. And nobody will make you feel bad for being an abusive asshole.
The bad coffee and the Beav are just the burdens one must bear for the “right” to not be called out as an asshole when you act like an asshole. Which is about 90% of what the resentment-based politics of the right boil down to these days.
JGabriel
shortstop:
Four links, whether to other sites or in-thread comments, throws you into moderation. Three or less is fine.
.
JGabriel
@Bnut:
Well of course it’s UnAmerican! This country was founded on “One Dollar, One Vote!”
This “One Man, One Vote!” nonsense is pure anti-democratic COMMIE drivel! Who ever heard of democracy that allows everyone to vote? Obviously, none of you libtards know what democracy means!
.
shortstop
@JGabriel: Hmmm, I only had three, but it was the response to (organ chord) YOURS that arrested my progress!
Yutsano
@Bnut: It’s like every right-wing bugaboo wrapped up into one neat nifty little article! Except, y’know, the whole voting being Constitutional thing and all.
elmo
The antidote to those ads is, of course, the best series of coffee ads of all time – Taster’s Choice from the 80’s. (Can’t link from work, sadly). Tony Head FTMFW!
Dennis SGMM
Austin Powers drinks a cup of “coffee.” “It’s a bit nutty.”
JGabriel
@shortstop:
That’s only because I’m such an arresting fellow.
ETA: Seriously, if there were only three links, then you must have unknowingly used an FYWP forbidden word.
.
catclub
@Yutsano: You ain’t kidding.
his book “Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.”
so why do a version control system and star trek extras have it in for the the American taxpayer? Inquiring minds and all that.
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
I’m guessing that today’s appearance ads, especially ones for weight loss schemes, will seem really freaky in 50 years. I’d also guess that Carl’s Jr. “without us, some guys would starve” ads will seem impossibly bad within 20 years.
@catclub:
A bar is a pseudo SI unit; it’s 0.1 MPa. It gets used a lot in engineering because it’s within an engineering tolerance of one atmosphere, so they can pretend to be using a SI unit without changing much. All of the pump driven Espresso machines I’ve seen advertised talk about the pressure they can deliver in bar. So does the high pressure lab equipment (e.g. HPLCs) that doesn’t use psi. For low pressures, they tend to use either bar/mbar/etc. or torr/mtorr/etc. Every once in a while I’ll see something calibrated in inches of mercury(!) but that’s usually for what we call “plumber’s vacuum”. I don’t remember ever seeing something with low pressures calibrated in Pa/mPa/etc.
kindness
@shortstop:
No but the hallmark of a good liberal seems to be the need to ream other good liberals for their thoughts & liberalness if the comments on this blog are any indication. (snark – before I get hoisted on my own petard)
pete
Except for the guy turning down the Thermos, everyone of the complaints in the video up top could (and should) have been followed by: “… and the portions are way too small.”
Which of course immediately suggests a response.
kindness
@JGabriel: OMG, The American Thinker… I saw that earlier this morning. Apparently this mob of preening ‘patriots’ is the biggest bunch of fascists since Mussolini was hung after WWII in Italy, and they don’t even realize it. How do you show a bunch of fucked up dictator lovin’ idiots that they are fucked up dictator lovin’ idiots? I haven’t a clue. The hypocrisy meter zoomed past 11 & broke into a thousand pieces over there though.
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
God, I thought that title was a snarky reply to the usual Republican vote suppression tactics; I didn’t think any of them were bold enough to come out and say that in public. WTF is wrong with these assholes?
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
See, I thought you were going to put up a picture of Mrs. J.
Or you.
The Other Chuck
I used to like a french press, but for some reason it started tasting too harsh (and yes I cleaned the thing thoroughly). I switched to an aeropress, which is pretty good and is basically mess-free (just untwist the bottom and pop the puck into the compost bin). Doesn’t quite get enough of the oils through though, so I wonder if I can get some coarser filters.
Meh, I probably need to drop a few thou for an espresso machine … or hey I’ll just put on clothes and go to peets.
normal liberal
@Roger Moore: Living among tea drinkers, I’ve used those Melitta one-cup things with the wedge-shaped filters for ages, and they work just fine. (I alternate between Major Dickason’s [assume registered trademark symbol here] and what Seattle’s Best used to call Henry’s Blend.)
Hario now makes a version with a Chemexesque conical paper filter and a single larger drainage hole. There’s one in clear plastic, which allows you to see if you need to top off the grounds to fill your mug.
Re the American Thinker clown – another for the list come the revolution.
Paul in KY
@Yevgraf: I was thinking the car, until I watched it. Love the mustache.
Did any Hollywood types do ads for Sterling beer?
Brian
In an effort to make the most juvenile comment on this thread, I’d ask that you watch (re-watch) the clip, subbing the word “coffee” out and placing in its stead your own favorite term for “lady parts.” It doesn’t work on clips 2 and 3, but as for the rest, well, it’s a hoot and a holler. If you’re as immature as I am. Which may be impossible.
Persia
It’s making me miss those cheesy soap opera ads with Giles.
@Roger Moore: A lot of the weight loss ones are creepy NOW.
@Brian: Your vagina really is murder!
Hannah
Is the first woman Donna Mills?
Less Popular Tim
@Brian:
Speaking of juvenile, I’m surprised nobody has alluded to “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” and the scene where Kumar imagines being married to a giant bag of pot. During the montage, Mrs. Kumar nee Giant-Bag-of-Pot makes him coffee, and he yells at her about the quality. She cries and he apologizes. It’s fascinating that there is so much precedent for that scenario…
gogol's wife
@Hannah:
Sure looks like it. Good eye!
Arclite
@jeffreyw: Don’t forget to get a decent grinder for the best tasting coffee.
Blogreeder
@Roger Moore: You’re right about the percolators. Smells good while it’s brewing but it makes awful coffee. Funny video.
Lesley
I have a story that explains why my 1960’s era mother became a feminist. My father bitched and complained constantly about his eggs one morning. He didn’t like them scrambled, he didn’t like them fried, he didn’t like them boiled. My mother kept returning to the kitchen until finally she cracked two raw eggs on a plate and set them down in front of him.
I believe he beat her for it but that part’s vague in my memory. He used to hit her.
I was a very young child at the time and have never forgotten how she stood up to him.
Batocchio
Ghastly. Next, they’ll be telling their wives they smell bad.