For our inaugural Digiday Throwback Thursday supercut, we’re taking you back to the 1980s, a simpler time, before DVRs or Roku, when you had to actually sit through commercials on television. To inform our millennial readers (and take Gen Xers on a New Coke nostalgia trip), we tracked down some of the best ’80s ads.
Included here are culinary gems like the Grey Poupon campaign — but of course — and less high-falutin’ fare like Hungry-Man’s microwaveable dinners. A few furry mascots make cameos like Bud Light’s party animal Spuds MacKenzie and the Energizer Bunny. There are even human spokesmen, too, including a America’s Dad, a pre-scandal Bill Cosby shilling Jell-O. Michael J. Fox braves the rain for a Diet Pepsi.
The more iconic commercials from the ’80s transcended television, becoming cultural touchstones in their own right, like Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” ad. Apple’s Ridley Scott-directed Macintosh spot tapped George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 for inspiration.
If your memory is hazy, just sit back and take a nostalgic trip back to the ’80s.
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