Jingles of Joy
So much of our imaginations are tied up in the gemstones from those days of yore and yesteryear. Hopefully some of our creativity comes from literature. But let’s face it. Unless we were child prodigies chained to piano lessons all day long, a decent amount of our inspiration comes from childlike frenzies garnered from sitting in front of the television on a Saturday morning enjoying the routine cartoon lineup. Also synonymous with our favorite shows was ultimately the commercial breaks featuring slogans such as, “After these messages we will right back!” featuring Claymation in the form of the California Raisins.
YouTube ultimately reunited us with these childhood memories unless we happened to be one of the lucky ones to capture some of nostalgic nuggets on a VHS tape collecting dust in our basements. Jeez Louise! Sometimes a commercial had a unique song or message that had the power to unite us as one even if it came from a religion or group we did not belong to or would never join. For example, I specifically remember a commercial produced by “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” What I remember most of all is not that it was a religious commercial, but a very human message. “Just because you’re not the same doesn’t mean you’re weird or strange. Being different. Being different. Is being great.” It is a message that I wish existed in more middle schools and society in general. Plenty of our favorite songs are also tied up in memories of TV commercials. You do not have to be a member of the Simpson’s Family to have a favorite song that is actually a TV jingle. Without looking it up on Urban Dictionary, the definition of a jingle is just any catchy tune used in an advertisement that has seemed into our memories forever. The greatest commercials are those that have songs and the messages do not just advertise the product. Some jingles are even used for one commercial only and are more like an extended song in a short film.
The commercial that I want to focus on is in regards to Pizza Hut, and it lives forever on both YouTube as well as the VHS tapes of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. It is about Pizza Hut and shows a very small boy playing on his Little League Baseball team. His mind has been wandering as do the attention spans of many small children. All of a sudden everything is pointing at him and to the skies. “Off in the distance the game’s dragging on. There’s strikes on the batter…some runners are on. But suddenly everyone’s looking at me. My mind has been wondering what can it be. They point to the sky, and I look above. And a baseball falls into my glove.” The entire team runs out to celebrate him as the coach for the opposing team looks dejected. Hopefully in our long lives we will have the sensation of winning at least once. Not just winning because of luck in a raffle, but really earning the victory and having everybody celebrating it along with us. The greatest victories are the times in life when we win, and everybody else also wins alongside us. We win a victory for a huge team and not just for ourselves.
A runner-up for my favorite TV jingles are the ones for Folger’s Coffee. I enjoyed these commercials well before being old enough to consume coffee. “The best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup!” My favorite Folger’s Commercial is the one titled, “A Dancer’s Morning” It shows a woman in the early morning waking up to the aroma of rich, Folger’s coffee before her dance class followed by she and her peers dancing in unison like some explosive River Dance routine or something to that extent. Mornings are not a pretty time for many of us, and it is too bad we are not able to recall and/or appreciate being a newborn infant where we had the choice of sleeping as late as we wanted. The message is that we all need something to propel us into action in the mornings and seize the day.
