Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Classic Local Commercials..The Selling of Cleveland.

I thought we'd take the blog in a different direction tonight..remembering some of the vintage local television commercials of days gone by..from those salesmen that told you "I REALLY wanna sell YOU a car NOW!"..and the like..Local commercials, in some instances became as popular as the shows they were advertising on..Some done in various forms for years and years...Some commercials were good, some bad but all memorable..Lets take a look at a few..



Roll On, Big O..For Lawson's Orange Juice..Fromn the early 1970's..Very memorable jingle here..The Lawson's name is used in Japan, Of all Places...




If you havent seen Higbee's...This is supposedly from 1967 but I dont recall this commercial airing that far back..




1971 Commercial for Red Barn's "Barnbuster"..While this wasnt Cleveland centered, Red Barns were all over Northeast Ohio until the 1980's..



1971 Burger King..Where Kids are King..



About 1970..The classic WEWS-TV 5 Eyewitness News Promo..




Uncle Bills Department Store..Looks to be the early 1980's..Voiceover is by the "Real" Bob James, WGAR-1220 DJ



From the Late 1970's...The late Ted Knight did a series of memorable commercials for Southgate USA, a then-new Shopping Mall in the Cleveland suburbs using his "Ted Baxter" persona..two short commercials here.




"Sohio Teperature Forecast"..1988 Radio spot from WNCI-FM Columbus with slides of classic Sohio pictures, signs, etc..Before its purchase by BP in 1991, Sohio had been involved in broadcasting in Ohio since the 1940's and its "Sohio Reporter" Radio program..migrating to TV from 1951-63...This radio commercial was the standard ad throughout the state from the 60's to the 90's..Notice the gas prices..around a dollar a gallon!!

Thanks a lot to ColumbusMediaTalk, ClevelandMemoryGrenade, Videoholic50's/70's, and others.. for uploiading these clips..If anyone finds any other classic Cleveland area commercials out there, we could do something like this again at some point

6 comments:

  1. That was great, thanks

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  2. I loved hearing the Lawson's and Higbee's jingles again. Thanks, Tim!

    -ck

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  3. GREAT POST. The Higbees commercial was fantastic. Thanks too for the SOHIO Weather Jingle. I have searched long and far for that crazy sound and now I have something that I hope I can use as a ringtone!!!

    Way to go

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  4. The Higbee's commercial is my favorite. It was a very cool and forward-thinking commercial for its day. I remember seeing this commercial on TV around 1970. I think there were other versions of it as well. Only sad part about seeing it is that Higbees is gone. What a loss to our community. Who wouldn't love to walk through those relving doors and once again look at the crystal chandeliers and marble floors?

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  5. Hi there? I've been looking at a lot of these commercials on youttube. I live in the Columbus, Ohio, area but was born and raised in northern Ohio, where everything is Cleveland.

    We've been trying to find the old "Garfield 12323, Garfield 12323" commercial forever, and we can't find it. There's a newer one, but it's not the same.

    If you have suggestions, I would love to hear them, and in the meantime, I'll keep my eyes open.

    Great site! Thanks!

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  6. Hi everyone! I just saw a post inquiring about old Garfield 12323 commercials. We've got them on VHS, we're going to be digitizing them soon and placing them on www.garfield12323.com when it relaunches in a few months!

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