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Author
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Topic: REUNITED WITH A LONG LOST LOVE!!!
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted August 25, 2008 04:27 PM
Okay, I rarely post on the 16MM forum, but this certainly applies.
One of my greatest pleasures, when I was a kid, was saturday morning cartoons. I didn't have a great upbringing, and so it was pure escapism on Saturdays!
Along with the cartoons, there was an even greater passion that I had; the animated cartoons ads, which mostly surrounded cereal products, which such memorable characters as "Dig Em" the frog, "Toucan Sam" and, of course, "Tony the Tiger", (honestly, who can forget them?)
I have always loved the very art of the ad. You have a period of 30 to 60 seconds to tell a whole story, including showing the product, the specific jingle, which all produts tended to have ... for instance ...
"Smack, smack, Sugar Smacks,
Give me a smack,
and I'll smack you Back.
Fun to eat, those puffs of wheat,
Kelloggs Sugar Smacks!
" I Dig Em! "
... and, if those ads were done well, they are really wonderful entertainment. I loved them.
... in 1984, when I had first gotten out of the house, (18), I went by the dumpster of our local CBS affiliate (KBCI TV 2), and there were HUNDREDS of these little 16MM reels which these short ads!
I was in love! I remember making a reel (25 minutes) of general ads for assorted products, and a smaller reel (6 minutes) of nothing but animated ads.
When I went into the Job Corp just six months later, they were both stolen off of me from my locker, never to be seen again.
Now, 23 years later, I saw an auction on ebay where the seller was selling nine of those wonderful old ads, ranging from
1979 to 1982. I never thought I would win these, as usually there are people who buy these things and then resell them for outrageous sums, and these were starting at 2.00 dollars each.
I won them all for the starting bid!
I just got them and I'm now on a wonderful memory lane! None of these ads were ever even used, not a single scratch or wear of any kind. Not only that, but the color is pristine on these, (except on the Kelloggs Sugar Smacks ad, which has the slightest fade, but only on the faces, slightly pink).
Another interesting aspect of these ads was that the studio (or film lab) would place a very thin METAL clip right at the spot where the projectionist would want to turn on the ad. I don't know if this was where they were in tending to splice or just to turn it on at the appropriate spot, but it certainly seems like it would cause the film path to be scratched up terribly in a 16MM projector.
This is awesome, because I would LOVE to have a negative made of this (it would be a 200ft, six minute reel on Super 8) and produce it for Super 8 collectors. But I would love to do this in a very different way ...
One thing that I didn't do back in 84, that I did now, was that I loved looking at the leader to these films and got a wonderful surprise! Not all Kelloggs ads were done by the same animation production company. I remembered this from a book I once read about the animated ads. They would take bids from assorted animation studio's and the lowest bid tended to get the specific cereal ad contract.
There are five different companies that did these ads, and they have thier own logo's, (the best one being "Duck Soup Productions" with an awesome cartoon style logo), so, if these are ever released as a Super 8 release, I would keep on the leaders from the different ads, (not the repeat leaders of the animation studio's) so that those who would also like this in thier collections, could also have the fun of knowing a little extra history about the beloved ads.
The era of on film ads ended approximately in 1983-84, in favor of videotape. It made sense, as videotape was cheaper and wouldn't gain scratches everytime it was projected. It was an end of an era in advertising.
I have read on the internet, that Kellogg's is thinking about retiring all thier stable of animated stars, due to regualtions about how cereal is represented on TV and instead of fight against it, they look like they may be taking the easy way out, potentially depriving us of some wonderful friends from our childhood.
I thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed rediscovering a long lost love!
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted August 25, 2008 06:58 PM
Kevin,
I thought of that, but I doubt that they would be willing to release them with some of the leaders attached, as I would.
It is a neat idea and I'll think about it, as it appears that Derann is settling into just releasing shorter reels, (cartoons and such), and it might be just down thier alley, so to speak.
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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