Video - 70s Commercial for 7-Up

It's confession time; I don't recall seeing a TV set until I was five years old, and even then it was three good network channels and one scratchy one an antenna-fed console. The year was 1969, and the first show I saw was probably J.P. Patches.

I think living the first five years of my life on an island in the North Pacific created a pop-culture vacuum that didn't become evident until we moved within range of the massive transmitters on Queen Anne Hill. From that point forward I sucked in TV, Radio, Music at an accelerated rate, almost as if my body was making up for the years of isolation. Oddly enough, it isn't just the TV shows that come back to me when I see references to them on the Internet; oftentimes it's the commercials from the era that have truly thrived on YouTube, including 7Up - The UnCola. That phrase and product are riveted to the inside of my skull. I remember their commercials in the early 1970s being artistic and astounding for the use of color and animation. Here's an example of a 7Up commercial I remember from those days - probably from the mid-1970s - done in the style of pop artist Peter Max. It might be described quickly as a "Pseudo-Psychedelic Soda Pop Timeline," describing eras of 7Up through pictures and music styles. It also has what I would consider to be early evidence of an Elvis Impersonator, because I can't imagine Elvis Presley ever loaning his voice to a 7Up commercial. Ironically it finishes with music styled like a Vegas show tune, which is exactly where Elvis ended up.

I could hit Replay on this video all day long, and I have highlighted it here because it made me think. Consider that this stuff was probably done without the benefit of digital animation. Back then a computer the size of a room could do less than the Dell PC I'm typing on right now. It would have been easier to render by hand the images you see here, as opposed to a cabinet filled with relays, transistors and tubes. This one-minute commercial is probably hand made. The editing, color, effects etc. were all done the old-fashioned way despite the fact that the commercial itself represented "the youth market." Consider it from that angle and you can appreciate the large amount of work that went into creating the presentation. It's like the relationship between a digital camera and a 35mm SLR; they both do the same thing, but the 35mm film camera truly requires a stronger working relationship between the photographer and the equipment. Without that relationship, the camera can't take good pictures. On the digital, you can just delete what you don't want and try again. To say that digital media "cheapens" the notion of art would be a cop out. Rather, I feel it's important to consider the amount of work people had to do back in the day to show what they saw and felt.

Watching this - knowing that - adds another layer of enjoyment for me. If you don't see the embedded video below click HERE or on the picture above to watch the video at YouTube!