Classic Christmas Commercials, Volume 11!
I wanted to sneak one last edition of Classic Christmas Commercials onto Dino Drac before THE BIG DAY, which is now approaching so rapidly that it might actually be January by the time I finish this paragraph.
Below: Five more Christmas commercials from 1987, featuring ALF, Garfield and Santa Claus.
ALF’s Special Christmas! (1987)
Here’s a promo for ALF’s Special Christmas. If you’ve never seen it, just know that there are reasons why the one-hour special has become so internet-infamous.
The episode dealt with some very heavy subjects, from suicide to terminal illness. The script handled them well enough, but at the end of the day, it was still ALF — a show about a wisecracking alien Muppet who loved cat meat.
Depressing, sure, but I’d stop short of calling it “bad.” They probably should’ve been more suggestive than literal with some aspects, but if anyone was gonna introduce ‘80s kids to the darker facets of life, I guess ALF was an okay choice. He cushioned the blows with jokes and fur. Read More…
Ancient Holiday Appetizers, Part 5!
Well, it’s that time again. Time to make the weird old appetizers.
I grew up surrounded by recipe books that were published many years before I was born. They fascinated me as a kid, and they still do now. Not every dish is appetizing, but there was such a colorfully crude artistry to it all.
These days, one of my big Christmas traditions is to prepare a bunch of dishes from those books. If you’ve been reading Dino Drac from the start, you’ve seen me broil grapefruit, thread carrots through olives and even smear black fish eggs on burnt toast. To me, that is Christmas.
Tonight, the saga continues! Below are five more holiday appetizers, as pitched by very old cookbooks. (This time, most of the recipes are from the late ‘70s.)
I followed the directions as closely as possible, substituting nothing even when I knew that I should’ve. What’s the point of doing this if you’re not gonna go all-in?
Mix a small tub of sour cream with a teaspoon of lemon juice and a container of cheap red caviar. (Even if you’ve never noticed them, trust me, your supermarket does have containers of cheap red caviar. They’re usually stocked near the sardines.)
Stuff small blobs of that mixture into two-inch pieces of celery, and you are DONE. I’m sure some of you are revolted by what you’re seeing, but I love the way it looks. I would seriously frame and hang a 36” version of that first photo.
If you’ve never had this sort of cheap caviar, it’s so heavily salted that stores don’t even keep it refrigerated. It doesn’t taste so much like “salty fish” as it does “fishy salt,” and I consider no Christmas season complete until I use a jar of it in something.
Hot tip: Your mixture isn’t guaranteed to come out quite this pink, so if you’re into that, you may wanna add a drop of red food dye.
SCORE: 7 out of 10. If I had to do it again, I’d add minced onions and maybe some chives. Sour cream is pretty goopy even when chilled, and I think these would work better with a thickened filling. Read More…
Classic Christmas Commercials, Volume 10!
A reader donated over seven hours’ worth of Christmas specials, all taped off television back in 1987… with every commercial left intact. Yes!
(Thank you, Robin!)
Everything in this edition of Classic Christmas Commercials is from that tape, so imagine them breaking Rudolph and Frosty’s adventures into manageable chunks.
KFC’s Holiday Meal Deal! (1987)
Whenever a TV commercial blended fast food with Christmas, I lost it. I’ve loved that pairing for as long as I can remember. To this day, I still consider ordering pizza and eating McDonald’s as inherently Christmassy things… so long as you do them in December.
Given that, I’m all about this Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial, wherein the notoriously-thrifty Ebenezer Scrooge sees merit in KFC’s Holiday Meal Deal. In fact, Scrooge is so smitten with the Holiday Meal Deal that he seems barely coherent. He’s like Alfred by way of Bulworth.
Scrooge collects enough empty fried chicken buckets to build a Christmas tree out of them (!!!), which sounds amazing until you remember than an “empty” bucket of fried chicken is never truly empty. So yeah, this whole situation is kinda gross, even if I will admit that it does make me want chicken. Read More…
Dino Drac’s December Funpack!
I want you to think of this month’s Funpack as “Christmas morning in a box.”
From collectibles to candy to reading material to classic stocking stuffers, Dino Drac’s December Funpack is guaranteed (well, the fake sort of guarantee, anyway) to make your month merrier. (And also guaranteed to get there before Christmas!)
For those who don’t know the score, I sell monthly Funpack subscriptions. The boxes are $25 a month (including shipping), and for as long as you stay subscribed, you’ll keep receiving them! You can cancel at any time without penalty, too!
Remember, your Funpack subscriptions are literally the only thing keeping Dino Drac alive! Without you, there’d be no me!
Scroll down to the bottom for more info, or keep reading to see everything you’ll receive in this month’s box! Read More…