Here’s another batch of TV commercials from the ‘80s and ‘90s, as I continue to muscle through these dangerously teetering piles of VHS tapes that are all over my desk. (Not kidding. Whenever I scratch my shoulder, there are at least three crashes.)

McDonald’s “Gold Rush” McNuggets Promo! (1980s)

This isn’t on anyone’s list of best-ever McDonald’s commercials, but it should be. Oh, what lengths they went to for this two week sale on Chicken McNuggets!

I’m totally in love with that old western set. Even conceding that much of the effect was achieved with a simple backdrop, they still had to fabricate an entire general store and hire assorted cowpeople. It’s like something out of a Six Flags park.

If you’re thinking that this was a touch overindulgent for a McNugget sale, well… yes… but in McDonald’s defense, their Chicken McNuggets were still fairly new by this point. (McDonald’s was sans-McNuggets before 1981, and they weren’t available everywhere until ’83!)

PS: I’m super into them correlating Chicken McNuggets with chunks of actual gold. I don’t know why that makes them seem more delicious, but here we are.

HBO Creepshow Movie Intro! (1980s)

This isn’t a commercial, obviously, but I think you’ll give me a pass. Here we have an HBO intro to an evening broadcast of Creepshow, likely from the late ‘80s. Every frame is perfect. Especially the ones that stutter and hiccup.

Give it up for HBO’s commitment to content warnings. They were practically daring us to watch this thing, all while promising that they’d *only* air Creepshow at night. Such disclaimers were common back then, and even if that was just a case of cable networks covering their asses, they only made the movies more appealing to us kids. So dangerous!

I have such fond memories of dipping my toes into horror by way of late night cable broadcasts. Knowing that I could click to a different channel when shit got too heavy encouraged me to test the waters, and it was with that fail-safe that I first experienced everything from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Hellraiser III. Read More…

I’ve been into space aliens for as long as I can remember. Whenever Unsolved Mysteries did a UFO segment, I led their cheering section. Whenever a flying saucer turned up on the cover of Weekly World News, I’d buy the issue. Aliens are one of my forever-jams.

Jay from The Sexy Armpit is in the same boat (or ship, maybe), so we’re both very excited to unleash this ALL-ALIENS episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast!

This week’s show covers ten space aliens from all walks of pop culture. We’re tackling scary stuff like Sightings and Alien Autopsy, along with friendlier extraterrestrials like Sonny Eclipse and that blue dude from the old Reese’s Pieces commercials.

It’s an hour-long tribute to beings from outer space!

Click here to listen to this week’s episode!

If you want more Purple Stuff, we’re also on Patreon, where you can get access to our monthly bonus shows — including January’s, where we do a deep dive into that new Ghostbusters teaser. Thanks to everyone who signed up — you’ve motivated us to increase our output! Read More…

Last week, I took a chance on a very large lot of homebrew VHS tapes, and my God, it really paid off. I’ve been at this for 20 years, and this was probably my best-ever score. I’m now sitting on more ancient TV commercials than I could ever hope to write about, which I suppose is a good problem to have.

Below are some recent acquisitions. May watching them on YouTube bring you as much joy as finding ‘em on dusty videocassettes brought me.

New Coke at McDonald’s! (1985)

We just talked about New Coke on the latest Purple Stuff Podcast, so this was a lucky find. In summary: Back in ‘85, Coca-Cola changed its flavor to more closely mimic Pepsi’s sweetness, in the hopes of grabbing back lost customers.

It didn’t quite work out that way, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Here we had McDonald’s celebrating New Coke’s arrival, and you can tell that McD’s was confident about the soda, because they practically married it to their Big Mac in this commercial. That was a pretty major endorsement.

The commercial seems to imply that McDonald’s had New Coke even before many stores did. I so love the idea of people enjoying a night out at McDonald’s just so they could sample New Coke. (Bonus points if McDonald’s actually used those swank Coke-themed paper cups.) Read More…