The "Best" TV Commercials of the 50s and 60s

If you've seen Mad Men (or are of a certain age yourself), you're familiar with TV advertising in the 1960s. The 50s and 60s saw a lot of jingles, animation, and musical numbers in advertising. A lot of it seems cheesy now, but there's a genuine sense of fun (and a healthy dose of plain weirdness) in many TV commercials of that era.

Today, let's take a look at a half-hour compilation of ads from the 50s and 60s, courtesy of The Internet Archive's Ephemeral VHS collection. This is from a 1993 VHS tape that carried the description: "Let's take a nostalgic trip back down memory lane for some of those great Classic Television Commercials that we all grew up with during the Golden Age of Television."

Fun games to play while viewing: see which brands still exist (like Raid and Kit-Kat), think of which products you would actually buy, or ask yourself "What would Don Draper do?" If nothing else, jump to 15:42 for an ad featuring various Mattel toy automatic weapons, or 25:30 for Ronald Reagan selling laundry detergent:

If the video doesn't work on your device, try visiting the Internet Archive page.