Adverts A-C

Appearing in 1992 to advertise 7Up and attempt to appeal to the 'hip' youth demographic is Fido Dido - a character created by Joanna Ferrone and Sue Rose some years previous.

During the 80s, when unemployment was at a terribly high rate, the ever-helpful UK government brought out... a leaflet. Perhaps not a brilliant scheme, but the overexagerrated screaming makes this an interesting ad.

5 years later and the advertising has gotten a bit more active, although the 'great fibre provider' tagline has remained.

Cool it brothers - it's 3am. The yoghurts are having a party downstairs but it's keeping the fridge magnets awake. Hey I only commentate on these things, I don't write the advert script!

What better way to celebrate Ambrosia Creamed Rice than with a train station (intended to look like Paddington, but actually St Pancras due to refurbishment at the time), a farmer riding a cow, and a cover of Village People’s Go West?

An earlier 'singing cows' advert for Anchor Butter, from 1988. Computer video animation isn't quite as advanced at this point, so a lot more looping of shots is used to try and create the effect of the cows singing.

The anchor cows sing, as they do battle against the evil lawnmower taking all of their grass. There's some serious stuff going down in fields these days!

Not a talking cow in sight for another product from Anchor. But there are a lot of cats. ALL THE CATS!

This advert for Andrex originally aired with a more sedate soundtrack in the early 80s, featuring a puppy and a duck interacting in the snow. However it was the later remix of it which saw the visuals teamed up with 'Merry Christmas Everybody' by Slade as well as adding the poignant Dogs Trust message about a 'Puppy Is For Life Not Just for Christmas' that became much better remembered. Becoming a recurring feature of British Christmas television for many years to follow.

An advert for the well-known dessert, here showing an alternative and somewhat questionable production method of vibrating a cow.

An Argos ad from the late 80s... with a song telling us how 'it's so easy' to shop with them.

One of a series of adverts for Asda from the early 90s, using Perfect from Fairground Attraction as a backing track. Plenty of 'everyday life' shots mixed in with items you could buy from Asda. Budding ident designers the world over may have been looking at this and thinking 'hmm, random lifestyle shots. Could we make channel idents out of this?..'.

Who wouldn't want one of these as a pet then? A jolly little animation, advertising the drink Babycham in the 1980's, with their famous animated character.

A later advert for the same shampoo!

A new logo, but 8 years on, and the same song for B&Q is still going. Different scenes make for a different set of lyrics this time round.

From the same 'spirit' campaign, another advert for Barclays Bank in 1991. This time featuring the Ghost of the Headless Baron... or a close approximation in the form of someone from the bank.

Rowan Atkinson stars in another advert for Barclaycard, this time self-charged with protecting the shopping for the beautiful Economic Adviser to the UN. In this advert, Atkinson's character is actually named as Richard Latham. Although the character idea would be largely the same in the later movies that followed, this name was not carried through.

Another advert for Barclaycard, this time in 2001. By now, its now Angus Deayton at the helm!

The people of Portsmouth feature in a slightly bizarre advert for defunct clothing and homewares chain BHS in 1994. Cramming in as many nautical jokes as possible to promote their latest 'sail'...

The late John Hewer played the famous Captain Birds Eye (or Birdseye, depending on your point of view) from 1967 through until 1998. The concept never changed much over that time - A jolly sea captain would ply a crew of children with plates of his finest fish fingers. In this advert from 1990, the children are looking a bit older, and the shape of the fish fingers is somewhat rounder.

Julie Walters stars in this humorous Advert for Bisto from the late 90s.

A famous ad for Boddingtons from the 90s. In a spoof of all those stylish trainer ads, an athlete runs through the desert to catch up with an Ice Cream truck driven by Melanie Sykes.

Boots employ the skills of TVC London, the animation studio famously behind The Snowman, to produce their 1990 Christmas campaign. Featuring their animation of a Raymond Briggs style Father Christmas, a whole year before their follow up animation on the character would air on Channel 4.

A few years later and Boots are now using live action for their Christmas campaign. Although in those 4 years their actual selection of gifts doesn't appear to have changed massively!

A friendly reminder of the possibly hallucinogenic effects of coconuts, courtesy of Bounty in the late 90s.

From Christmas 1992, and British Airways let everyone know how special they make people feel... and apparently how their staff are some sort of giant omnipotent Gods in the sky! All whilst showing considerably more shots of sailing boats than of any planes.

A long 1989 advert promoting the rail industry in 1989, featuring footage shot around the country. A fun game is spotting how many of the same trains can still be seen in use 30 years later.

Maureen Lipman stars in one of her many Beatie adverts for then-named British Telecom, that ran throughout the late 80s and into the early 90s. In this adventure, a new carphone is the focus using one of those modern 'mobile' networks. We're pretty sure the idea will never catch on!

ET, the alien from Spielberg's famous film, has popped up in numerous advertising campaigns over the years, most recently for Comcast/Sky in 2019. Here, some 20 years earlier, he's busy advertising BT, reminding Mum there's always a good reason to call for no reason.

An ad from the famous Budweiser Frogs set from the late 90s. The concept itself was very simple - three frogs just repeat the name Budweiser over and over again.

~ NEW! ~

The famous animated Cadbury's Caramel bunny with her dreamy voice provided by Miriam Margolyes appears here in a well remembered advert alongside a beaver. Write your own jokes! This particular advert had been in use since the 80s, but had been updated here to include the newer corner Cadbury logo that had been added to all their ads from the 90s.

A short advert for the Lancashire park, mainly notable as being owned by Granada at this time, hence the mentions of it at several points. This was during the phase of the 80s and 90s where Granada still kept a large amount of outside-of-television interests. The Camelot Theme Park was sold off in the late 90s, and eventually closed its doors completely in 2012.

One of the most famous of all the 'I'll bet he drinks' adverts for Carling Black Label aired in 1990. Evoking the 1955 The Dam Busters film, a German sentry is responsible for blocking all the bouncing bombs being sent in his direction.

A squirrel runs an obstacle course to the Mission Impossible theme to reach some nuts, in another memorable advert for Carling Black Label from 1991. The advert is also marked for posterity by playing on background televisions in the series 3 episode of One Foot In The Grave 'Monday Morning Will Be Fine', alongside the David Dundas ITV theme of the time.

At first glance it looks like the lager advert is destined to be another one for Castlemaine. But very soon, Carling Black Label reminds us of how they like to do things, with a visitor from England dealing with a spider in the toilet.

One of the many dogfoods to come out of the Masterfoods department of Mars, Cesar has always been positioned as their more 'upmarket food for smaller dogs' range. And this advert from 1993 is no exception.

The original and well known nodding dog advert for Churchill, voiced by Reeves and Mortimer.

A later ad for Churchill, appearing in 2004, whereby we find out Churchill is no good at saving the Earth from an alien invasion... but is quite good at saving money on car insurance. How exactly we could still use our cars if the human race had been overthrown by aliens is another story!

Advertising cigarettes on UK television was banned back in the 60s, however cigar advertising continued to be permitted through to 1991. Comedian Russ Abbot stars in an advert for Castella Classic Cigars, in the days before the ban. This time he's out fishing, but knows the easier way to do it...

Russ Abbot in another Classic Cigars advert. And this time he's tasked with mowing the lawn, but without making too much effort.

A classic club ad from 1987, featuring a remarkable recreation of the famous Wizard of Oz, only this time singing and dancing about Club. Watch out for an early appearance of the well known 'if you like a lotta chocolate' slogan too.

A Des Lynam (or Lion) cameo in this Coco Pops advert from 1995. The Coco United team are losing badly in the Jungle World Cup, until hero Coco inspires them by showing them all the milk turning chocolatey.

Tom and Jerry feature in this Colgate Toothpaste advert from 1994.

When defunct companies collide! Electronics chain Comet promote free installation of BSB in 1990.

Kellogg's promote one of their most exciting cereals ever, enticingly named 'Common Sense'. Not a brand that lasted for a particularly long time relative to many of their more famous ones, perhaps not unsurprisingly.

A well loved and well remembered advert from Walls for Cornetto. This particular broadcast was shown on TV in 1992, although the advert remained in frequent use in cinemas for several years afterwards!

From 1991, and Kellogg's remind us all that one of the first things you want to do after that wedding is to have a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

Need to wake your kid in a hurry? Well as it's not an ad placing during the children's shows of the era, Kelloggs would like to pretend the answer isn't Frosties or Coco Pops but instead is...er... Corn Flakes!

Stop motion animated characters depicting starsigns was the Cadburys approach for selling Creme Eggs for several years throughout the early 90s, with each of them talking about 'How They Do It'. Here in 1990 are Leo, Gemini, Sagittarius and Tauros.

Matt Lucas (aka George Dawes) stars in this ad, asking people 'How will you eat yours?'.

Do you get that Friday feeling every day? Or just have a very odd sense of dress? Either way you've probably been eating Cadbury Crunchies.

1994, and the police need to coax a fugitive out of the mountains. Lucky for them they always come with boxes of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

An ad from 1990 encouraging people to secure their houses against criminals.