This commercial is an oxymoron.
It is brilliantly/stupid, stylishly/gauche, and awesomely/horrible at the same time. The only thing that could make this ad more impactful is to just run it again today in the middle of an episode of Lost.
Remember the cartoons you used to watch just because they were the only ones on. Sometimes running over a lunch hour as you were scarfing down a bowl of Hamburger Helper or at 6:30am before any real programming came on, these cheap ass cartoons were the saving grace of 70's kids who couldn't stand watching test patterns... where I grew up anyway.
The Mighty Hercules... "Iron in his thighs."
Rocket Robin Hood... "Band of Brothers marching together."
Kum Kum... this made for some bad acid trip lunches.
Hammy Hamster... wow! I just wanna chill to late night Hammy, Maddy and GP.
Okay... first off, if anyone outside of Canada ever thought they saw a cheap game show, they were never in the Great White North during the 1970's. Grand prizes included toaster ovens, dinner for twos, and the cash sometimes almost went to triple digits. Included below are some clips from some of the cheesiest games ever played on television.
The Premier Episode of the Mad Dash
Check out Alex Trebek's 'fro in Pitfall (admittedly this show had a budget)
Definition actually lasted until the 80s, but still brings the cheese
Pay Cards was produced in Canada and syndicated to the US... so you know it was good!
Get your pop culture retro fix on with the Cap'n, the Count, Frankenberry and Mr.T.
And as a special bonus a rare episode of the Sugar Bear cartoon before cereals were afraid to put "sugar" in their names.
If you really want to get a sense of how trippy kids' shows can get, check out this intro from the classic HR Puffnstuff. Oh, I know that Japan has done its best to create some very surreal and bizarre anime for the past 30 years that have become even more crazy when adapted for the US, but Puffnstuff was just "Woah man, is that Mayor McCheese and a talking flute" kinda trippy.
Quite frankly, this game SUUUUCKED! But for a 41 second retro shot, it's perhaps the coolest thing I've found since the extra mustard packet in my lunch bag. Get your moonwalk on!
When I was too young to remember anything but the theme song, or even know where the cartoon came from, Prince Planet was my first exposure to anime. I cannot say that I continued to love the style for its own sake, but what I did love was Battle of the Planets which was the Americanized version of Gatchaman... just some retro kitsch for your weekend.
What can I say? In the context of the show, great learning moments. On their own, it's like someone dropped the brown acid at Woodstock.
When I was very young this Rankin and Bass production would come on at 6am on Saturday mornings with the New Adventures of Pinocchio... not the greatest animation or storytelling by any means, but hey, it was 1961 when this was made and a couple decades later before I saw it... if it was Saturday mornings and there was a cartoon, I watched it.