I have a new traumafession that has recently resurfaced after lying dormant for decades.
Thanks to the marketing folks, my old nightmare fuel from Swiss Miss has been resurrected.
In the 1970s Swiss Miss ran ads with a disturbing stop motion doll. She always gave me the creeps and contributed to at least one early childhood nightmare. I think part of it is simply the evil smile and dead eyes but the way she would yodel and the way it would echo was another contributing factor.
I remember being relieved when the company moved away from using her image in their advertising and switched to the more cartoonish version of the girl. However while shopping recently I spied her scary face once again as she is back on the packaging with the old advertising artwork. Let's hope if she makes new commercials they are CGI.
I feel ya Popcornmonster! And that creepy music box music doesn't help!
It's funny how childhood trauma works. Years later as a full grown adult, just seeing her again gives me the creeps. I had actually forgotten all about her previous incarnation as the stop motion puppet until I saw the new packaging.
I'm with unkle lancifer – that music really ups the creep factor!
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Dear God in Heaven! She can be yours. This thing would never set foot in my house.
Yes, there was something deeply unsettling about this kind of stop-motion animation, see also Speedy Alka-Seltzer, the opening credits to Here’s Lucy and, worst of all, Mrs. Butterworth, who TERRIFIED me! I wouldn’t even be in the same room as the bottle!
I like this discussion! Althought, these didn't scare me, I was always enthralled by it, especially the likes of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is coming to town. My niece, however, is TERRIFED of the Rudolph show because of the Abominable Snowman. He scared the heck out of her since she was 2.
Here, here. The one that had us cowering was the stop-animated "scrubbing bubble" that went down the drain as the commercial closed. It was unnerving because of the scrubbing bubble commecials, all but seemingly one had animated bubble scrub guys, so when this particular one cycled my sister and I were already holding our collective breath in dread anticipation….even the bubble's voice (I think whoever did Tigger) couldn't bail it out, although that may very well have been added later. Remember.."We work hard, so you don't have tooooooooooooooo….."
That is the voice of Tiger! I think I found your TV spot BigWig…
That is some creepy. There's something about stop motion animation that reads insectoid to me. It makes me itchy.
Also it stirs unfriendly LASERBLAST memories…
I forgot about that scrubbing bubbles thing. That is a little freaky!
Even though it's not stop motion, that new Toaster Struedal commercial freaks me out *now*. Something about the creepy village of the damned kid in lederhosen randomly showing up at the door hollering, "toooaaassster struuuuuuueeeedal" at me is horrifying.
Likewise, I remember the Jolly Green Giant commercials, pre-Litte Sprout. Most were animated, but there was one at the time, that panned out to show a live actor as the towering JGG a bit blurred in the background. He was a very dark, shiny green color. I recall my sister running through the house yelling "He's a real person!" at age 4 or 6…kind of like Chuck Heston in Soylent Green. That baritone "Ho Ho Ho" of his certainly wasn't of the joyful Santa variety…
Apocalypsejunkie! Haha! I told Aunt John that was a future traumafession commercial the first time I saw it! I think it was built with that in mind. That kid seems to have control over animals and flying toaster demons and I think he uses the black arts to knock down the front door!
Also…I hate to do this to you fine folks but…..there's this….
That Salerno bear reminds me of Teddy Ruxpin. On that note, did any of you find Teddy Ruxpin somewhat creepy? I didn't when the commercials aired, but now in retrospect there seems to be something Chuckie-ish about him.
I once read from a poster on fark.com about someone who had had a Teddy Ruxpin and used a four-track recorder to reformat one of his special tapes, and redubbed it (Teddy would play any tape, but would only move his mouth for tapes made specifically for him.) with a Jackie Martling comedy show. His Teddy Ruxpin would then tell filthy jokes, punctuating them with a blink of his eyes. Unfortunately, he sold it for $100 when he was short on money. Creepy or not, that redub had to be awesome.
Thank you for sharing. I thought I was the only one traumatized by the scrubbing bubbles.
It just occurred to me that in 1973 (See above) Dow was making both scrubbing bubbles commercials and NAPALM to drop on North Vietnam. I'm equally horrified by both. -Tom