Three
odd Seventies ad campaigns.
“I’m a Gnu”
Typhoo.
Gnu. It’s such an obvious rhyme when you think about it. This is the way people
thought in the 70s. Launched in 1903 and
named after the Chinese word for `Doctor`, Typhoo always had a witty way with
slogans and as far as can be ascertained
the company chose to use a Gnu simply because it rhymed with their distinctive
moniker. The series of ads were animated and featured a very civilised Gnu extolling
the worthiness of the product. The song accompanying them was an adaptation of
a ditty composed by Flanders and Swan, a comedy duo popular in the 1950s and
60s.
The original song `I’m a Gnu` was released in 1957 as a single produced by
George Martin who would later become The Beatles producer. The lyrics were
altered to reflect the product. It
finishes with their slogan at the time- “For the tea that
picks you up, pick up Typhoo". The Gnu itself was a strange choice simply because alot of people would not really have known what one was. The character was created bty Tony Cattaneo who also devised the Tetley tea folk.
You
can see lots of Typhoo ads on, erm, GnuTube.
“Its about as likely as a duff bottle of
Hirondelle”
Nowadays
we mostly encounter adverts on television platforms or YouTube but back in the
Seventies print adverts were just as important and this series promoted a wine
by using artwork of unlikely occurrences such as a cloud shaped as a nine or flying pigs with the slogan “It’s about as likely
as a duff bottle of Hironedelle”. Nowadays the wine is the subject of derision
amongst connoisseurs despite the fact that it helped popularise the drink with
the mostly beer orientated British. Selling very cheaply- it was £1.79 a bottle
in 1979- Hirondelle appeared to be a French white table wine but in fact was
Italian. It never mentioned the grape variety it was made from but experts
reckon it was Muscat. It was imported into the UK but bottled here.
Its
provenance was tested when its makers claimed that the wine was from Austria
though it was the case that its UK annual sales were higher than Austria’s
total yearly wine production. The company then admitted the wine was actually from
Hungary. The 1979 Good Food guide only described it as “acceptable” though it
remained popular until superseded in the 1980s by other cut price brands.
“Curly Wurly”
The
product of a spontaneous invention from a confectioner called David Parfitt who
worked at Cadbury’s Bourneville factory, the Curly Wurly is a nigh un-chewable
intertwined chocolate coated caramel ladder from a time when people didn’t
bother much about their teeth. Or indeed their health. Kids however loved
biting as hard as they could to pull off a section of the bar and chewing the
toffee insides for hours. It was launched in 1970 for the princely sum of 3p.
Imagine being able to buy something for 3p now! You can still get Curly Wurly
and apparently Cadbury have softened it slightly to reduce the risk of
dislodged fillings.
If the bar
seems unlikely then the adverts are even more so. They featured comedian Terry
Scott of Terry and June and some Carry On films who despite being in his
mid -forties was dressed up as a school boy! It all looks decidedly creepy to
the modern eye but he was very much the branding icon for the product appearing
not just on tv and print ads but t shirts and toys. Its quite an early example
of the sort of cross media campaigns that we see today.
While its’ fun
to imagine that Bruce Springsteen name checks the chocolate bar in the song
`Blinded by the Light`, he’s actually referring to a slang term for s small
sports car. Or at least slang that Bruce made up. A shame otherwise a Bruce
Springsteen / Terry Scott crossover would be a thing. Ok here’s one of the tv ads -, brace
yourself…
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