In the Carter Era, you had no choice of colors when you hired someone to paint your house. Yes, this is what we expected when we thought of “service.”
What beef there is in the burger, it’s 100% pure! There’s so much to love in this ad. His jacket-and-turtleneck combo – stylin’, profilin’, Mister Brady style. Her plaid sweater and open, honest, almost hesitant inquiry as to the possibility of additional ketchup. The counter gal, who must be serving a work-release sentence for her involvement in a high-profile intercontinental diamond heist.
Best of all: her cartoon-train-conductor hat. You can just imagine what that felt like after a long shift in a place with balky A/C.
Pass it along, if you wish
32 Responses to Evening Commercial Break: Your Way, You Shall Have It
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Love the boom mike at :10.
Ha! I remember this one, too. My family owned a paint store at the time this ad came out, and “Believe me, you’ll get used to it!” was our running gag for a long time.
Ah yes when fast food place workers were all over the age of 25, no teenagers or newly arrived immigrants here. Only Hot Dog on a Stick has or had goofier hats.
Sort of a PC vs. Mac ad, except BK didn’t even have to mention their competitor, because everybody knew who they were aiming at.
More proof that the 70s really did suck.
RE: The Conductor Hat: Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?
I like when she hands the bag to the gent: Kind of an overhand pinkie out maneuver.
The Burger King at 5300 Folsom Blvd. in Sacramento still might be festooned with a similar decorative style. At least it was a few years ago. It took forever for Burger King to put a franchise in our neck of the woods, but they had a Drive Through Window! Unheard of for us at the time! First place I ever had Mountain Dew on Tap. My first step into a whole new world…
The painter sounded a bit like Jesse White (don’t know if he was the original Maytag Repairman, but he has one of them, and parlayed his voice and attitude into a bunch of movies and TV shows).
And I believe that those BK uniforms were double-knit polyester, too. I’d be willing to bet that BK had incidents of employees being burned by fryer oil and having those uniforms melt onto the skin.
I love it when he makes a motion towards the painter, as if he’s going to deck him, and she holds him back with a hand.
Notice the bare hands assembling the burger? In these germophobic days, people would freak out at the very idea!
Good spotting, Jazz.
Jesse was the original Maytag repairman, with a face like an old shoe and a personality to match. Then the late Gordon Jump, and now I don’t know what the hell they’re doing. The earliest Jesse White appearance I’ve seen was a small but potent part in the film Harvey, I believe as a nuthouse attendant; he provides the answer to the film’s pivotal question.
Robert, you are correct. I was a teenage BK grunt in 1980. Those shirts were polyester. A kid named Louie ended up with some molten poly burns from a relatvely small grease splatter. We had to supply our own pants and I made sure mine were never polyester — for that and other reasons. Also made sure to wear a t-shirt under the poly smock.
We made up a variant jingle: “Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce; shut up lady you upset us”. Sounded funnier when sung over the intercom after a big hit of helium.
heh heh — I like how the painter drags the paintbrush along the edge of the can to remove the excess — oh, but wait — there is no paint in the can! Also, his cigar isn’t lit.
I like this better than their current ad campaign, featuring the King Burgerplastic I, the Monarch of Uncanny Valley.
“Have it your way, shut up and pay!” – I remember this ad only because I was a dumb prepubescent kid (redundant, I know) and we all thought this was a clever thing to say.
Baby M, I share your revulsion at MimeKing. He’s just spooky. But interestingly enough, Jack from Jack in the Box works great for me. He has personality, wit, and at least three facial expressions.
Jack (of the box) is one of the finest ad campaigns ever. He makes fun of his food, his company, and – most importantly – his customers. Watch the customers on the commercial and you’d think they’re all stoners ordering 30 tacos, weird civil-war reenactors who have custard under their hats, or transvestites.
Huh. Maybe that is a pretty good-cross sampling of the J in the B demographic.
Good spotting, Jazzbo! I guess the actor is supposed to be looking at the menu board (“do they offer Whoppers here?”) but maybe he’s wondering if that thing is going to clonk him.
Had a girlfriend who worked at BK about then, same uniform. When she had it on I used to imagine she was some kind of burger stewardess.
I had BK for lunch today. Advertising on Lileks works!
(Also, a Whopper Jr and a side salad have fewer calories than a salad from Chili’s, that was really the deciding factor).
I’m afraid my favorite BK commercial was when they updated the one with the three singing girls. First they roll the footage from ’73. Then they roll the footage w, presumably the same staff and customers 25 years later. I don’t know why. It just takes me back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkg_XojVRcs
Bill
http://willstuff.wordpress.com
If this is from 1976, technically it’s from the Ford Administration – Carter was elected in ’76 and thus did not take office until January 20, 1977 (and was only a bit slower than Obama has been in tanking the economy).
Aha! Boom mic at :10 (as said the first commenter). Seeing a boom in the shot = automatic fail. So what do I do for a living? Soundman.
Wait a second. “Have it your way” means saying “yes” to “extra ketchup?” And then deciding for the customer what “extra ketchup” means?
Can I decide for myself what “extra ketchup” means?
Can I have my burger with Grey Poupon? With real bermuda onion?
With kangaroo meat instead of beef?
I was in Huron South Dakota a couple of years ago. There is a restaurant on the south end of town that must have been a fast food franchise, circa 1974. Inside, all very dark wood paneling, with burnt orange tables and chairs.
It was actually disturbing to be in there.
Oh, I completely blanked on this last night:
EXTRA ketchup?
FREAKS.
Go take that junk back to your swingers’ / experimentation is cool / love shack / pad. I’m sure the groovy / psychedelic paint job is all finished now.
Extra Cheese
Extra Onions
Extra Pickles
All OK.
EXTRA ketchup. Reveals everything. Might as well be wearing a sign.
When I was a student at UNH, I remember seeing a fellow student working at Burger King who had to wear that genormous hat… each time I saw her if she could sink into the greasy tile floor from humiliation, she would have….
Best of all: her cartoon-train-conductor hat. You can just imagine what that felt like after a long shift in a place with balky A/C.
I think those were called “Muffin Hats” and were a “Mod” style sometime around the mid-1960s. Don’t know why Burger King retained the style all the way into 1976, though.
And I believe that those BK uniforms were double-knit polyester, too. I’d be willing to bet that BK had incidents of employees being burned by fryer oil and having those uniforms melt onto the skin. — Robert
Well, the mid-1970s WAS the heyday of 100% polyester.
Leisure Suit Larry, anyone?
I was in Huron South Dakota a couple of years ago. There is a restaurant on the south end of town that must have been a fast food franchise, circa 1974. Inside, all very dark wood paneling, with burnt orange tables and chairs.
It was actually disturbing to be in there. — Dave
Except for the “dark” tones, wood and burnt-orange don’t sound like that bad a color combination. Of course, exactly HOW those colors were used would have a lot to do with the effect, “disturbing” or otherwise. I believe a certain James Lileks wrote a coffee-table book about 1970s interior-decoration styles (which did NOT age well) called Interior Desecrations?
She hands that bag over like it’s filled with something nasty – notice how she keeps it as far away from herself as possible? Sort of a straigh-armed handoff.
Now I’d expect a “straight-armed handoff” from Jack-in-the-Box; both times I’ve eaten there, it HAS been “something nasty”. But Burger King? They’re foodoid quality is OK — nothing to write home about, but still better than Jack-up-the-Crack.
So, when exactly did we pass that amendment that says English-speaking white people can’t work in national-chain fast food restaurants? Was that part of reforming Social Security in the 1st Reagan term?
The era when wearin’ Farrah hair wasn’t square.