I’ve never been convinced of the link between lather and shampoo-power. I am, however, convinced of the absolutely necessity of studying commercials to understand any era; it’s what they show, what they don’t, what they assume, what they tout as new. Today, class, it’s Prell.
As noted elsewhere, I eventually came to grind my teeth at the famous laugh line from “The Graduate” - ”One word, Benjamin: plastics.” That’s so Establishment. So L-7. So Herbert. Plastics are everything that’s wrong with the world. Really?
Of course, if the Prell container was glass, you wouldn’t heave it across the room, but the point’s made.
The roommate-dynamic, with one gal helping out her friend (both secretaries who’d spent the day fending off groping bosses, perhaps) was replaced by Recessionary Message:
Before it was plastic, it was foil – which, I will grant, didn’t break, either. And it could be twisted into artistic shapes.
Pass it along, if you wish
21 Responses to Evening Commercial Break – with lather
Host with the Most
That’s not Susan; that’s Angelique! I wouldn’t antagonize her if I were him. Barnabas did and regretted for 200 years.
Oh, great! He’s getting all turned on by her Prell-hair. The last thing they need in a recession is a kid.
Give a listen to the V/O tag at the end. Sound familiar?
Um, if she used as much as she indicated, it was the equivalent of about 8 oz. of thinner shampoo. Hardly the fingertip’s-worth demo’d in the older ad–IMHO.
That one in clothes looks like a stewardess (yeah, you heard me), not a secretary.
I didn’t know they made Prell anymore, until I saw some in Wal-Mart a couple weeks ago. It’s sitting in the bathtub as I type. Comes in a bottle, not a tube. It is pretty concentrated; I keep using too much. You need more than a fingertip’s worth, though.
Remember when it used to be advertised with a pearl? Nice bottle too. Today’s are ugly.
That’s a suspiciously large amount of lather for any shampoo I know of the producing. Are you sure that isn’t Palmolive instead?
Oh. My. Gawd!
If I ever heard my husband whine: “Do you have to use so much shampoo?!!”
I… I… Aack!!!
“Yeah, I’ll tighten my belt… Right around your friggin’ neck!!”
Oh the sculpted, rigid, immobile glory of 70′s mom hair. I remember waiting to see if it would stay that shape in a strong wind. With as much hairspray as my mom and her friends used, it generally did, even in the rain. When did we as Americans figure out it was normal for hair to actually MOVE anyway?
I remember lacquering my hair with Aqua-Net Ultra-Super-Industrial-Strength-Kevlar-Fortified Hairspray – even into the ’80s!
Ah! Prell! That was mom & dad’s shampoo, the choice of the Sanka generation. I distinctly remember that the person who won the high school science fair in 1983 had a project that involved putting clips of hair into test tubes filled with different shampoos for a month.
This conclusively demonstrated that of all the shampoos tested, Prell had the unique ability to *dissolve* hair into a disgusting gray smear suspended in green gel.
Ah, Aqua-net. Made a great flamethrower.
Yeah, I was a teen in the 70s.
“Honey, our budget’s a disaster…but your hair looks like a million bucks…”
Muttered sleep talk by Obama during an erotic Blago nightmare?
“When did we as Americans figure out it was normal for hair to actually MOVE anyway?” – Dana W
Not until the early 1990′s, I believe. Judging from memory of the senior pictures from the class of ’90. Big mall hair kept the stiff styles going for a long, long time.
Mine included.
“Do you have to use so much shampoo?” “I don’t know… but maybe you could cut back on the Glenlivet 18 a tad, dearest.” That commercial wouldn’t last 12 seconds these days before angry emails flooded in.
My dad still uses Prell.
OMG – I knew that was Angelique from the minute I saw here. Lara Parker, if I am not mistaken. I’m surprised our host didn’t pick up on that right away!
Oh, I hated Angelique with a passion! : D
Lara Parker is now 68 (!) and Jonathan Frid (Barnabas) is 84 (!)
Geeze I feel old.
They both have websites:
http://www.laraparker.com/
http://www.jonathanfrid.com/main06.htm
(gee, Barnabas doesn’t look so scary with gray hair and weight!)
And remember, according to the 2000 year old man, liquid Prell is the greatest invention in the history of mankind. Why not, say, the heart-lung machine? he was asked. His answer: Because if you have a heart-lung machine in your medicine cabinet and it falls out and hits the floor, it’s going to break! Not liquid Prell!
Please note the wife’s left hand in the second commercial. At the beginning it is rather daintily holding up the shower curtain so hubbie cannot see anything below her clavicle. But then, as the camera moves in, that left hand is now pointing out the glories of the goo in the bottle, which means the shower curtain is in a more vertical position.
And hubbie is more interested in the shampoo. That marriage needs some work.
I’m so glad I wasn’t born yet in the ’70s.
I was secretly hoping the ladies in the first ad were *more* than friends.
First commercial: The second gal is definitely a stewardess. As she tosses her air hostess hat on the counter, she says, “Whatta trip!”
This is a weird commercial in so many different ways: Just look at the size of that bathroom! The rest of the apartment must have been the size of a broom closet. The cameraman must have been standing in the toilet…and who has ever seen a shower enclosure that only goes up to your neck?
But ain’t it great that we can sit here and watch goofy crap from the 60′s and 70′s and laugh about it? Thanks Al for inventing the internet.
Prell did come in glass bottles, circa late ’60s if I recall correctly.