I think Burns & Allen run on Antenna TV. I am sure they are severly edited and replaced with current ads.

The old Andy Griffith Show used to do spots for General Foods featuring Andy and the cast. They were usually set in the Taylor's kitchen with Andy and Opie enjoying Post cereal or Andy and Barney discussing Sanka decaf coffee. 

One memorable one featured the normally silent Leon, played by Ron Howard's little brother Clint, who finally uttered his first word when Andy asked him to describe Jello pudding (or puddin' as Andy called it.)

Leon said it was goooood!

I'm too young to remember them at the time, but they were released as part of the show's DVD box set. They're also available on YouTube.

I always thought talk radio should take this approach and weave sponsor/client mentions into the show instead of running 3-4 minutes' worth of spots every ten minutes.

In the case of the Beverly Hillbillies, it was clever of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to write an extra verse of the opening theme song to mention Kelloggs's and later Winston. Another feature on the closing credits was a small photo of the sponsor's product in the lower portion of the screen. In the case of Kellogg's the cereal would change every time the credits did.

RadioActive wrote:

Yep, there's nothing like advertising cigarettes on a cartoon for kids. What were they thinking?

I'm an outlier. I never thought The Flintstones was aimed at kids, originally. Sure, kids could watch it and they might laugh at it here and there but I always felt like the plotlines were a bit more adult. 830pm was my bedtime growing up, so I wouldn't have been allowed to stay up to watch, had I been around during the show's initial run.
By the time I came around, the show was on at noon weekdays and I'd watch it when I went home from school for lunch.

RadioActive wrote:

There was a reason this worked - it almost seemed like part of the show and you liked the characters making the pitch. Made those other insipid commercials look bad in comparison. But this was in an era where a show was "brought to you by," something that wouldn't happen today.   

Some radio shows are still "brought to you by" but the mentions have been relegated to ten second stingers going into or out of a segment, plus a couple of spots an hour during the show; which doesn't quite make them "part of the show" per se, they're not integrated in the way we're referencing.

Overall though I agree that it worked and was effective but we also trusted people (read: personalities) more then versus today - we're less naive as an audience.

Last edited by Binson Echorec (Yesterday 11:51 am)

One person who would not do commercial endorsements was Walter Cronkite.
Even after retirement he maintained his credibility as a journalist.
Can you imagine him doing ads for reverse mortgages or car insurance.
Now there's a U.S. president who does ads for collectable trading cards and autographed bibles, and much more -- while in office.