“A dollop of Daisy” jingle gets stuck in my head far too often. I’ll be walking down the street humming it to myself or in the car when I realize it. Lame, I know. And the worst part is that whenever I sing it I have flashbacks of that commercial…where the contents of literally five containers of sour cream is happily plopped onto everything from a burrito to what seems like bowl of cereal. I mean forget about when I actually eat the stuff…the jingle is permanently burned into my consciousness.

But what excellent advertising! Such a dopey little tune has the power to impregnate the mind solely with images of Daisy sour cream for days. It seemed like such an advertising wonder to me until a few days ago when our Creative Director, Mike, brought in a DVD of random commercials from the 1950s and 60s. These were the first TV advertisements, a brand new business phenomenon sweeping the nation and visible to anyone who had a snazzy new antennae TV set. And lo and behold! Nearly every single dazzling black and white brand had a jingle to go along with it. Forget cutting the ad down to 30 seconds. Forget being politically correct. Forget about actually showing the product. All that seemed to matter was a great jingle and a good cartoon to along with it.

I shudder at the thought of humming a different song every time a use a specific household item. Sour cream is enough. But when it’s all said and done, I suppose that’s what makes it advertising at its best. Get a load of a few of them on this site. Perhaps the time has come to bring the good ol’ cartoon jingle back from the grave.