Customer Reviews

1001 Classic Commercials

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've been buying disks and tapes of old commercials for about a decade now. This three disk set will likely contain a fair number of the ads that regulars to public domain and retro media sites already have bought before now. But one nice plus this collection has, which the others I have had definitely do not, is a chapter break for each commercial. It's not a complete index of every commercial. It's the ability to hit your remote's chapter advance button and move to the next commercial, one ad at a time, through each disk. This makes cueing specific ads up, or skipping items of less interest to you, much easier than any other collection I've seen. (Most disks on the market seem to be made up of bulk transfers of old ads in 30 to 50 commercial chunks. Much of this material came straight from an online archive of public domain material in this form, and until now, no one has troubled to break it up for easier use.)

The video quality is of a very wide range, and some of the images are a mess. But anyone with a passing-to-serious interest in old commercials, or pop culture from the 50s to the 70s, should pick one of these up for general purposes. It pretty much "retires" about half the commercial sets I have bought up until now.

Note: There's also a section of Drive-In movie promotional films ("Come by our snack bar..."; "Enjoy our mouthwatering hot buttered popcorn...") at the end of the third disk. That was a pleasant surprise.

Exactly what I was expecting, over 16 hours of old television commercials from the '50s, '60s & '70s . I would have given this product 5 stars but the picture quality on many of the commercials isn't that good-- I guess that's to be expected. Nothing here has even remotely been digitalized or enhanced in any way. These commercials have been sitting on dusty shelves in a basement somewhere since the last time we saw them, some over 50 years old. For the price it's definately worth it. I bought another series of old commercials last month and paid $25 for only 3 hours. Those exact same commercials are on these DVDs PLUS 13 MORE HOURS!!! One bit of advice if you buy this product...buy two sets. If you lend this out to a baby boomer you'll never see it again.

The commercials on this idsc are of varying quality, but that's to be expected - no one ever thought there'd be a demand for old commercials when they were made, so I imagine they weren't archived very well. Still, there are hundreds of commercials on this disc that'll transport you back to your childhood and make you point at the screen while shouting, "Hey! I remember that!!!" A lot of fun, but best taken in small doses.

I am quite a fan of retromercials and of pop-culture. I have a huge collection of DVD's of old commercials, both bootlegged from Ebay, as well as legitimate ones like this one. Honestly, this collection, "1,001 Classic Commercials" is one of the best collections I have ever seen. 16 hrs of commercials!! PSAs! Industrial promotional training films! Stuff the average person never gets to see. Really, you can learn so much about our shared experience through some of these little gems. It is a very well organized collection, as other reviewers have mentioned, and there is the cool feature that groups brands commercials next to each other. I saw many, many interesting ads. My favorites are for brands/stores that have gone by the wayside of the retail landscape, like the "Heckle and Jeckle" inspired ad for Robert Hall Family Clothes. Overall, an excellent value and highly, highly recommended!

I just got this in the mail today. With over 16 hours of commercials, it will be awhile before I get through it all.

Tonight I watched the 191 FOOD commercials on Disc One. While some of them were indeed blurry (mostly the over-saturated color ones) as others have noted, MOST of them were watchable, and MANY of them brought back many many good memories from the past.

In the ads I didn't remember, I was surprised by how many featured stars in them. Everyone from The Monkees, to The Beverly Hillbillies, to David Seville & The Chipmunks, to Andy Griffith, and more.

I can't wait to watch more of this set!

Definitely worth owning if you're in any way interested in "classic commercials".

FYI, I purchased my set when Amazon was selling it for only $7.99. Watch their prices. They fluctuate daily.

Okay, I made a big mistake with this set. I sat down and watched all 16 hours (!) in a day and a half. Not smart. Maybe an hour a day would have been better. But I couldn't stop myself.
Obviously the quality varies. Some (especially the early color ones) are nearly unwatchable. But the gems outweigh the chaff. Or something.
When you get multiple ads for the same product, they do get redundant. The cigarette category was especially bad in this regard.
The good stuff though...WOW!!! The Flintstones selling cigarettes. The Three Stooges selling cigarettes. A (very) young Peter Boyle. More celebrities than I've ever seen on one dvd.
Good ads, bad ads, funny ads. Ads I'd forgotten and ads I've never seen before. I was amazed with this collection.
I've only seen 2 other collections of commercials on DVD and this set blew those out of the water. And at a better price.
Highly recommended for tv history buffs or fans or just people wanting a reminder of a less frantic time.

Even after reading several other reviews about the poor quality of the video, I bought the collection to see them anyway.
I'm glad I did because of the memories many of these commercials bring back. Although I didn't find any indication of what years are covered it looked to me like the 1950's to the early 1970's. It is a 3 DVD set with each disk covering groups of different topics. Some topics have just a few and others have many commercials on the disk. The box says 16 hours of commercials and I won't dispute that. Even I couldn't sit through that many commercials at one time so I've just been watching here and there.

And yeah, the video quality isn't the greatest on many of the commercials. But the viewer needs to keep in mind that like so much from that era of time, most (if not all) of the commercials were on film and not made with the idea of lasting and becoming the cultural significance they'd ultimately become. And to be honest, if you're of my age group (53) and mainly looking for the memory factor this is a great collection and for the Amazon price.
If you want to show family (grand kids) what things were like in the eras represented in the commercials, I think this collection and the commercials included are an excellent snapshot of the clothes and culture of those times!

I grew up in the "Greater Los Angeles area" and do recall quite a few of the commercials, especially the toys and games. And although I never smoked, I think I'd take cigarette commercials again over the medicine commercials shown nowadays!!
I do recommend this collection.

Great gems here including: the Indian shedding a tear over pollution of his beloved land, the hot chick turning out to be Smokey the Bear in a hot chick mask, smoking commercials, beer commercials, Mel Blanc's American Express ad, and on and on and on They even throw in a short film on the effects of cigarette smoking from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Great, great stuff if you like this sort of thing. The picture quality is passable. Look, the material is from dubious sources so don't expect THX quality. Just enjoy these gems from an earlier age for what they are: great pop culture.

I own several of these commercial collections on DVD from the '50s through the '80s, and this one is by FAR the best. The quality varies, yes, but it does on all of these collections. I can honestly say that the quality of this set is above par, although not "perfect" by any means. Still, it has so many wonderful, enjoyable commercials, it's hard to quibble. This is a staggering collection, especially for the price. If you're looking for a collection of old commercials, look no further. This is the best on the market right now. Bar none.

The people complaining about the bad quality of many of the commercials need to get a clue. When these commercials were made, NO ONE thought they would be of value any time in the future, so they didn't bother to maintain the prints. Complainers should instead be thankful they can see these commercials at all. Anyway, I am still working my way through the first disc of the set, and so far I've been very entertained, even though I did not grow up during the eras of these commercials. Some of the commercials are effective even today (I'd like to try Shasta soda pop, but it isn't available in Canada!), and others are quirky and/or unintentionally hilarious. This is a good DVD set to pull out when you have free time but not enough to watch a full-length movie - just select a category on any of the DVDs, and you'll be entertained for that short time.