After a conversation with a friend about how they wanted to watch weird TV content, I mentioned children’s TV morning shows from the late 70s and 80s. They were trippy and quite existential in story and art direction. (I will blog about that subject another time.) This made me think about TV commercials from that era. In many ways, I loved watching them as much as the shows themselves. They can all be found on YouTube.

However, after discussing it with another friend from my childhood, the TV commercials that baffled me the most were the KOOL-AID spots! Why? The Kool-Aid man was a monster of mayhem! Destruction followed in his deadly charge to quench the thirst of small, annoying children. When kids get thirsty, they invoke his name like a demon lord, then he crashes through the wall and says ‘oh yeah”! And the mothers are smiling and are like “Oh, Kool-Aid, thank God you are here!” With smiles as if they wanted to have sex with him? Really? He just crashed into the house, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in collateral damage. Why are they happy? It was quite frightening and perplexing.

Kool-Aid was a force of pure chaos. Plain and simple. Why am I making this post? Two reasons. Levity. We really need it now. Also, the television commercials of the ‘70s and ‘80s were ones of creative freedom and weirdness that we probably will never see again. You should check them out.

"Nostalgia is possibly the greatest of the lies that we all tell ourselves" — R.A. Salvatore