David Striepe's Blog
February 3, 2021
W-W-W-Windows/386 Corporate Commercial (1987-88)
Microsoft’s got a pretty stellar track record of terrible Windows infomercials. Some for the consumer, some internal, all pretty rough. This 1988 video showcases Windows/386, a fairly impressive upgrade to Windows that introduced multitasking among other features. The impressiveness of the upgrade does not come through in this video. What begins as a dry-but-corny corporate...
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December 10, 2020
A Green Christmas – Nightmare on Elm Street 4 Christmas Ad (1988)
Freddy Krueger’s always been his own best pitchman, both in his filmic universe and in ours. He’s got this unflagging confidence that only breaks – at most – thirty seconds before he’s defeated, and that confidence rings as clear as a bell as he breaks the fourth wall to sell his movies to the real...
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November 9, 2020
They’re a Necessity(yyy) – Moon Shoes (1990s)
The idea seems like a 7-year-old’s fever dream: strap trampolines to your feet and then you can get trampoline-air anywhere you go for the rest of your life. That’s the promise of Moon Shoes, the brightly colored ankle-breakers of the ’90s. To be clear, the shoes are a terrible idea; apart from the aforementioned risk...
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October 27, 2020
You Maggot – Nightmare VHS Game (1992)
Most VHS games come off as less than they intend to be, but watching this VHS presentation of 1992’s “Nightmare” I can’t help but catch a chill. Nightmare’s a 3-to-6 player board game fueled by the Gatekeeper, your host on the VHS tape. Unlike other VHS board games where you fast forward and rewind to...
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October 5, 2020
Hide Your Heart – Groovin’ Commercial (1993)
Back before streaming services allowed everyone to just build their own definitive genre-or-era-defining playlists, there was what was apparently a lucrative business curating and selling mixtapes to suckers who had way too much money on their hands. These mixtapes were advertised in long commercials on late night cable with cheesy, theme-appropriate imagery accompanying a scrolling...
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September 14, 2020
Doing Whatever it Takes! – McDonald’s Training Video (1991)
“What if the training video was the training video?” McDonald’s goes meta with this early ’90s instructional where a rigid, by-the-books director learns the value of going off-script in order to get things done right. The video kicks off with an intro by Michael Jordan, which makes perfect sense as Jordan is an authority in...
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August 31, 2020
Stop It, You – British Handkerchief PSA (1947)
The “wear a mask” of its time, this charmingly pithy British PSA reminds us that failure to catch one’s sneeze is the behavior of a true garbage person. Correctly pointing out the real health risk involved in an uncaught sneeze, the narrator then proceeds to dump an absolutely insane amount of pepper into the protagonist’s...
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August 3, 2020
Kid Icarus/Mirror of Palthena Commercial (Japan, 1986)
It’s a quick video but there’s so much to love about this 1986 commercial for A Mythology of Light: The Mirror of Palthena on the Famicom System (or Kid Icarus on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US)! First cool thing: it features an adult playing and not a kid! In 1986! Second cool thing:...
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July 27, 2020
I’m Out of Control – Regis Previews Tower of Terror (1993)
Regis Philbin had a long history with the Walt Disney Company as a regular host of Disney’s Christmas Parade. His approach to hosted moments, crowdwork, and pre-taped segments was truly one-of-a-kind. One of my favorite Regis moments is this 1993 preview for the upcoming “Twilight Zone Tower of Terror” attraction. In a pre-taped segment, Regis...
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July 20, 2020
Their Best Move – NBA Stay In School Jam (1992)
If you were a middle schooler in Orlando, Florida in the 1991-1992 school year and had perfect attendance through February, you were given the opportunity to get up early on Saturday morning and ride a school bus to the Orlando Arena (now the Amway Center) during the NBA All Star Weekend to attend the NBA...
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