Last Updated on February 12, 2022
Back in 1971, The Brady Bunch aired an episode titled “And Now a Word From Our Sponsor.”
The episode had a rather creepy beginning: as the Brady family were packing newly-purchased groceries into their trusty station wagon, they suddenly notice a strange-looking man is stalking them in the parking lot. He was peering around cars, looking through windows, watching their every move.
If a show began that way today, it’d probably be an episode of Criminal Minds. But this was 1971 and back then we were all apparently a lot more innocent.
It turns out the stalker was actually a television director who wanted to cast the family in a commercial for Safe laundry detergent. As the storyline unfolded, Mike learns that the Bradys had used Safe, until they found that Best laundry detergent was, in fact, better. Now there was a problem: if the family wasn’t using Safe, how could they accept money to be in a commercial to tout Safe as being better than Best?
And to think that back in 1971, this was one of the only things that would have been on the air on that November night, and we’d all have been watching it, quite satisfied with the evening’s entertainment.
I won’t spoil the ending for you, because by now I’m sure you’re clamoring to go watch that episode and see what happens! But the story does bring up a few interesting concepts, like whether we assume people who appear in commercials actually use the products they so enthusiastically endorse. Maybe sometimes we do and maybe sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter as much.
But suppose it was you who gets approached by a director looking to cast a commercial. That notion brings us to this week’s edition of The Big Question:
For a million bucks, if change to using whatever products they’d want.
I finally had time to answer one of your Big Questions! Â http://sweetmemes.blogspot.com/2015/01/patricks-place.html