Tag: tv advert

Broadcast From the Future, c.1991

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ Leave a comment

We have a new UWTV memory here, sent in by Gluben, one of our readers.

So over to Gluben…

“Okay, this one is pretty obscure, but this was similar to an unsettling ad break from 1989.

“To give people some background, in 1989, First Direct bank launched with a strange advert that literally “interrupted” an ad for Audi (all pre-arranged with Audi) and aired on all ITV regions and Channel 4 at the same time. The ad by advertising agency HHCL claimed to be a broadcast from the future in the year 2010 and was celebrating the 21st anniversary of the launch of First Direct before it returned viewers to their regular programming. It was only ever shown once:

“It was very daring and it was followed by a second pair of adverts that aired during the week, introduced by actress Charlotte Rampling, with different viewpoints of First Direct, a bank that had no branches. The “positive” ad (starring Jeremy Swift in a white suit miming a gospel song) aired on ITV, while the “negative” ad (starring Steve Punt in a black suit miming a blues song) aired on Channel 4:

“Anyway, when the first ad was reposted on YouTube, it brought about a comment relating to something similar. [The commenter] claimed that there was another interruption of a commercial break during a showing of Romancing the Stone on ITV (Central in their region). It occurred in 1991, but was nothing like that one and definitely wasn’t made by a company selling a product.

“For anyone familiar with the book Bringers of the Dawn and the subsequent Pleiadians videos that have been posted online, it was similar in content but abridged and compressed into about 60 seconds. On screen, there appeared a spinning galaxy and possible fleeting images of our planet (their memory was rusty on some details), while the message was spoken by an unseen soft-voiced woman. The gist of what she said is as follows: ‘We have come from your future to let you know that Earth will soon be entering a special phase in its evolution, whereby there will be an opportunity to raise the planetary frequency.’ He definitely remembers a period of 20 years being mentioned, along with the recommendation that we work on increasing our positive vibes, or words to that effect. At the end, she said something like ‘You will now be returned to your regular viewing’ and then it finished.

“He only heard of one other person who’d apparently mentioned it (a friend of a friend, his name is Richard Forbes and he lived in Dudley), although he never got to ask them in person, and was surprised to not find anything reported in the media about it. He’s certain of the year, because he remembers talking to a couple of mates the next day when he met them on his dinner break, and he was only in that particular job throughout 1991.

“I’ve tried my best to locate the ad on the History of Advertising Trust (HAT) website but couldn’t find anything close to matching, and they also emailed back saying they had nothing in their records matching. I’ve also looked through the British Newspaper archive for regional TV listings and there’s absolutely none for Romancing the Stone for ITV or Channel 4 in 1991 in the whole of the UK, let alone the Central region; only in Ireland, but the person is adamant of both the year and the film. He reckons it aired on a Sunday between about 7pm and 10pm and was definitely not in the summer months, so possibly February to April or September to November.

“That’s all we’ve got to narrow it down, so any help finding the ‘advert’ in question, or what it was about, would be greatly appreciated.”

Does anyone else recall seeing this? If so, please respond below or drop us an email and let us know!

Surreal Breakfast Cereal Advert from the 90s (IDENTIFIED!)

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ Leave a comment

Today’s UWTV entry is about a surreal advert for breakfast cereal that was on UK TV in the 90s. From my recollection it was mid-to-late 90s, I think some time between 1994-98, but I can’t recall the exact year. Nor do I recall what cereal it was for but I’m fairly sure it was an ‘obscure’ cereal as opposed to the more well-known ones like Corn Flakes, All-Bran, Shredded Wheat etc. This advert was rather weird and (to me at least) perhaps unintentionally disturbing, so here goes…

The advert featured a comedic woman who was rather bumbling and silly, in a kitchen/dining room making a bowl of breakfast cereal for herself. (From memory the lady had quite long, thick hair, I think either blonde or possibly a reddish colour.) From my recollection there was a male voiceover and the lady didn’t say anything, it was more like a silent comedy thing, with her making the bowl of cereal. At the end of the advert, the lady sat down at the table to eat the cereal – and then, the room turned itself upside down, and the woman screamed as she and everything in the room fell crashing to the ‘floor’ (i.e. the ceiling that was now the floor). The advert ended with a shot of the cereal packet landing upright in front of the camera, and I think a male voiceover advertizing the cereal.

I recall seeing this advert quite a few times; I think it ran fairly regularly over a short period of time, but I cannot recall the exact year. Personally this advert always bugged me, because although it was obviously meant to be silly and comedic, it looked like a pretty nasty accident the woman was subjected to at the end, and what made it seem particularly unpleasant was the woman’s scream – if she’d let out a comical, light-hearted scream it probably would not have bugged me so much, but as she fell to the ‘floor/ceiling’, the woman let out a proper shrill, terrified scream that would rival that of Janet Leigh in Psycho – no way could I see this advert as being funny at all!

My search for this advert has brought me, naturally, to the Cereals & Other Ads channel on YouTube; I emailed the channel’s owner, but unfortunately he is not familiar with this advert, despite being a big collector of UK breakfast cereal commercials. If the advert managed to elude him I wonder if it may have been a regional advert rather than a national one (I live in the Northwest).

Of course there are hundreds if not thousands of commercial breaks from the 90s on YouTube, so I’m hoping this advert may be on one of them somewhere, but if so I have yet to come across it.

So it seems this elusive advert is deserving of a UWTV entry – does anyone recall this advert at all, know what it was for or know where we can find it? If so, please comment here or drop us an email!

UPDATE 30/03/23 – Thanks to one of our Twitter followers, @Carrigpudding, it seems this UWTV item has been found!

The advert is for Shredded Wheat, and can be viewed at the end of this ad break, at 3:20:

So it seems the advert was from earlier than believed, as this ad break is from November 1988. It’s possible the ad may have been repeated in the 90s, or it could just be a classic case of memory being unreliable. It’s also possible that a different ad reused the same idea in the 90s, but I see no real reason this particular advert isn’t the one I remembered.

And it’s yet another instance of childhood memory making an ad out to be more disturbing than it really was – as you can see from the video, the woman’s scream at the end is pretty comedic after all, and definitely not the ‘nasty accident’ I perceived it as when seeing it at a very young age!

Huge thanks to @Carrigpudding on Twitter for solving this mystery for us, and should anyone have any further info on similar adverts, don’t hesitate to contact us via the comments, Twitter or email!

Impact: Terrifying 80s TV Commercial

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ Leave a comment

One thing that kids of The Haunted Generation era are all agreed on is that TV adverts were often terrifying or plain creepy – even when advertizing the most mundane kinds of products. The particularly eerie adverts for Castrol Oil are a firm case in point.

But there’s one advert for one such product that completely scared the bejeezus out of me as a young child, that I have yet to hear anyone else recollect when unprompted by me, and which does not seem to have resurfaced online. This advert was for a product called IMPACT.

I can’t remember exactly what kind of product Impact was, other than that it was a completely mundane household product of some sort, probably a cleaning product. But the TV advert (which I think ran around 1984-85 or so) was well and truly terrifying.

For some reason, the bottle for the Impact product had a close-up of a scary-looking Great White Shark’s face on the label. The advert ended with a close-up of the bottle – IIRC it kind of shot towards the screen, with the shark staring right at the viewer through the screen… and if this wasn’t disturbing enough, it was accompanied by a particularly threatening-sounding voiceover man saying “Impact – puts you right in there, and Won’t Let You Go.”

My toddler mind could not quite fathom that this ‘Impact’ was merely a harmless household product, and interpreted it as some kind of warning that the shark was out there, and was coming to get me – or that the product would unleash the shark on me, or something. Either way, I remember being truly petrified every time the advert came on and that shark stared right through the screen at me, accompanied by the chilling words of the voiceover man.

I have asked about this ad on the Weird British TV Memories (70s-90s) group on Facebook, and one other group member recollected it, agreeing it was horrific. But other than that, this advert remains elusive. A search on the History of Advertising Trust website has revealed the following adverts that may be related:

Fungicides Commercial: Impact Extra

Fungicides Commercial: Early Impact

These commercials seem to indicate that Impact may have been a fungicide, but either way they’re mild and completely unscary compared to the advert that traumatized my young mind.

So here’s an appeal to anyone who may have any recollection of the Impact commercial, or better still have a copy of it – if you recall this advert or are able to make it available for viewing again, please comment here or email us!

UPDATE, 03/10/24: Thanks to Jack Mortimer, one of our readers, we now know more or less for sure that Impact was a brand of bathroom cleaner. Jack stumbled across an advert for the product on a YouTube ad break from 1985, a still from which is below:

While there’s no shark on the bottle, it seems pretty certain this advert is for the same product the elusive shark advert was promoting. Thanks Jack for sending us this!

If you are able to help us find the terrifying ‘shark’ advert for Impact, or have any memory of it, please comment below or email us!