The other morning, NPR was doing a story about the auto dealer industry and it profiled LA car dealer icon Cal Worthington (and his dog Spot!). And it brought back a flood of memories from my days in the mid-80s living in SoCal.
The Angelinos out there know what I'm talking about. But for the rest of you, one of the great things about living in the LA area was Cal Worthington's late night car commercials. All his commercials started with "Here's Cal Worthington -- and his dog Spot!" and out would walk this man in a big cowboy hat, along with "Spot", who was never a dog. Sometimes Spot would be an elephant, or a tiger, or a hippo, or what have you. And the jingle (which would periodically change) was always pretty dang funny ("If your wife is a-naggin' and your tailpipe a-draggin', go see Cal!").
They were the perfect commercials: outlandish, funny, completely over the top. You always wanted to watch to see what Cal would come up with next. I remember them vividly over 20 years later. Here's a typical commercial out of Cal:
So here's a mashup of a bunch of the crazy things Cal did in his commercials. If you don't want to watch the whole thing (you really should -- it's a hoot, and you get to hear many different stanzas of the "Go see Cal!" jingle -- "I will stand upon my head until my ears are turning red"), at least skip forward to the 2:50 mark, where you can see the roller skating monkey, and the shot of Cal riding the hippo.
Heh, classic stuff. The man was a marketing genius.
Go See Cal!
4 comments:
So Cal does seem to do commercials late night still - even though I rarely see them because I don't watch local TV much anymore, and I'm not up that late either. The dude must be in his 80s because he looked like he was in the 60s when we were at Tech.
The most amazing thing for me about Cal was when I went to a wedding in Washington state, and Cal Worthington came on TV...
I think the NPR piece said he was 87 or 88.
I'd never heard of him until the other day, but these are pretty hilarious and I'm still sort of humming the tune.
What a fun few minutes spent there. I really like Spot. I want one.
~p
oh yes, i remember it well.
I also remember Captain 20 and gerbil races.
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