It’s a well known fact that the 60’s was the decade of the uprising controversial advertising era, when it was OK to be sexist and cigarettes were good for your health.
However, again we were shocked when we saw this super odd and freaky Winston Cigarettes commercial promoted by cartoon heroes Fred and Barney from the Flintstones.
That is right, the 60s were so out of their minds that that used a cartoon heroes to promote cigarettes. If this commercial is aired nowadays, boy would they have to deal with a riot!
“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” is an enduring slogan that appeared in newspaper, magazine, radio, and television advertisements for Winston cigarettes from the brand’s introduction in 1954 until 1972. It is one of the best-known American tobacco advertising campaigns.
In 1999, Advertising Age ranked the jingle eighth-best out of all the radio and television jingles that aired in the United States in the 20th century.
In the radio and television advertisements, the slogan is presented in a singsong fashion with a noticeable two-beat clap near the end, so the jingle would sound like Win-ston tastes good like a (clap clap) cigarette should. The “clap” noise was sometimes substituted for actors in the commercials knocking twice against a truck carrying Winston cigarettes, or an actor flicking his lighter twice to the same conceit.
Winston cigarettes were sponsors of such television series as The Beverly Hillbillies and The Flintstones. The former series would show stars Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, and Nancy Kulp extolling the virtues of Winstons while smoking them and reciting the jingle.
The latter series would later come under fire for advertising cigarettes on an animated series watched by many children, but Winston pulled their involvement with the series after the Pebbles Flintstone character was born in 1963.
The Flintstones is the first animated primetime American television series. It was broadcast from September 30, 1960, to April 1, 1966 on ABC. The show, produced by Hanna-Barbera, fancifully depicted the lives of a working-class Stone Age man, his next-door neighbor/best friend, and their families.
The show’s continuing popularity rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting. The Flintstones was the most financially successful network animated franchise for three decades, until The Simpsons debuted. In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Flintstones the second Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time (after The Simpsons)