One of the most brilliant marketing campaigns of all-time has to be “Got Milk?”

From the 1990s into the 2000s, “Got Milk?” became a celebrity “thing” to latch onto, personalities spanning from music to film to sports to journalism to fashion models. Even political figures. I can just see the agent negotiations that went on back in the day. From Shaquille O’Neal to Whoopie Goldberg, Chirstie Brinkley, Britney Spears, Serena and Venus Williams, Mark McGwire, Tracy McGrady, Mike Myers and Ivanka Trump (to name a tiny few of legion who participated), the “Got Milk?” ads became a movement more than a mere pitch.

This to promote healthier living using back-to-basics shenanigans with the trademark “milk mustache.” I know as a child I had quite a few milk mustaches and no doubt every parent has run into these raising their own kids. My son sported plenty of them, laughing like a loon at them nearly as hard as a Spaghetti-Os ‘stache. I loved these silly ads you tripped over anywhere: comic books, magazines, malls, billboards, bus stops, parks. It worked, too, even for the lactose intolerant, who found their Lactaid substitutes to get on board.

Let’s face it, only star power of the time held so much influence as to rock the milk ‘stache and pimp what most people of the time wrote off as kid’s fuel.

Got Milk? Hell yeah!

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I was only 9 when The Warriors came out in theaters in 1979, so it took me to my mid-teens before I finally caught up to the cult classic urban action flick. It was one of those impactful movies, like A Clockwork Orange and Blue Velvet, which hit me hard once I saw it.

Now I’m not going to say The Warriors is cinematic art like those aforementioned fringe films, each speaking of psychosomatic sexual tension and violence. Yet any teenager coming to The Warriors at the right time of his or her life is wont to have a game-changing experience in attitude. Teenagers are pull of piss and vinegar, full of themselves, carrying supercilious airs like they’ve already figured out the world and their parents were wrong about more than half of what they’d preached. The Warriors puts you in your self-righteous adolescent place.

Directed by Walter Hill, based on the 1965 novel by Sol Yurick and stuffed with a dirty funk and rock soundtrack I love and play often (including the gritty shuffle-stomp of Barry De Vorzon’s movie theme and Joe Walsh of The Eagles’ modest hit, “In the City”). The premise of the film was a de facto warning against gang culture, lost in translation between the gangsta huckstering eras of Dr. Dre and 21 Savage. A well-meaning gang leader, Cyrus, with the power to unite all of New York City’s (at the time this was made in economic despair, culling the unwanted tag “The Rotten Apple”) street packs under one tribe is assassinated then mistakenly pinned upon our focus horde, The Warriors.

Turf means nothing at this point, as The Warriors, homebased at Coney Island, must fight their way home from Van Cortlandt Park through New York’s subterranean and top-level hellholes from 96th Street to Union Square and beyond from rival gangs looking to bash them to pieces. It’s a savage, goony brawl to the finish against comic-reminiscent adversaries like The Gramercy Riffs (who have propagated a bounty upon The Warriors), The Turnbull ACs and The Orphans. The most famous gangs here being the all-female “Lizzies” and the pinstriped, face-painted, bat-wielding “Baseball Furies.” Michael Beck as Swan and James Remar as Ajax are The Warriors’ face men, and they’re not always in the right, which makes The Warriors that much more compelling. You’re inexplicably cheering for street trash, even with their ugly faults and sometimes piggish conduct, even as the aggrieved characters in this film. The final showdown against The Rogues gang who’ve set The Warriors up, is a memorable, bottle clinking denouement that works your nerves and sets in to the sun washed we-made-it-thank-God ending.

Upon its inaugural weekend release, The Warriors inadvertently incited reports of street violence, vandalism and three murders, two in California, one in Boston. The film and radio ads were ripped from the airwaves and extra security was hired across numerous American theaters. I hear some of today’s generation praise The Warriors but most of them consider it soft soap and cheesy in comparison to today’s spirit of nihilism in filmmaking. There were reports of theaters so crowded for The Warriors in ’79 people were lying on the floors to watch it.

Make no doubt about it; The Warriors is tame by today’s standards, yet it was a very dangerous film of its time, and it still has the capability of stirring insurrection to the right audience. A board game called Warriors: Come Out to Play surfaced as recently as 2022 by Funko. Dynamite Comics ran a four-issue miniseries dedicated to the film back in 2013. John Wick 4 has a blatant homage to the DJ in this film calling underground thugs to action, including a remake of “Nowhere to Run,” already covered by Arnold McCuller here. In other words, The Warriors has mucho holding power all these years later.

Walter Hill himself said of his film, “I think the reason why there were some violent incidents is really very simple: The movie was very popular with the street gangs, especially young men, a lot of whom had very strong feelings about each other. And suddenly they all went to the movies together! They looked across the aisle and there were the guys they didn’t like, so there were a lot of incidents. And also, the movie itself is rambunctious—I would certainly say that.”

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

If you grew in the 1970s, what wasn’t cooler than gold belt buckles, stripe patterned shirts, comic books and Hubba Bubba bubble gum?

Sure, Fruit Stripe was okay, if a little chalky. If you liked chalk in your gum, all needed do was buy a pack of Fleer or Donruss baseball cards, during the waning years of trading cards coming with a gnaw-on treat. Topps at least had a palatable stick of gum in their card packs. Fleet or Donruss, it’s amazing we even lived eating that nasty crap.

Big Red chewing gum carried a fun, zesty cinnamon zing on the palette, while Fruitalicious and Bubble Yum were hot contenders vying for our gnawing pleasure back then. Hubba Bubba, I mean, dude, the name sold itself. The fact it had the best reputation for bubble blowing elasticity was the reason to care. It was also on par with Bubble Yum and the tried-and-true Bazooka for the quickest sugar rush.

I was reading through a few of my classic Iron Man, Captain America and Spiderman comics and rejoiced to spot the above ad for Hubba Bubba repeated in the issues from 1979. Hubba Bubba used to air t.v. ads featuring kids as “Gumfighters” in an old West setting throwing down against Black Barts of gum chewing, nonsensical giddiness which were effective in their pitches. We wanted this stuff to get in there amongst our friends to duel in bubble blowing.

Here in print form, a hilarious tutorial on the fine art of “Gumfighting” or as I called it then, “Gumslinging.” Best of all with Hubba Bubba, they’d found the science of non-stick retraction! All-important to a child of the Swinging Seventies’ gumslinging forte.

A Happy Easter and Ramadan to you, plus belated Ostara and Purim to those communities.

Whether you’re dipping eggs, gnawing the ears off chocolate bunnies, steppin’ out with your baby in vibrant technicolor, cheering on the home team at the ol’ ballgame or reflecting in reverence, may the holiday provide you release, recharge, introspection and balance.

For those heading off to church in their Sunday best, check out this wayback advertisement from 1949 for Kodak film (you know, those spool-wound reels called “rollfilm” you can still get and send off for processing development at Wal Mart and Walgreens in the day and age of digital cameras and cell phone selfies). Here, a vintage top-down view finder camera pointed by a post-World War II, suit-clad dad at his colorful ladies (synchronized twins, no less), all the norm of the day. Flower-crowned hats and leather buckle shoes. Sterile to see today. Absolutely “swell,” the vernacular of the times would call it. Also a time when a woman called be called “dollface” without being pulled into the fires of “woke.”

Mom’s possibly humming echoes of “Beautiful Faces Need Beautiful Clothes” from the song and dance classic, Easter Parade, starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire released in theaters only one year before this magazine pitch. Today, Easter dress is still something of a fashionista sport as much as those wide-brimmed derby couture hats, throwbacks to posh elegance when “Meet Me in St. Louis” was as popular a song as anything today by Rihanna.

Nowadays it’s alright (at least in some Christian denominations) to show for church on Sunday wearing jeans and football jerseys. Not that I would ever impose sanctions upon those schlumping in slacker gear at any place of worship. Worship as you worship, if you’re so inclined. Judge not and not be judged. I say this as a one-time Catholic who remembers strapping on a size-too-big navy suit and tie to attend church with my grandmother, the slacks, button-down shirt, blazer variation with my parents and later in my adult life. Vibrant colored solid or check patterned Van Heusen shirts specifically for Easter. All until switching to cargo pants and polos with the loosening of the dress code, even if the ushers took exception to my flat cap inside church while letting pass kids wearing Tupac Shakur thug life tees.

You know what Vonnegut would say pushing click upon a Kodak Instamatic to such a scene. So it goes.

Ahh, the 1970s, decade of my childhood. Star Wars and Soul Train, both a big part of my world then. I’ve been having a lot of bittersweet fun hanging on Sirius XM Channel 74, Smokey’s Soul Town, bringing the funk, the soul, the boogie, all that smooth jive from the 1960s through the early 1980s. The sounds of Motown, Stax, Atlantic, Hi, Westbound and King Records which filled my ears heavily as a child. My mom used to shake her butt on Saturday afternoons to Don Cornelius’ power hour of funk and R&B gold, and it left an impact upon me. Same as the exotic “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” spooling from a transistor radio as Mom got ready for work. I’m talking the true soul sista shove by Labelle, not that atrocity “Lady Marmalade” remade by Christina Aguilera and company in 2001.

Guitars wrenched by foot-tappity wah-pedals, bass guitar being KING of all genres of the Seventies, especially. You wanted to get down, you wanted to groove. Morgan Freeman was just beginning a decades-long tenure of swagger on the original inception of the classic kids’ education show, The Electric Company. For me, the G.O.A.T. of such programming made immortal by the entire ensemble, but Freeman’s recurring characters Easy Reader and Mel Mounds were the epitome of cool along with Rita Moreno’s trademark holler, “Heyyyyy youuuuuu guyyyyyyyysssss!”

To this day, I still say “Right on,” no less then 50 times a week. “Rad” at least 10, but different era, different path of life. It’s part of my DNA, spoken by some white kid in Maryland farmland who, like most of his generation of kids, found the funk. Funk music being an all-time favorite genre, I still marvel how pop culture of the decade assimilated to the new hip factor of Shaft, Superfly, Foxy Brown, Coffy and Cleopatra Jones. So much the comic books I read back then strove not only to introduce more characters of color, but to shift the dialect of most stories set in urban settings to funkadelic speak.

So it didn’t surprise me when I scoured through a bunch of ads for Burger King and McDonald’s from the Seventies most of them tried to huckster forced jive talk that’s comical to see today. Some may call it latent racism. Exploitation to be certain. There was such a term back in the day as “Blacksploitation,” some of it empowering, some of it embarrassing.

McDonald’s had an angle and a jingle for everyone back then. One being “We do it all for you.” Another being “You deserve a break today.” For all of us kids, the fast-food chain’s targeted demographic, we were too busy grinning at the famous clown and the “Rubble rubbles” thumb bitten by his Hamburglar nemesis to care about anything else. Other than we could rely on McDonald’s ads to run with Mounds/Almond Joy commercials during Charlie Brown t.v. specials.

Maurice and his lady here in this ad I’m sure even the McDonald’s corporate honchos shake their heads at, gettin’ down with some cheapo cheeseburgers with the implied suggestion they’ll be gettin’ busy after-the-fact. “Celebrating just being together?” Come on, man. Can I feel where they’re coming from? Gawd, hell no. This is some ancient jive turkey crap if I ever saw it.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

It’s St. Patty’s Day and having a lineage to Clan McDermott, some of the beers I’m keenest on are, naturally, Guinness, Murphy’s, Harp and Kilkenny.

Yet Smithwick’s red ale (its actual finishing palette resting somewhere between maroon and brown) remains dear to my hops-loving heart, one of my go-tos in any American Irish pub. Particularly mashed with a Guinness stout, the combo pint known as a Blacksmith. Cue the old Guinness t.v. spot: “Brilliant!”

Smithwicks has been around since 1710, originally brewed on the grounds of a Franciscan abbey, later coming together under the same brewing umbrella with Guinness in 1965. Originally manufactured in Kilkenny until 2013, it’s now brewed on Guinness turf in Dublin at St. James Gate. Ironically, Smithwicks these days is shipped internationally by the British alcohol distributor, Diageo.

Make sure you get the name right if you order one of these amber gems, lest the Irish true laugh you straight into the Atlantic. Or make good on this ad’s whimsical threat to put heat to our collective outsider arses. It’s pronounced “Smitticks,” not the way it reads, and this hysterical old pitch for the beer has such savory smarm it has me pouring my own pint as I write this.

I have friends with whom I’ve shared these glorious pints (especially on many memorable St. Patty’s pub sprees) and our glass-clinging call-to-arms was once “Up the Smitticks!” No doubt to many a private invitation around us to “feck off.” There was a time during COVID when “Smitticks” disappeared from U.S. beer retailers, making me wonder when we’d ever see it stateside again. Luckily, it wasn’t another 300 year wait for its return. I can’t imagine what we Yanks could send the Smithwick estate in gratitude, other than a plethora of IPA recipes which they already fused in 2011 for their own pale ale.

Slainte, my friends.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

As I continue my romp through my old issues of Heavy Metal illustrated mags, I busted out howling at this vintage ad.

Forgot this promo for Animal House ever existed, LMAO.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

You probably read my post a few weeks ago celebrating my love of Heavy Metal illustrated fantasy magazine, my love affair with it having begun in my tweens from an enabling 7-11 clerk.

Well, I’ve been getting reacquainted with my old treasures in-between current novel and comics reading projects, and I forgot how, especially in the early years of the magazine, Heavy Metal ran ads for albums and movies which became legends of their time and forevermore. 

We’re talking classic rock albums like Rush’s Moving Pictures, the Scorpions’ Blackout and Meat Loaf’s Dead Ringer. Okay, so Dead Ringer is hardly one of Meat Loaf’s critical gems, but it’s no surprise Epic Records took an ad here, since its cover was done by famed horror and fantasy artist Berni Wrightson. Wrightson being a standard at Heavy Metal in its pages and its 1981 animated film.

What really slayed me was the full-page ads for some of my all-time favorite movies: Blade Runner, Excalibur, the original Conan the Barbarian, Twilight Zone: The Movie, even the first Vacation film. Again, no surprise in the latter case, which ran a two-page spread with Chevy Chase as a nutty yuppie champion of the wasteland theme. The recognizable movie poster was helmed by fantasy art royal, Boris Vallejo, whose covers for Heavy Metal were always mandatory pickups for me.

I confess to being a nostalgic sap while taking cautious steps forward, but even TJ will tell you I got all extra sappy uncorking these advertisements from my youth. 

Sidebar, I was able to get my hands on these adult-oriented comic magazines at age 12 in 1982, but nobody would take me to see Blade Runner because of its R-rating. My mouth hung agape when I spotted Harrison Ford in that ad in Heavy Metal, being a total freak for Han Solo. Blade Runner became an immediate obsession I never got to satiate until seeing it on VHS at age 15. 

Funny to think I was delving into sci-fi softcore porn but denied entry to a hard-edged sci-fi noir film. Seeing my dismay, however, my grandfather bought me a Blade Runner movie magazine as a consolation prize. 

Check ’em out:

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

With a ho-ho-ho and a cough-cough-wheeze, it just wasn’t cookies and egg nog Santa Claus was craving if you were alive during the 1950s and early Sixties.

Now let me get this down right off-the-bat: I despise smoking, especially as I lost my father to COPD due to his debilitating chain habit. My mother and stepfather successfully quit decades ago and I applaud them for it. With all the warnings and evidence of self-destruction out there, it pains me to see people still running to cigarettes in modern times. That’s just me, though, and if I’ve offended any smokers out there, no direct judgment. It’s all good. You do you. Peace.

It’s damned near laughable to think of a halcyon, manufactured holiday totem nearly as sanctified as Jesus Christ as anything less than pure and, except for any romps in the sack with Mrs. Claus, virginal. Santa Claus to children everywhere is the symbol of all that is right in the world at Christmastime. To parents, a means of both staying young themselves while having a figurehead of righteousness with which to reinforce good behavior. If not, forget the coal; there be ol’ Krampus to contend with.

Okay, so Santa Claus has been shown to have a nasty side, such as Black Christmas and the Silent Night Deadly Night films. Those bloody exploits catering to the sicker crowd (I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t fess up to enjoying those dreadful arcs of dreck), can you really fathom, in this age of cancel, a Santa Claus as pitchman for cancer sticks?

We’re talking about 70 years ago, when you might find (according to advertisers of the day) Lucky Strikes, Chesterfields, Camels, even Prince Albert loose leaf tobacco in a can in your stocking if you were not only good all year, but “cool.”

While smoking was a huge pastime of the entire 20th century, it was the 1950s where your hip factor was at stake if you smoked or not. My parents told me the stories, I heard it from many others of their generation. You can see it in films and old t.v. ads and radio jingles back then. The Fabulous Fifties were extra faboo with a smoldering ciggie out of your mouth.

I mean, even Alan Hale, aka “The Skipper” in Gilligan’s Island, once did a bit in cosmopolitan Santa Drag to hawk Chesterfields. Chesterfield also utilizing a little ABC motif to create a tongue-waggling, Pavlovian buzz phrase, “Always Buy Chesterfield.” Hit ’em all, no matter the age bracket, current and future customers alike.

Gee, Santa, do you prefer them filtered or unfiltered? Was the Surgeon General on your naughty or nice list? I mean, okay, sure, who doesn’t want a little release after something as magnanimous as delivering presents down chimneys to households worldwide, never once explaining how he gets into apartments and homes relying on central heat instead of fireplaces? The way the world is today and legalization coming into play, don’t be surprised to see Santa wearing a rasta-colored hat with all eight reindeer as high as him in a cloud of reefer. Now we’d finally know why Rudolph’s nose is so red!

Personally, I prefer Santa’s caffeine addiction over nicotine, just sayin’ I don’t drink soda much anymore, but Coke always was it for me, and I left Santa Claus that with cookies more than I did milk back as child. Because I’ve seen a lifetime of Santa really taking a shine to Coca-Cola and I’m grateful for that.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.