I know you’re all waiting on tenterhooks for the second half of my All-Time Favorite Movies list, but this was too good not to share immediately. For years, I heard whispered tales about Fred and Barney hawking Winston cigarettes back in the days when The Flintstones was running in primetime, but I’d never seen any actual evidence of it. When the news went out that the show would be released on DVD, there was much fanboy speculation about whether the legendary commercial would be included as an extra, and much disappointment when it was not. Some people even suggested that the whole thing was apocryphal, that it never happened.
But it did. And here’s your proof:
I love weird little pop-culture artifacts like this…
[Ed. note: I found this clip courtesy of Mark Evanier; if you’re interested, he offers a brief history of this commercial, The Flintstones, and some other primetime cartoons here.]
Well, isn’t this an interesting little artifact?
Yeah, I think so. It’s interesting to be reminded that all these iconic characters weren’t always depicted in the wholesome, kid-stuff way that we now think of them.
Of course, there was a time when smoking was so accepted that kids were practically getting free packets of tobacco in their breakfast cereal…
Huh. And I always thought B.C. stood for “before corporations.”
Also, what’s the deal with cartoon beard shadows always shaped like goatees? Nobody grows sideburns in cartoonland?
Sideburns didn’t exist B.E. — “Before Elvis.” Specifically ’70s-vintage Elvis, of course.