Totally Ta-GETHA!!!

Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I've been happily reunited with my favorite TV alcohol ad of the 1970s, for the first time in thirty years. The commercial, of course, is the immortal "Shake 'Em Up" campaign for Thunderbird wine, which suggested that no party was truly complete without the combination of cheap wine and random grapefruit juice. I used to see this all the time on late-evening TV during the summer of 1977; it's here as a part of a commercial break from Martin Mull's great Fernwood 2 Night, but I also remember seeing it pop up during Carson. It definitely made an impression — decades on, I could still hear/sing the jingle note for note — though for some reason it never made me want to actually drink the stuff...

Now you get some!

Comments

[Greg Barbera]

pouring the juice in the bottle is so... classic. all that's missing is the brown bag to house the specialty beverage

[Fred B]

Boones Farm and Michelob...that's how we rolled in Tarrytown NY in the 70's.

[CP]

My BFF freshman year of HS, Robin Barnes, and I used to quote the "Shakeumup? Wusssat?" all the time. Cracked our whitey-white selves up all over LTHS.

[phil]

I'd love to try it but I can't seem to find Thunderbird anywhere. My loss...

[jim saft]

Sickest I have ever been was when, getting off a 36 at Belden Triangle already drunk I made friends with a wino and shared his T-bird. Next day I went to a Tom Waits play, maybe with you Dan, and prayed silently throughout for the sweet release of death.

[Dan]

Holy shit — I was just thinking about Frank's Wild Years last night, for some reason. 'Twas indeed I that accompanied you to that awful play; I wasn't even hungover, but it gave me a headache so brutal that I, too, would have welcomed death as a comparative relief.

[stu]

I want Norbert's bathing suit.

[Michael]

That commercial is so wrong on so many levels, it makes my head spin. And speaking of Fernwood 2-Nite (even those very brief clips look excellent), I recently picked up a DVD set of the first 25 episodes of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and I'm completely engrossed. What an amazing show!