Low Budget Mania

I know I've already blogged about commercials but I only covered commercials for kids in that post. Yesterday, an email from my cousin reminded me of one of the VERY few advantages to watching daytime television: the cheesy local commercial.

My greatest memories of low budget commercials come from my childhood in St. Louis. During the summer, I would get up at a reasonable hour and spend my mornings in front of the television most of the time, before going out and playing with my friends in the late morning or early afternoon hours. This would normally occur after watching The Price Is Right. These few hours of watching morning television introduced me to some local businesses I never would have known about otherwise.

The first one, that was the inspiration for this post, is Schweig Engel, which I believe is a furniture and appliance company, but I'm not sure if the commercials ever made it clear. These commercials were made up of three guys essentially yelling to you about their financing and credit options at the store. I don't recall them ever actually mentioning what they sell, leading me, as a child, to believe they were just a credit or accounting firm. After doing some research into it, I figured out what they actually sell. However, I tried to find information about the actual actors and was only able to come up with this video interview with Mike Stein. The cheesy special effects, sometimes violent overtones, and the voice levels of the actors made these commercials a favorite among native St. Louisans.

Next up is Becky's Carpet and Tile Superstore. I always found these commercials disturbing. Back in the day, they consisted of Becky, Queen of Carpet, and Wanda, Princess of Tile. They rode a flying carpet all over St. Louis, not always staying on it but generally ending the commercial there. However, after several years, Wanda suddenly disappeared from the ads, leaving Becky flying (literally) solo. Perhaps the combined weight of the two hurt the flying carpet, or perhaps Wanda actually did fall off the carpet and died...but that remains one of the great mysteries in St. Louis lore...What happened to Wanda? My opinion is there was a dispute between the Queen and Princess, and Becky ended up on the winning side. She admitted to being a recognizable figure outside of St. Louis in an interview done recently...and I bet that if Wanda were still around, it would take some of the spotlight off Becky. And who wants that?

There are several others I would like to cover, but in order to save space, I'll mention: Dirt Cheap and the Dirt Cheap bird, Buckley the talking dog...I can't even remember the name of the company, but if you mention Buckley you get $500 off the price of your car. The questions there is how do you go about mentioning Buckley when you're buying a car? That's always plagued me, and I wonder how many people have actually gotten that $500 off the price of the car. I also wonder how many Buckleys there have been.

Louisville doesn't have the same number of cheesy local commercials. But there are a few. The one I'm going to highlight isn't nearly as good as Schweig Engel, but it's still good. Darryl Isaacs, Attorney at Law, AKA "The Heavy Hitter." This is just a big oaf of a lawyer, who supposedly finished in the bottom third of his law school class, but is now probably the most recognized lawyer in Louisville. He's been seen in his commercials playing basketball and punching people and cars out of the screen, among other things. Most catchy, however is his jingle: "The heavy hitter is the way to go. Call 458-1000." Classic.

I wish I could write about more than this but I don't watch enough daytime and late night television anymore to really be able to do that. I hope the cheesy local commercial is not a dying breed. But if it is, then I thank all the local companies for filling my childhood (and adult life) with memories of dinosaurs eating people, headless salesmen, and b-balling lawyers.