1970sTV Ads

TV Ads – 1979 – Honda Express + Shirley Jones Coney Island Steamers + Zest + Bill Monday Pontiac

DOG COMMENTARY:

The Honda Express or Honda NC50 is a scooter made by Honda between 1977 and 1983….which are powered by an air-cooled 49 cc (3.0 cu in) two-stroke engine. The Honda Motor Company of Japan released the Honda Express (NC50) to the North American market in 1977. This new bike was designed to enter the large market for scooters that developed following the 1973 oil crisis…..as such it came with a fuel-efficient single-cylinder two-stroke engine….which was also designed to be simple to operate….as many owners would be inexperienced with or intimidated by larger, more complex motorcycles.  Honda accomplished this by using a fully automatic transmission and a small oil pump to self-mix the Express’s oil and fuel, thus eliminating the need for premixing.

Although Shirley Jones was a huge TV star….who was well loved by the viewing public back in the day….she still couldn’t sell enough Coney Island Hot Dog Steamers through her TV ads for the company to be still around just two years later.

Zest is a brand name, or trademark, which Procter & Gamble introduced in 1955….with the slogan “For the first time in your life, feel really clean.”….as early commercials stated that Zest is not a soap….cuz it does not leave the sticky film that soap does.  A 1970-era commercial illustrated this concept with an apparent demonstration in which two photographs of a person were each dipped in one of two bowls…. with one labeled “soap” and the other “Zest”….with the one that came out of the “soap” bowl having a scummy coating….whereas the one that came out of the “Zest” bowl had no such coating. 

Bill Munday has been in the auto dealership business since the late 1960’s in Austin, Texas….who built his dealership empire through television advertising…..which made him successful back in the day….who is still successful in 2018.

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