April 30, 1952…TV’s First Toy Commercial, And Other TV Ad Firsts

On this day, in 1952, Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on national television.

Below is the first animated TV commercial to use identifiable characters. The spot was for Ajax cleanser, which debuted in 1948 and featured the antics of The Ajax Pixies, who not only cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, but sang a catchy jingle which many of us still remember.

Many of us will also remember the Gillette “Look Sharp, Feel Sharp” jingle and the animated Gillette parrot. The first television network sponsor of a sporting event was Gillette Razor Company with the telecast of the Joe Louis vs. Bill Conn heavyweight boxing match, on June 19, 1946. Their commercial spotlighted a line drawing of a parrot called Sharpie. Speaking of “sharp”, this event was the first ever use of the new RCA TK30 Image Orthicon camera, which made much sharper images than it’s predecessors.

The first ever TV commercial advertisement was sponsored by the Bulova Watch company on July 1, 1941. Bulova paid WNBT, $9.00 for a 10-second Bulova Watch Time announcement superimposed on the test pattern at 2:29:50 P.M..

At 2:30 P.M. the telecast began from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn with announcer Ray Forrest doing the play-by-play of a baseball game between the Dodgers & the Phillies. There were 4000 sets for the first broadcast.

Kraft Foods was the first company to sponsor an hour long drama as they lent commercial support for their dramatic anthology “Kraft Television Theater”, which ran on NBC from 1947-58. Their first drama was “Double Door” and starred John Baragrey.

The first color commercial televised in a local show was for Castro Designs (Castro Convertibles), in New York on WNBT. It was first telecast on Aug. 6. 1953.

In response from pressure from a number of concerned citizen groups, the NAB in 1958 outlawed the “Men in White” commercials which depicted actors who simulated doctors recommending medicines to the American public. To get around this ruling, one advertisement later featured a commercial that began “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”

On January 2, 1971, a federally imposed ban on television cigarette advertisements went into effect.

In 1971, The Federal Trade Commission ruled that such euphemisms as “Leading Brand,” “Brand X” and “The Leading Foreign Import” were only confusing to the public and must be discontinued. This was the birth of the television commercials that directly attacked another product by their “brand name” such as the phrase “More people prefer Pepsi to Coke.”

In a unique collaboration of commercial marketing, the Alka-Selzer Company and H & R Block Company joined forces in the spring of 1987 to calm the queasy feeling that Americans get at tax preparation time. The commercial pitch was “Take Alka-Seltzer and call H & R Block.” This was the first time two major companies jointly pushed their products. By sharing costs, the joint venture would allow the companies to reach a larger group of consumers in both supermarket and tax offices.

In May of 1988, rock star Michael Jackson starred in five Pepsi Cola commercials aired in the Soviet Union to an audience of 150,000,000 people. The commercials were seen during a week-long series called “Posner In America” hosted by Vladimir Posner, Russian journalist/broadcaster. This was the first time in history that an American commercial was shown behind the Iron Curtain. As you read this, I know you are wondering if these are the spots he was filming when his hair caught fire, and the answer is no…that was in 1984. -Bobby Ellerbee

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