Badvertising: The Flintstones Have A Smoke
This isn’t so much of a bad advert as a “what the hell were they thinking?” advert.
As most people will know, The Flintstones was a programme for children, set in the time of the Stone Age. Because animators were lazy at the time, the same plotlines happened in The Jetsons, which was based in the future.
With the average age of a child watching The Flintstones about ten and under, you’d have thought Barney and Fred would be flogging sweets, army propaganda or toys. In a very odd twist, they are in fact puffing away on a Winston cigarette. Something that any sane parent wouldn’t give to their ickle child.
We know a couple of things about this advert:
A) It’s old. Look at it! There is no colour, so we have to assume it was made before God created colour, or prior to sweatshop colouring in camps being established in China.
B) The advert’s a bit rubbish. Think about it, have you ever had the privilege of puffing on a Winston? No, we haven’t and unless you’re a million years old, you won’t have heard of the product.
And what’s the conclusion of all of this? Cartoon characters aren’t actually real and things not done in colour are rubbish.
“As most people will know, The Flintstones was a programme for children, set in the time of the Stone Age.”
This is where you’ve gone wrong. In fact, The Flintstones was one of the very first, if not the first cartoon that was aimed at a general audience. It was not designed to be a children’s program, even though later incarnations were more aimed at the kids. So as bad as this old advert might look, there really is nothing surprising or outrageous about it, especially considering that this was a time when cigarettes were still perceived as having no health risks.
You also neglected to mention that Winston were the official sponsors of The Flintstones in those early days. So this wasn’t just a one-off advert, but a plug that they worked into every single show.
Believe it or not, when The Flintstones originally ran on American TV in the sixties, it was a prime time program aimed at *adults*. Hence the advertising. (The original air time was 8:30 – 9:00 PM on Fridays, definitely not a “kiddie” time slot).
In the later seasons of the program, it was aimed more at children, and aired in an earlier slot at 7:30 – 8:00. It was subsequently pitched as a children’s program in endless syndication, and spin-off programs made later with the same characters *were* made specifically for children.
Oh my god, that is so weird…
I got a chuckle out of this ad when I saw it. I do remember seeing this back in the 80s but recently on you tube. Anyhow, if you were to watch the first 2 seasons of the Flintstones it really was aimed more towards adults. The episode themes were more adult orientated and closely resembled the Honeymooners. It wasn’t until later in the series that it got more geared towards a family audience particularly with the addition of Pebbles and then Bam Bam. They even changed the closing theme of the Flintsones with sugary sweet “Let the Sun Shine in” in the last season of the series. So it’s not a surprise to me that this commercial was shown.