On second glance, I’m pretty sure that gorilla with a bra and the guy next to it are supposed to be from Cabaret.

Nothing says Thanksgiving more than a musical about sex and Nazis.

Chestnuts roasted by Gavok @ 11/25/2004 5:48 PM

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i have an inflatable baby shamu thats like 6 feet long, its looks exactly like one in the parade except with handles attached to its head

Chestnuts roasted by Diarrhea Dave @ 11/25/2004 6:18 PM

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I’d have to say Snoopy’s my personal favorite. Garfield’s a close second, though.

Chestnuts roasted by Mr. Mr. Mr. @ 11/25/2004 6:58 PM

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Ahh.. the old days where I watched the Thanksgiving Day parades every year… I miss it.

Though that Marvel float bit? That was so awful I simply couldn’t finish watching it. Im not sure if it was the cheese or the Back to the Future music, but I couldn’t take anymore of it…

Chestnuts roasted by Bloodcat @ 11/25/2004 7:23 PM

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Matt – thanks for the memories. Once again, you have produced the kind of content that makes this the best ‘nostalgia’ site on the internet. The comercials are what do it for me – I was 11 in 1987 and I remember all those the comercials – I can’t say I ever wanted an Atari XE though! NES forever, baby!

Chestnuts roasted by Jason @ 11/25/2004 7:24 PM

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Thanks, Matt, now I’ll giggle hard when I hear the theme from "A Different World" now.
Best improv of theme lyrics ever.

Chestnuts roasted by AngeFaitore @ 11/25/2004 8:24 PM

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http://www.livejournal.com/users/jpcromer/6716.html">My take on the Macy’s parade, not any specific one just in general.

Chestnuts roasted by Jason @ 11/25/2004 9:42 PM

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First of all, happy Thanksgiving Day to all American bloggers (and belated Thankgiving to the Canadians). Like last year, I hope everyone else still had as much fun with these parade reviews as I did.

I’m afraid the Marvel Comics float wouldn’t have been impressive to me in ’87 (when I would have been about or now. I’m more of a DC Comics person – seeing Superman made me happier. Being a girl, Barbie and the Cabbies were also interesting, and the Peanuts float ranks as a "nice try," even if I agree that the suits came out scary.

The only commercials mentioned that I remember are the sentimental McDs classics, especially the one involving the teacher. Yes, I cried at it. I’ve always been a fool for sentiment.

I may have seen bits and pieces of this in passing, but as a kid, I also swore by the Philly parade. As I live in Southern New Jersey, they made more use of familiar local personalities and it just made more sense to support your local Boscov’s. The Philly parades haven’t been nearly as fun in the past decade, though, hense my switch to the Macy’s parade.

Oh, yes, and I DID actually get to see most of the parade this year. There were some nifty floats, especially the two that revolved around animals, but I agree with Matt that the "Barbie’s Princess and the Pauper" number was excruciating. Overall, I had far more fun this Thanksgiving than last year – my brother and I just spent the afternoon between parade and dinner playing Nintendo Game Cube.

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 11/25/2004 9:55 PM

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Was I hallucinating, or did John (Cougar) Mellencamp sing during one of the football games halftimes? I swear I saw his snubbed nose and floppy brow. The tv sound wasn’t on, so I have no idea if it was actually him by hearing his singing voice.

But, i gotta say, watching football w/ the sound turned off is a lot better than watching Bill Gaither and the Gaitherettes sing non-secular music in accapello for the 9th year in a row.

Chestnuts roasted by trajeal @ 11/25/2004 10:37 PM

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Another great parade article and another great batch of commercials.

Damn, the Atari XE Flight Simulator II, from back in the era when the series was being produced by a company called SubLogic (before Bruce Artwick gave the copyright to Microsoft for Flight Simulator 3.0), sucked, and I don’t mean compared to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, or, for that matter, even, say, MSFS 4.0, I mean compared to the PC version of FS II. I mean, okay, the PC version only had undetailed outlines of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center and maybe the Chrysler Building for all of Manhattan back then too, but it was running a couple of frames a second. What’s that frame rate on the XE… 1 frame every 2 seconds?

I’m a little disturbed by that McDonald’s commercial… the bit when everyone raises their hands looks kinda like the zombie hands on the posters for Shaun of the Dead.

And it seems that Pierce Brosnan’s agents were already beginning to prime him to play Bond eight years before Goldeneye hit theatre screens.

By the way, even though I’m Canadian and, to me, Thanksgiving was a month and a half ago, I actually did watch most of this year’s Macy parade, with the main coverage on NBC and the alternate coverage (with Broadway show tunes!) on CBS, usually switching to the show tunes every time NBC had one of those abhorrently wholesome pop acts pop up, which seemed like every two minutes or so this year. They also had a puppet from Avenue Q, the adult Sesame Street spoof, but they didn’t perform any of the great songs like "The Internet is for Porn", for some reason. And they had the Kermit balloon this year too, but no Jim Henson. :’( I appreciated seeing the 1987 footage of him.

Chestnuts roasted by Steve Brandon @ 11/26/2004 12:41 PM

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A selection from The Hooples’ Horrible Holiday, by Stephen Manes, copyright Avon Camelot, 1986:

Annie piped down and turned toward the screen, where floats and balloons and bands and majorettes were marching along. Not-so-famous television stars described the action as if nothing so important, astonishing, and amazing had ever taken place in the history of the universe.
Then came some singers. "Hey, they’re not really singing!" Annie cried. "They’re just moving their mouths!"
"That’s for sure," said Alvin. The singers were so phony, so obvious about mouthing the words to something they’d recorded long before, that even a two-year-old would have noticed. It wasn’t even in sync. "Look at that guy. Words are coming out of his mouth even when it’s closed. Next thing you know the balloons will start singing."
The big helium-filled balloons of cartoon characters didn’t sing, which was probably just as well. But the commmercial jingles more than made up for them. There were ads for candy and cereals like the ones on the weekend-morning shows. But mostly there were toy commercials.
It seemed to Alvin that three minutes couldn’t go by without a bunch of commercials for a bunch of new toys or new accessories for old toys. Even with the remote control, he couldn’t change channels to avoid them, because all three stations ran their commercials at the same time. There were commercials for dolls, there were commercials for toy cars, there were commercials for robots, and there were commercials for games. And Annie claimed she wanted every single thing she saw.
"You don’t want a dump truck that can run over other dump trucks," said Alvin.
"Yes, I do," said Annie.
"You don’t want a stuffed pig that comes with its own birth certificate," said Alvin.
"Yes, I do," said Annie.
It didn’t matter what it was: Annie said she wanted it, and that was that. Alvin remembered when he was Annie’s age and wanted everything, too. He wondered how his parents could have stood it.
"That’s what I want most of all!" Annie cried, pointing to one of the little pictures in the corner of the screen. "Change the channel!"
"Don’t be silly, Annie."
"Change it!" she shrieked in a voice so loud it made Gramps stick his nose in the door and say, "Simmer down in there."
Alvin changed the channel, but he knew what he was going to hear. The one toy Annie wanted most in the whole world, next to a Carly Cutie doll, was a FuzzBot. It was a giant stuffed robot that could turn into half a dozen different kinds of furry animals. Alvin thought it was the stupidest toy he’d ever seen. And by now he knew the jingle by heart, since Annie had heard it on all the Saturday-morning cartoon shows for weeks and sang it almost every chance she got.

FuzzBots are tough with a hide of fur,
FuzzBots are fun for him and for her.
FuzzBots can be anything you please,
FuzzBots are lots of fun to squeeze.
FuzzBots are cute,
FuzzBots are hot,
So get yourself
Your own FuzzBot.

"FuzzBots by ToyBotics," said the announcer. "Clothes and accessories sold separately."
"That’s my favorite toy in the whole world," said Annie.
"That’s the dumbest toy in the whole world," said Alvin. "Who ever heard of a fuzzy robot? It’s just stupid, that’s all."
"It certainly is," said a silly voice at the door.
"Is not," said Annie.
She and Alvin turned toward the voice. It was coming from a tall grown-up in a curly green wig, a big plastic nose, a bushy fake moustache and eyebrows, and glasses with windshield wipers on them. There was snow all over this person’s fur coat. "It is too stupid," the comical figure said, "and I should know."

–

To read more of this classic story of 1980s Thanksgivings, you can http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380897407/qid=1101453149/sr=8-7/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i7_xgl14/002-8840360-2772052?v=glance&s=books&n=507846" TARGET="main">buy the book!

Chestnuts roasted by G'Tron @ 11/26/2004 2:16 AM

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Happy Thanksgiving.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/OhGodtheRats/turkeystufflowqualsmall.jpg

From my psyche.

Chestnuts roasted by OhGodtheRats @ 11/26/2004 9:14 AM

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re:luap
Crow, no!

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 11/26/2004 12:10 PM

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