'60s Commercial Jingles That Will Transport Boomers Right Back To Childhood

Songs are powerful time machines, and perhaps nothing can send a boomer on that magical journey to the past more effectively than a commercial jingle from their 1960s childhood. Television advertising in the 1960s relied on catchy music that created a lasting memory of a product. Many of those commercial jingles went on to be worth a head-turning amount of money, while some wound up regarded as the worst jingles ever recorded by classic artists, but the ones that endured are those embedded with hooks. Ad jingle writers and anonymous studio musicians were tasked with selling a product, but some accidentally made some of the longest-lasting earworms of all time.

Some of those 1960s jingles are as fondly remembered as a pop or rock song first heard in childhood, and are just as capable of conjuring up nostalgia for the boomer generation. From Slinky to hot dogs and soda, these ads are especially good at sending boomers right back to when they were kids or teenagers watching TV or listening to the radio.

The boxed and seasoned mixture of rice and pasta hit stores in 1958, but Rice-A-Roni didn't become a national phenomenon until the early 1960s. It was promoted through a series of commercials that featured San Francisco iconography — where the product was invented — and a repetitive melody. "Rice-A-Roni: the San Francisco treat," the jingle proclaimed. "Rice-A-Roni, the flavor can't be beat." There's a verse and some cable car sounds, too, but that jingle was so memorable that it was used for decades.

It's hard not to get a song as hard-charging and repetitive as Coca-Cola's 1960s-era jingle, "Things Go Better With Coke," stuck on a loop that can live in the brain for years on end. As the music for the first major Coca-Cola branding initiative of the 1960s, the jingle is as peppy and effervescent as sugar-loaded carbonated water. Jittery and agitated and delivered by a choir of friendly, ghostly voices, the ad's visuals match the music, showing people having fun with each other and getting things done. Coke provides energy, the jingle promises, and this song is absolutely full of it.

Back in the 1940s, the Slinky was one of the biggest Christmas toy crazes in history. It's just some thin metal wire bent into a coil, but its simple pleasures were espoused in a 1962 TV commercial that made it a popular toy all over again. Such ads ran frequently in the decade, targeting kids with a bouncy, breathless, sing-songy jingle. The song explained everything Slinky could do and more, like how it could stroll down the stairs and didn't cost very much. "Everyone wants a Slinky," the ad proclaimed.

This piece of 1963 ad music was so geared toward kids that Oscar Mayer got kids to sing it. The wiener jingle is a happy, propulsive march, showcasing an army of young folks declaring their appreciation for the leading brand of hot dog filler. But these young boomers don't just want to eat Oscar Mayer wieners — they actually want to be Oscar Mayer wieners, so then the whole world would love them. Children of the '60s subsequently got this jingle associating love and comfort food lodged in their memory banks forever. Oscar Mayer didn't retire the song until 2010.

The melody of the jingle used to market Armour hot dogs in the 1960s is timeless, while the lyrics are a bit dated and problematic. "What kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs?" the commercials wonder aloud before answering: all kinds of kids. Like its competitor Oscar Mayer, Armour employs a bunch of kids espousing the benefits of the product, imploring young viewers to join them in the march led by a Pied Piper type who informs his acolytes (and those watching at home) that Armour hot dogs are appropriate for children with all kinds of body types, fighting prowess, and even those with chicken pox.

To counter Coca-Cola's assertion of being the carbonated cola of the establishment, Pepsi-Cola told 1960s TV viewers that its soda was for hip, cool, youthful people with discerning taste. Presaging the ideological generation gap that would push boomers and their parents' ilk apart, Pepsi's 1964 slogan, "For those who think young," fueled aspirational and influential commercials made to be absorbed by young people. The jingle skewed more old-fashioned but was still hypnotic, particularly when it came to the tag, a simple yet burrowing five-note melody.