I love old communist-era TV commercials...
(Yes they had TV commercials, cheerfully advertising the state brand for shoes or toothpaste.)
Hungarian commercial for ready-to-wear clothes
That's what készruha means = ready-to-wear. I cant quite make out what he sings in the beginning but it's something like "I look so handsome ... why? Because I wear ready-to-wear clothes". (The rest? Don't ask me what's that all about, but it's sure odd
)
Imagine the era in which off-the-peg clothes, as opposed to bespoke tailoring I suppose, was some new-fangled innovation! Touted as some glorious step of industrial progress: glamour for Everyman!
Extra funny because one of the enduring stereotypes about the Eastern Block was those politicians in ill-fitting suits of sub-par material.
Here's another one:
Hungarian commercial for the newest type of cassette-player
Absolutely f*cking hilarious. The actual casette player doesnt turn up till the very end, but it's worth waiting for.
I also love it when the guy's back in the military-style uniform and explains that - you won't understand what he's saying, but it's pretty self-explanatory - you know, a
really good casette player is one that you can turn, swing around, and use in any kind of position!
This one, meanwhile, is just wrong:
60's Camp Communist Sausage Commercial
(If you're wondering about the chicks in bikini, that's cause sausages are good in winter, and in summer!)
This last one doesn't quite fit, because this
Totally psychedelic Romanian chocolate commercial that's got Ceausescu's head twirling and spinning around
isn't actually vintage; one of the commenters explains that it was made recently by the ROM chocolate brand, which apparently is trying to ironically market its former history as original communist product.
(And not to get too serious, but this embrace of Ceausescu in ironic hip, in Romania itself, raises all kinds of interesting questions, but let's not get into that.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqn9rXu1TCM
