Surreal 1960s Jeno's Pizza Roll Commercial

Posted by Adam Kuban, August 30, 2006 at 9:00 AM

While doing research for the previous post, I came across this crazy commercial for Jeno's Pizza Rolls:

Taken out of context, one which I'm too young to have lived through originally, the commercial is completely insane and makes almost no sense. Until you find out that it's the work of Stan Freberg and is a parody of a commercial for Lark cigarettes. Who knew they were doing meta back then?

Here's the Lark commercial:

Jeno's Pizza Rolls Commercial [YouTube, via Happiness is ...]
Comparing Pizza Roll Commercials [Happiness is ...]

5 Comments | Tags: pizza rolls, pizza snacks, pizza weirdness, videos

5 Comments:

Even seeing the original does not explain the empty stares of the people holding up their boxes of pizza rolls.

Slice Justin H. at 6:57PM on 08/30/06

The Jeno's commercial looks like a page from Rowan and Martin's Laugh In. Fun stuff.

seltzerboy at 7:31PM on 08/31/06

Do I ever miss those cigarette commercials. For those of you too young to have enjoyed them, some of Madison Ave.'s finest and most creative minds produced outstanding commercials for these deadly products. The FCC, in its wisdom, banned TV and radio ads for cigarettes around 1970...just about the time we got used to the nightly Vietnam death counts on the evening news. BTW, the tune used is the "Lone Ranger Theme," thus the reference to "that masked man" and "kemosabe."

Slice famdoc at 5:07AM on 09/01/06

Hey, Famdoc: I hope my post didn't come across as nostalgic for cigarette commercials! I debated even putting the Lark commercial on the site for that reason but really wanted to give readers some context for the pizza roll ad. I first viewed the pizza roll ad without foreknowledge of the Lark ad it was referencing. In that context, the Jeno's ad is even more surreal. I mean, why would someone be wheeling a cart through a cocktail party that says "show us your pizza roll pack"? And why the Lone Ranger, apart from the fact that they're using the show's theme song? But the second ad clears everything up, and, sadly, makes the first ad less fantastic. (Although Tonto stuffing his pockets with pizza rolls is still pretty crazy.) And, yeah, I got the Lone Ranger theme reference--"The William Tell Overture." I might have been born about 10 years after these commercials were made, but I still grew up watching Lone Ranger in rerun. ;)

Adam Kuban at 5:35AM on 09/01/06

Justin H.: Agreed. The empty stares are more creepy than campy.

Adam Kuban at 5:36AM on 09/01/06

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