So what’ll it be today? Maxine Waters? The Supreme Court? Donald Trump? Television commercials from the 1960s? 

TV ads it is.

Once you go down the rabbit hole of old advertisements you find yourself transported back to a time when women were either secretaries trying to bed the boss or housewives trying to make that perfect cup of coffee. And kids? They were playing with guns, swilling chemically colored beverages and dreaming of the day they could join adults around the family ashtray.  

Ah, the good old days.

In 1964 the Topper Toy Company company marketed the Johnny Seven OMA  (One Man Army) Toy Gun. 

What a magnificent weapon. It had everything: Grenade launcher, a Tommy gun and even an anti-tank rocket. Boys must have loved this amazing gadget (although I don’t remember it). Today? It would get you a trip to juvie. 

This 1962 ad for Fresh deodorant seems like a spoof, but it’s not. Yep, an underarm stick to help you seduce the boss.

Every Baby Boomer remembers the “Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid tastes great. Kool-Aid Kool-Aid can’t wait” jingle. But not all of us remember when the Kool-Aid Kids traveled the world. Dragging ethnic stereotypes with them. 

Tobacco ads were deliciously audacious. This one claims Salem cigarettes are softened with fresh air and features a comely smoker on a rope swing, proving that people really did smoke everywhere in the ‘60s.

In 1965, Mrs. Olson appeared, saving American housewives from spousal abuse over their inability to make a decent cup of coffee.

In addition to Mrs. Olson there was Mr. MacGregor, the friendly grocer who consoled weepy young housewives whose caffeine-deprived husbands leaned across the breakfast table and said things like, “Sorry, Honey, but your coffee tastes terrible."

The airwaves were once full of tobacco ads and the commercials for Marlboro were the absolute best. Horses, cattle drives, men doing manly things. All to that “Magnificent Seven” theme soundtrack.  

This is a not-great compilation of Marlboro ads. I like the first one, though, with a wild stallion and a cowboy who forgives him for running off three of his mares. Must have made desk jockeys in soul-sucking jobs all over the country yearn to live in well, Marlboro country.