This brilliant Kit-Kat chocolate bar TV ad is entitled "Pop Band" and dates from 1984. I love it. I actually like the tune as well! Gets me tapping my feet! Similarly, I liked the sound of Not The Nine O'Clock News' 1982 ditty Nice Video, Shame About The Song ("Let's spend our honeymoon in East Berlin...") - and could quite happily have bopped around the dancefloor if a full-length version had ever reached my local nite spot!
Back to the ad: "You can't sing, you can't play, you look awful. You'll go a long way..." Sounds like me in the '80s.
Apart from the last bit (sigh).
UPDATE 21/5/12
Thanks to my readers who have provided further information about this ad. It was filmed at Wembley in 1984, the band member on the far left has "1984" emblazoned on his T-shirt, and the agent is played by actor Gavin Richards, who has featured in many television productions over the years, including EastEnders (as Terry Raymond) and 'Allo 'Allo as Captain Alberto Bertorelli. Carol Smillie also features (second left).
The ad was beautifully done. Just look at the band: by 1984, the New Romantic scene was just about dead, although it had left its influence. The guy on the far left in the band has a modest version of the A Flock Of Seagulls quiff, with the uplifts at the side; in 1983 and 1984 Bananarama were big news and the two girls are 'nana clones, obviously happily embracing the brave new worlds of hair gel and mousse; the guy on the right is your typical trendy dude, whilst the dapper agent with the pink tie... well, need I say more? 1984 lives!
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11 comments:
I'm 99% sure this Ad was still airing in the early half of the 90s - I remember it as not all that long ago... one of a number of memorable Kit-Kat ads. :)
Very probably - I think it went on after 1984 for years! I'd quite forgotten about it and was delighted to discover it again. In 1984, I was working as a clerk for a pneumatics company and I remember me and my colleagues chanting: "Alien Invasion! What on earth are we going to do?" both at work and in the pub afterwards. The things that amused us in those comparatively unsophisticated times! LOl!
I don't remember this. Some of the people in it look very familiar though. The smarmy guy at the desk and the girl with the stripey top and bouffant. The other girl looks like Sinita?
I wouldn't call the agent smarmy. He seems a bit of a git to me! :) One of the girls, I am told, is Carol Smillie. Not sure if it's true or not! Don't know about the other one.
Just been out for a lovely walk with my wife. The sun was setting over the fields, a gentle breeze was blowing, birds were singing... and "Alien Invasion!" "What On Earth Are We Going To Do?" was going round and round in my head! ARRGGHH!!! :)
The agent there is actor Gavin Richards. He was Captain Alberto Bertorelli in 'Allo, 'Allo in the '80s and played Terry Raymond in EastEnders in the 1990s. Nice bloke. Bet he'd be surprised that an ad he did in 1984 is causing such a stir here!
Thanks, Maria, he looked very familiar to me, but I just couldn't place him!
He also was the bookie in Coronation St who had an affair with Tanya Pooley.
Cheers for that. His face is so familiar. No wonder!
1984 lives indeed! If you look closely you'll see the guy on the far left has "1984" on his T-shirt!
It would have been very dated in the '90s! The thing screams "mid 1980s" - one of the guys even has "1984" on his T-shirt! I only remember it from the mid-'80s.
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