10 musical 80s and 90s food adverts

I like food. I currently can’t eat any food because I’m trying to lose three stone this week. This has led to me becoming obsessed with food to the point where I’m looking at strangers and wondering how many calories are in the bit of their arm I could manage to bite off.

A less mental pastime is watching old food adverts. To be fair, this only makes me hungry, but I’m relatively safe unless I somehow manage to eat my laptop. Don’t assume I won’t try.

Food adverts in the 80s and 90s were the bollocks, because quite often they had jingly-jangly songs accompanying them. Here are 10 of my favourites:

Potato Waffles

Might I suggest that potato waffles also go with gin, cigarettes, and your own self loathing, mainly at just having eaten a whole box of potato waffles.

Smiths Crisps

Let’s ignore the fact that the gardener sounds like he’s humping the ground because he gets off on potatoes. Let’s instead concentrate on the most adorable potatoes you’ve ever seen, who have got some sort of trade union together, and are expressing their rights via song.

Fruit and Nut

Here we have a man about to have sex with a bar of chocolate. That’s not wrong in and of itself – it’s the fact that he’s going to do it during working hours. Can you imagine the inquiry if that company goes under because of him? “I couldn’t help it, the chocolate had sort of hair, and she grabbed my wire, the slut. You’re right, maybe I should have had that time off.”

Um Bongo

All together now:

“Way down deep in the middle of the congo
A something took a something and a something and a something”

Um Bongo’s nice though.

Sunkist

While the visuals scream “It’s like licking a lady’s salty arse in soft drink form!” The song screams “Summer! Hot weather! Power hair! That trip to Flamingo Land when you were 5!”

Micro Chips

What is it about potato products that lends itself so well to jaunty musical numbers?

This is a variation on the hit ‘Yakety Yak (Shut Up)’ by Johnny John John and the Johns. The song even managed to make us ignore the fact that, in reality, you got about three chips in a typical box.

Milky Way

Modern people will know this advert thanks to a recent rerun. By modern people, I mean people who’ve never heard of teenage boys having to use the Kays catalogue and their imagination.

Disclaimer: Eating a Milky Way won’t make you suddenly be able to jump over a ravine.

Gino Ginelli

“Tutti Frutti is my favourite ever ice cream flavour” – no one ever. Still, 10/10 for the song, which made me feel all European.

Club

Was there ever actually a Club club? If not, I should start one. I could make membership badges and have a password (it would probably be ‘club’) and a secret den made out of boxes. Everyone who doesn’t like a lot of chocolate on their biscuit could have bricks and small children thrown at them.

Crisp ‘n’ Dry

Not technically a food (unless you’re a bit drunk and really desperate). However, I can’t leave singing nuns out of this line up. Ok, it’s not technically a singing nun, but shut up, because I prefer my wrong memory of it being a singing nun. At worst, it’s a nun doing lip-sync.