NBC’s late-night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) has been on the air since 1975 and is now celebrating its 50th season.
The show traditionally lampoons and parodies current events and cultural happenings, and over the years, they have created watercooler moments and captured the overall zeitgeist (even if it was best when you were young). So, it’s little surprise that SNL mines for comedy gold from products and advertising. A mainstay of the show is faux-mercials for made-up brands and goods, resulting in a comedic commentary on the stuff we buy and how we market them.
With five decades of history, however, there are countless segments to comb through, and picking some of the best SNLhas produced over its long run is mostly a fool’s errand. Still, I gave it the old college try. In choosing some of the most notable commercials, I focused on ads that feature a packaged product (that’s kind of our deal, after all), which makes it all the more difficult to ignore examples of ads for TV adaptations of video games, insurance, presidential candidates, and banks. Who can forget the fast food spoof “Taco Town or the Macy’s children’s winter clothes commercial?
