Classic YouTube: 1970 Burger Chef Commercial

Every Saturday morning at 11am, this post looks at a Classic YouTube video. Enjoy!

There has been some debate on the quality of Mad Men this season. A vocal minority has complained that things have moved too slowly and/or that we’re repeating the same stories over and over again. This was pretty much washed away with the episode that aired last Sunday.

Pressed against the agency’s need to create a commercial for Burger Chef – we don’t care about spoiler alerts here – we see how Peggy, Don and Pete have evolved through the series. When the episode ends with them at a Burger Chef, talking about what families are and what they have become through the 1960’s, we see that those three are their family. The ones that have been with them through the ups and downs, the divorces, the addictions, the breakups, and the bad decisions – everything.

It was a beautiful piece of television and, as Alan Sepinwall so aptly pointed out, that scene and the previous scene with Peggy and Don slow-dancing to Sinatra’s My Way would have made for acceptable series enders. Instead, we get another episode next week to end this half-season before it wraps up for good next year. I will miss Mad Men.

But what did a Burger Chef commercial actually look like in 1970? Yep, it’s the total cheese that Peggy railed against.

Watch this one-minute of schlock and imagine McDonald’s or Burger King rolling this out during, say, the NFC Championship Game. 

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