9 of the weirdest TV adverts you might remember from the 80s, 90s and noughties, from Irn-Bru to Wine Gums
How could you forget these?
- They are some of the most memorable, and strangest adverts, ever made
- From a drumming gorilla to a dancing moose, they certainly grabbed our attention
- How many of these classic TV commercials from the 80s, 90s and noughties do you remember?
You’re an uninvited guest in someone’s house and you have just 30 seconds to grab their attention.
If you want to make an impression, it pays to stand out, as advertising bods have long understood.
That’s why the annals of TV are littered with so many weird and wonderful adverts that are so bizarre you’d think they were the product of a fever dream.
Here are just a few of the most unforgettable TV adverts you’ll recognise if you’re old enough, from the 80s to the noughties.
Hoots Mon - Wine Gums, 1993
A stuffed moose clapping its antlers? Check. Dancing bagpipes? Check. Not just one of the strangest adverts of the 90s, but perhaps the catchiest. Once you hear that song, it’s stuck in your head all day.
Hoots Mon, written by Harry Robinson and performed by Lord Rockingham's XI, originally topped the charts in 1958.
It was revived for this Maynards Wine Gums advert, in which a traditional Scottish manor house comes alive to the strains of the song when its kilted owner pops open a bag of the sweets.
The original line ‘there’s a moose loose aboot this hoose’ is changed to ‘there’s juice loose aboot this hoose’, and the catchline tells us to ‘set the juice loose’.
Goosebumps, with Nicholas Lyndhurst - WHSmith, 1997
Nicholas Lyndhurst really got to show off his acting chops in this classic WHSmith Christmas advert, playing all four members of the same family.
The comic actor, best known for playing Rodney in Only Fools and Horses, appears as the mum, dad and their teenage son and daughter.
The voiceover describes how the stationery giant offers the biggest range of Goosebumps products, including, this being the 90s, CD Roms.
When the sulky teenage daughter dismissively inserts the CD, telling her brother ‘this is meant to be scary, is it’, her hair shoots up and she lets out a piercing scream.
I Want to be a Tree - Prudential, 1989
People from all walks of life share their dreams and aspirations in this moving 80s advert for Prudential, the savings, pensions and life insurance provider.
There’s the child dressed as a carrot for his school play, who wants to be a tomato; the sullen twins in matching dresses, who both ‘want to be different’; and the cookie-munching granny scanning the pages of the FT, who wants ‘to be in conglomerates’.
But most of us remember it for the nude hippy standing in a field of wheat, arms outstretched, who tells us ‘I want to be a tree’.
Armadillos - Dime Bar, 1996
The Dime bar (as the Daim was then known on these shores) was launched in the UK in the 90s with a huge advertising blitz.
Harry Enfield was at the peak of his popularity back then, making him the obvious choice to play the country bumpkin invited to try one of the new chocolate bars.
When asked whether he liked the bar, which is ‘smooth on the outside, crunchy on the inside’, he replies, unforgettably: “Nope, I likes armadillos, smooth on the inside, crunchy on the outside.”
Belly’s gonna get ya - Reebok, 2000
A giant beer gut chases a jogger through the streets, shouting menacingly ‘belly’s gonna get ya’ as he does so in this memorable noughties TV commercial.
There’s seemingly no escape as the belly bounces past pedestrians, bursts through a fence and crams into a shopping centre lift.
The belly finally takes to a motorbike and pursues the desperate jogger through a multi-storey car park.
There, the runner eventually manages to shake him off by leaping the railings and clinging to the ledge as the belly crashes through the safety barrier and into the river below.
At this point, the camera zooms in on the jogger’s Reebok trainers, emblazoned with the slogan ‘lose the beer belly’.
Drumming gorilla - Cadbury’s, 2007
There’s something strangely fitting about the Phil Collins track ‘In the Air Tonight’ being chosen for this advert, which shows a gorilla picking up some drumsticks and beating out the pounding rhythm.
There’s no obvious connection to chocolate, though the purple background is the same as the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk wrapper.
The surreal scene is prefaced by the words ‘a glass and a half full production’, and the advert ends with a picture of a large Dairy Milk bar with the slogan ‘a glass and a half full of joy’.
The ad achieved its aim, becoming one of the most talked-about commercials of the noughties.
Goths on holiday - Irn-Bru, 2007
Who says goths don’t have any fun?
This memorable advert features a group of teen goths sitting stone-faced in a bedroom.
One of their mums then appears and sets a tray of mince pies and Irn-Bru before them.
When the drink hits their lips, broad smiles appear across their black-and-white makeup-caked faces.
They dance their way into a car and set off for Blackpool, where they are seen surfing (on coffin-shaped boards, naturally), riding ponies, building a sandcastle, and experiencing the thrill of a rollercoaster.
Paint - Sony Bravia, 2006
Many people assume this extraordinary advert was made using CGI, but it was actually shot on a Glasgow housing estate.
Costing a reported £2 million to make, and helmed by the Oscar-nominated director Jonathan Glazer, it showed the disused tower block and surrounding homes exploding in a symphony of colour as paint explodes into the air like fireworks.
A staggering 70,000 litres of paint were donated in time to the classical strains of Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie, perhaps best known from its use in the opening sequence of A Clockwork Orange.
The advert was filmed at a derelict tower block in Toryglen, Glasgow, and even showed some of the rooms inside being splattered with multi-coloured paint.
The commercial ends with the surreal scene of rainbow coloured paint raining down upon an empty playground.
It was made to promote the new Sony Bravia TV, described in the catchline as having ‘colour like no other’.
Total eclipse - Jaffa Cakes, 1999
One of the most-quoted and mimicked adverts of the 90s shows a teacher torturing her young pupils by scoffing Jaffa Cakes in front of them, supposedly to demonstrate the lunar cycle.
She picks the cakes/biscuits from the pack one by one, getting them to repeat after her before each bite: “Full moon, half moon, total eclipse.”
The ad ends with the catchline ‘deliciously self-centred’.
What do you think is the best, and the strangest advert, ever aired on UK TV?
If you enjoyed our nostalgic look back at old TV commercials, you might like this article recalling some of the most surprising celebrity appearances in adverts from the 70s to the noughties.