The Hess Truck

[dr_whom]

Every year around this time I start seeing commercials for the Hess truck. These are commercials for a toy truck, which itself is an advertisement for a gas station, that feature a children's choir singing a parody of the 1963 pop song "My Boyfriend's Back". I'm not sure why exactly I find this combination of elements so unutterably bizarre, but I can't deny that I do. The commercials just mystify me for some reason. I wonder if this is due in part to the fact that I'd never heard of the Hess truck before I was let's say 25 or so, but I'm really not sure.

In unrelated news, it must be kind of embarrassing for Alex Trebek to have said "I just got a look at the Final Jeopardy! clue, and I bet someone will be going home with a big payday tonight" and then have no one get the right answer.

Comments

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Maybe another part of it is that the target audience isn't clear? One assumes, given that one is looking at a choir of children and a toy truck, that the target audience here is children; but if that's the case, it seems unlikely that many members of the target audience are going to recognise the song in the parody, so it's a weird choice; so maybe it's for the parents; but that would be us, and it's actually a song from our parents' generation, although at least we're likely to recognise it...?

[dr_whom]

Hmm, good point! The use of a song that's 40 years older than the children singing it does seem really unmotivated for just the reason you discuss.

The Hess Truck itself was first released in 1964, I gather, so presumably the use of a song is either a relic from a much older version of the ad campaign or a salute to the year of the truck's origin or both; but it's not like they haven't changed other things about the ad over the years.

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Third possibility: it just sort of never occurred to them to change the song? By this point, it's implausible, but not completely impossible, that some of the people in charge of each year's ad have no association with the song other than Hess Trucks.

but it's not like they haven't changed other things about the ad over the years.

Or, for that matter, the truck.

[dr_whom]

True!

[devjoe.livejournal.com]

I was even older when I first heard the Hess truck commercials, but only because that was when I came to New England. The first few years I wondered what the heck a Hess truck was, why that particular name should be printed on a special truck sold as a Christmas toy - because there wasn't a Hess station near where I lived, or where I worked, and I just never encountered one. And they didn't really have any other advertisements that I saw.

[dr_whom]

New England? I never heard (of) the Hess truck commercials before I moved out of New England.

I think you've pinpointed two other mystifying aspects of these commercials: (1) that the Hess truck is only sold (or only advertised?) around Christmas, despite having nothing per se to do with Christmas other than being a toy like any other toy that is sold year-round; and (2) that Hess doesn't seem to do any other TV ad campaigns than this once-a-year promotion for their toy truck; they don't advertise, say, being a gas station.