Jingles all the way
Six classic commercials from the 1970s and ’80s
It just wouldn’t feel like proper Christmastime without a catchy holiday-inspired commercial jingle rattling around inside our heads.
Every year, come early November, the local airwaves explode with commercials featuring Yule-flavoured seasonal syrup, packed with catchy hooks and heartstring-tugging lyrics.
Although today’s spots tend to be overtly cynical and committee-driven, the Christmas commercial jingles of the 1970s and ’80s were much more innocent and wholesome, as sugary as eggnog and as cozy as your favourite ugly Christmas sweater.
Here are six classic Toronto Christmas commercial jingles from Santa’s vault. Canada Dry “Here’s to the Best at Christmas”
Written and performed by Terry Bush, a local jingle visionary (his earwormy hit roster includes everything from “I Adore My 64” for Commodore 64 to “I Wanna Go to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo” for the Metro Zoo) who is probably most famous for his maudlin ode to Hoboism, the theme song for TV’s The Littlest Hobo: “Maybe Tomorrow.”
“Here’s to the Best at Christmas” perfectly captures the Christmas spirit and still casts a warm nostalgic glow more than three decades after it first aired. The Eaton Centre “Christmas in the City (Starts at the Centre)”
Bush was also hired to compose a theme song for the Eaton Centre for its opening in1977 and so he came up with “Life in the City (Starts at the Centre),” a folky elegy to the joys of disco-era consumerism.
The theme was reworked and remixed heavily into the 1980s, but never as joyfully as its annual Christmas appearance in the form of “Christmas in the City (Starts at the Centre).” The spot featured Santa playing hide and seek with a young child who had apparently never seen The Silent Partner (a 1978 crime film featuring Christopher Plummer as a department store Santa who robs a bank in the Eaton Centre). Woolco “Taking Care of Christmas”
First founded in Ohio in the ’60s, discount retailer Woolco folded in the U.S. in the early ’80s but remained active in Canada until the mid-1990s, when their outlets were sold to Walmart. Woolco’s low-key, hushed Christmas spots always promised that it was “Taking Care of Christmas,” which indeed it was, as many ’80s kids will remember getting their cherished Star Wars, HeMan and Cabbage Patch Christmas loot from there (no doubt helped by parent-approved pricing). Radio Shack “Just Can’t Wait!”
Long before big-box stores crowded the market with disposable, cheap-as-chips tech, Radio Shack was the definitive destination for boffin-friendly gear. The Shack’s plush animal AM/FM radios were standard kiddie Christmas fare for many years, and their simple pumpup jingle — “Just Can’t Wait for a Christmas Pack from Radio Shack!” — said it all really. Simpsons “Here Comes the Simpsons Spirit!”
Besides the epic Christmas window displays at their downtown storefront on Yonge St., and the fact that legendary local kid show Today’s Special was set in said location, long dead retailer Simpsons once gifted viewers with an equally amazing jingle in the form of “Here Comes the Simpsons Spirit!” Used throughout the 1980s, it always culminated in a holiday version equal parts uplifting and awkward. The best remembered version was for tacky sweaters and featured a gang of super happy dancers making merry on the roof of the department store. Canadian Tire “Give Like Santa, Save Like Scrooge”
Canadian Tire’s frankly genius Christmas campaign, which ran un- interrupted for over two decades (1982-2003), spotlighted the miserly Scrooge (played by the late great stage actor John Davies), who was satisfied that the Tire’s low prices ensured he could save money while still counterintuitively being able to give out presents. In the early spots he crossed words with Santa, while latterly they focused on Scrooge alone. Interestingly, for the Quebec market the French-language versions featured Santa’s stingy elflike accountant known as Gratteux (played by Richard Lalancette) instead of Scrooge.