The Flintstones are selling beer? And smokes? And car insurance??

Ah, The Flintstones.  The modern Stone Age family, the retelling of Honeymooners episodes in the Cro-Magnon era.  At one point in time, The Flintstones was the longest-running prime time animated series, lasting a whopping six seasons.  Of course, that would leave it behind The Simpsons and Family Guy and King of the Hill today.  But still, it has its fans who love the antics of Fred and Barney, Wilma and Betty, Pebbles and Bamm Bamm.

One of my readers / Facebook friends, Charles Bailey, posted this video clip on his Facebook page.  And I thought it was so odd and unique … I not only decided to use it on this blog post, but also to find other examples of the same.  It was an episode of The Flintstones that was produced in 1967, after the original series went off the air.  This episode, commissioned by Anheuser-Busch, show Fred and Barney extolling the virtues of Busch Beer.  I kid you not.

http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=8310204,t=1,mt=video

So I thought to myself, “I know the Flintstones have shilled for other products in the past – yeah, Flintstones Chewables vitamins and Fruity Pebbles cereals, I knew those…”  but a quick tour around the YouTube neighborhood found that Fred and Barney had no problem as spokespeople for other products.

Including Winston cigarettes.  Here’s a clip featuring Fred and Barney puffing away.  In fact, that night’s episode of The Flintstones was “sponsored by Winston.”

So it was certainly natural that they would eventually pitch cancer awareness via the American Cancer Society.

Long before the era of Flintstones Chewables… Fred and Wilma were shilling for One-A-Day and Alka-Seltzer.  No plop plop fizz fizz here… apparently One-A-Day can improve your bowling score.

I swear, Fred and Wilma fed Pebbles so many glasses of Welch’s Grape Juice, I’m surprised the poor kid didn’t turn into the Stone Age equivalent of Violet Beauregarde.

Of course, if you’re going to offer Welch’s Grape Juice, you may as well offer grape jelly and grape jam.

While I appreciate the fact that Fred is doing this public service announcement for the Shriners Hospitals, I can’t help but wonder if his Water Buffalo lodge buddies are going to be thrilled with him associating with another fraternal organization.

And long before the cavemen were part of GEICO advertising… GEICO hired another set of cavemen for a commercial.

That is, of course, when they weren’t doing commercials for a British car insurance company.

And while they’re in England, they gotta have breakfast… and I’m not talking Fruity Pebbles, either.

And finally, one of my favorite recent Flintstones commercials, where Fred and Barney promote Midas brake centers. Now think about this for a moment. What type of brakes would Fred have on his car? Yep… THOSE brakes.

http://adland.tv/files/jwplayermodule/player/player.swf

So thanks for joining me on this trip down Memory Lane… cause when you’re … with the Flintstones … you’ll have a yabba dabba doo time… a dabba doo time… you’ll have a gay old time!!