[Description by Uncle Ricky]

They came on ten-inch 78s, and twelve and sixteen inch 33.3 RPM discs, a few even arrived on new-fangled recording tape — the Fabulous Fifties radio spots and jingles for soft drinks, cars, cigarettes, movies, gasoline, snacks, beer, fruit and coffee — nearly everything sold by national advertisers in the prosperous decade that spawned rock ‘n’ roll. Contributor Joe Evelius meticulously transferred each magical memory in this delightful montage from his giant stash of old-time commercials. Joe even matched stylus size to each disk, but he admits that some of the older vinyl was just plain grungy.

Many of these sounds are embedded in baby-boomer media culture. You’ll hear some of the greatest advertising campaigns for Pontiac, Plymouth, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Ford and Chevrolet. In those days, you could watch first-run features in your choice of automobile at drive-in theaters — movies like Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe, The Girl Can’t Help It with Jayne Mansfield, South Pacific, and Pat Boone’s first picture, Bernardine. And, you could “fill ‘er up” with Shell, Amoco or Texaco gasoline for a couple of bucks.

Perhaps a Miller High Life is your preference, if you can munch a bunch of Fritos. Chiquita Banana is here to say that you should eat bananas every single day! Cigarette commercials were among the best produced of the era, and Kool, Chesterfield, Camel and Lucky Strike are all fired up here. By the way, did you know there are 43 beans in every cup of Nescafe?

Coca-Cola and Seven-Up are included, and this montage begins with a reminder from Pepsi that Grandpa may have liked his women on the buxom side, but slender women live longer. (Exactly how a sugary soft drink keeps them slimmer isn’t explained.) It closes with an invitation from Pepsi to be sociable, long before social networking came into common usage.