According to my WordPress dashboard, I’ve posted more than two hundred times on this blog, and many–if not most–are about one commercial or another: an ad for shaving cream or razors or for something unrelated (like the dad getting into the Christmas spirit in that Walmart commercial). It’s this commercial, however, that means more to me than any of them.
Why? Because it’s the very first ad that I can remember that made me feel something, although at the time I had no way to describe what that feeling was. All I knew is that I badly wanted to see it again.
The Box the Football Came In
I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw this commercial, but by the time I was nine, I definitely was in someway hooked. I remember because one day when I was home sick from school, my father came home with a gift: a Franklin-brand football with Joe Namath’s signature printed on the side. At that point my poor dad had no idea that he had a gay kid who couldn’t have cared less about sports. I really hope I showed some appreciation and thanked him in a way he might have believed.
And I actually was delighted, but not with the football: I was fascinated by the box it had come in, which had Joe Namath’s handsome face on at least two sides. I remember sitting in bed in my pajamas in the middle of the day and taking a white crayon to Joe Namath’s face to try to make him look like he did in the Noxzema commercial.
The results were disappointing. The paper on the box’s exterior was glossy and the wax of my crayon would not easily leave a mark, and in the end it looked like a child’s crayon scribble and not the fluffy white Noxzema foam I had imagined.
The box is long gone, of course, but I still have the Joe Namath edition Franklin football, which is shriveled and not very football-shaped anymore. It’s likely just a lump of hazardous waste after all these years, but I’m still reluctant to part with it.
So that’s how I remember this ad. I may have seen men shaving before, but this was the first time that I can clearly remember, mainly because of may failed attempts to re-create the commercial.
It was also when I was around this age that I starting having kinda, sorta crushes on men: Lee Majors from The Six Million Dollar Man (coincidentally married to Farah Fawcett around this time), the Professor (Russell Johnson) from Gilligan’s Island, Robert Conrad from The Wild Wild West, David Hedison from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Brian Kelly, aka the dad from Flipper. Heck, I was even attracted to Fred from Scooby-Doo! (But I also liked Daphne, too, so maybe Fred shouldn’t count. Well, because of that and the fact that he’s a cartoon character.)
Maybe I felt a little bit weird about how much I enjoyed looking at these guys, but it wasn’t like I could indulge my interest much besides watching TV. It was still a few years before VHS made recording television shows possible, and I didn’t have money or the opportunity of buying magazines with handsome celebrities in them. My mom did let me join the Six Million Dollar Man fan club, and as a member, I had a signed picture of Steve Austin on my bedroom wall for a while. (I’m pretty sure this was the picture.)
All the self-discovery that would help me make sense of childhood interests and fascinations was years in the future. Further still would be this wonderous age in which we all live when watching television commercials like this one whenever I wanted to would be possible (thanks to websites like YouTube and Retro Junk).
It’s easy to take for granted, but when I stop to think about it, I do feel very lucky.
Another (Earlier?) Version of the Ad That I Don’t Remember
Shaving Face Blog 