The Weirdest 1980s Italian Food Advertisements You Need to Watch

Forget reminiscing about the Trix bunny and the Froot Loops toucan. I watch food adverts from 1980s Italy when I want an (un)healthy dose of industrial food nostalgia.  

Italian television in the 1980s presents a complex landscape. Until the late 1970s, state broadcaster RAI held a monopoly over the airwaves. But then national lawsuits determined RAI’s hegemony prevented free speech. Local channels flourished and soon after media magnate Silvio Berlusconi launched quasi-national Canale 5, which imported American soaps like Dallas and broke them up with ample commercial breaks.

Yet while today’s viewers might groan at the incessant pauses, in the 1980s these respites represented a step toward American-style broadcasting following the dissolution of the advertising format characteristic of RAI’s programming. As Italy developed a television model in the 1950s, both the Communist Party and the Christian Democrats were concerned that replicating an American model would also promote unwanted consumerism. RAI was decidedly partisan and consequently chose to segregate commercials into a half-hour show called Carosello, which aired before evening programming began. During this half-hour companies bought spots that ran up to 155 seconds, but could only name the product in the last 30 seconds. The majority of the commercial told a story about the attributes the advertisers wanted to highlight.

Although this model was obsolete by the 1980s, its impact remained. Advertisers continued to develop stories in multi-part commercials, but these stories highlighted emotions and morals rather than product description. In this sense Italian advertising in the 1980s represents a hybrid. Spots sell modern products like canola oil and ice cream novelties, but do so in a narrative style that .

Here’s a collection of my 7 favorite food commercials from the 1980s. Some are for products that are still around, others are for products that should have never been invented. But they are all hysterical and uniquely Italian.

1. Burghy was Italy's answer to McDonald's in the 1980s. Watch this commercial twice and you too will agree that 'più gusto di Burghy, nessun ti dà!' [No one will give you a more Burghy flavor!]
2. If cats and children and cuddles make you tear up, you'll find this Barilla tearjerker irresistible. Because a good plate of pasta turns all our eyes watery.
3. Does fruit juice make you want to choreograph a dance and dress up in neon? It did for Billy fruit juice in 1985.
4. Mulino Bianco commercials attempt to present a nostalgic yesteryear even today, but this 1986 advertisement for chocolate covered soldini cakes replicates the Carosello format to win over both parents and children.
5. Sofficini, essentially Italy's version of pizza pockets, try to win over kids with this modern version of Pinocchio, presenting two tokens of Italian history to suggest that the country can sell industrial food through their illustious traditional culture.
6. Olio friol was sold as a healthy oil for frying that allowed you to capture all the perfect crispiness of fast food without the unhealthiness. Presumably because the diners were too interested with each other to care about the food on their plates.
7. Fonzies are fun. Even I want to be an American teenager in the 1980s watching this advertisement. Though I can't imagine Italian teenagers made the Happy Days connection.

On reading, pleasure and selling entertainment

Reading al fresco

Summer means travel and this year I enjoyed four weeks of it. And four weeks on the road demands juicy reads. I soared through love triangles and depleted inheritances and dysfunctional families. But now I must atone for devouring novels so entertaining that a slower pace would misrepresent them. I read books irrespective of their cultural capital.

Reading this way should feel liberating. Yet society convinces us that a book’s value is proportional to the amount of effort it takes to finish. Better to push yourself through The Castle than to frolic with The Year of Living Danishly. We should laugh at this. It’s the reading process that’s important. Whereas cinema seduces you with perfectly-pressed pictures, books require you to assimilate another outlook that generates as a hybrid experience between book/reader and author/reader.

Just as some people prefer thrillers to comedies, everyone has a favorite narration-style. For me, The Castle was thought-provoking but not a page turner, while The Year of Living Danishly lured me out of museum galleries and into the toilet where I’d sneak-read a chapter when ohh-ing and ahh-ing at Picasso grew tiresome. Although name-dropping Kafka at a dinner party might exhibit my cultural capital (as could the Picassos I spurned), I’d sooner mention Jutland’s Lego-themed hotel, which I learned about in The Year of Living Danishly. The former seemed the intellectual equivalent of an undressed kale salad, while the latter was indulgent like a Saturday morning croissant. My preferred narrative style is casual, modern and anecdotal.

If I were to focus on just that genre, I’d still suffer from too-many books too-little time syndrome. Avid readers understand this affliction. You realize its severity when you return home from your favorite bookstore and struggle to balance a third layer of books on your deepest shelf. Digital society exacerbates this affliction. Now we can crowdsource recommendations from friends, get personalized selections from Good Reads and download them all with a single click on Amazon. Whereas money, space and time previously constrained the of books we encountered, the rise of e-readers and low-priced e-books renders the first two constraints irrelevant.

We need new parameters to decide what to read. Publishing might bring a book to stores, but it doesn’t keep the book in print. Time sets a story apart.

But time doesn’t signify longevity; it means any book that people have collectively decided to devote time to. Whether that means the weeks it takes to meander through The Goldfinch, the years Potter-heads devoted to waiting for J.K. Rowling’s next installment or the decades War and Peace has sat (unread) on your bookshelf, time determines social value in myriad ways. The greater a book’s power to mobilize communal time, the greater its cultural visibility. It means that the title be name-dropped and understood. Unfortunately, this turns books into weapons of self-presentation in the crusade of conspicuous consumption. We use the covers and quotes, the licensed products and spinoffs, to exhibit our understanding of the story’s social value. When space and money no longer restrict access to books, a story's ability to mobilize time in myriad ways that determines its cultural value.

Mass-commodification touches every book. Oprah includes a translation of Anna Karenina in her reading club. Dante’s Inferno has become a computer game. Baz Luhrman forced us to share an image of The Great Gatsby’s great green light. Although some might argue that classic literature offers an escape from the commercialization of reading, social trends reveal that a story rich in time is apt for commodification.

I’m at an impasse. During August I committed myself to reading only novels that bring me unwarranted pleasure. Will September’s fresh pencil smell encourage a return to Kafka, Calvino and Kant? To books that allow me to feign separation from the industrial publishing machine? Maybe. Or maybe I need a new balance. One that lets me read books that are engaging and light and thoughtful and consoling. Not every book communicates every emotion, but the best mix them into unexpected cocktails that change your perspective on what reading and feeling mean. The ones that have mobilized the most time and money are the ones to which we surrender shelf space. But just like some people prefer gin-based cocktails while others opt for bourbon, different readers seek different consolations and outlooks. These can vary within a reader’s life. Somedays you crave a challenge, other days you long for a chuckle. Library card in my hand, I can’t wait to see what I have time for next. 

A photo journal of dining in Central and Eastern Europe

Sauerkraut soup, potato dumplings
Sauerkraut soup with sauage and potato dumplings

Two weeks of dining in Central and Eastern Europe does weird things to a girl. You start eager to eat all the meat and potato dumplings. You think you have a never ending stomach for beer, good beer that is. And then you hit day four (oh, heck, day three). The curiosity begins. Having grown up in a culture where a standard meal plan calls for as many cuisines as there are days in the week, the variations that exist between central and eastern European countries, fascinating though they may be, fail to satiate the craving for diversity. Here's a photo journal of the typical, strange and delightful foods I encountered during two weeks traveling in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary and Ukraine. Hope you're hungry.

Breakfast
Budapest breakfast and croissant with espresso from Cafe Gerbeaud in Budapest, Hungary
Croissant - Moods Bakery
Multigrain croissant from Moods Bakery in Bratislava, Slovakia
Chimney Cake
Plain chimney cake in Prague, Czech Republic
Chocolate filled chimney cake
Chocolate filled chimney cake in Prague, Czech Republic
Beer
Beers from Kolkovna in Prague, Czech Repbulic
Grapefruit and Becherovka cocktail
Grapefruit and Becherovka cocktail from Kiev, Ukraine

Discovering Vermouth and discovering Spain

Vermouth, Sangria in Madrid

The guidebook said Spaniards drink sangria and fruity red wines. It's true. Or a partial truth, like coke-guzzling Americans and tea-swilling Brits. Come summer, more intriguing tipples fill Spanish glasses. Like tinto de verano, an easy-drinking wine cocktail made with lemon-lime soda and red wine (called vino tinto in Spanish). Or vermouth, drunk straight-up, maybe with a twist of lemon or spear of olives. During my trip to Spain I sipped the latter in small glass and relished its exotic flavor.

You know vermouth but likely as an ingredient, not a drink. Few Americans drink it beyond the splash that goes into their martini or Manhattan. Even in Italy, where red vermouth originated in the 18th century, it’s most frequently tossed into a Negroni or Americano. Spain defines vermouth. On tap or from a bottle, vermouth is the day-drink for when wine is too strong but beer is too dull.

Although ordering vermouth in Spain is straightforward, buying it abroad is baffling. After returning from my trip I went to the grocery store to get a bottle. They had Martini and Lillet and Punt e Mes and Pernod, which I thought was vermouth but is actually pastis. I left with a sparkling water and returned home to research.

Vermouth is a fortified wine with more alcohol than beer and wine, but less than spirits or liqueurs (about 16% ABV). It’s classified as a sweet wine, but no vermouth I’ve had tastes as a cloying as vin santo or cream sherry. Northern Italy dominates vermouth production — just think of Cocchi and Cinzano and Milano da bere — but Spain and France also produce sizeable amounts. While seasoned tasters can discern the difference between Dolin and Noilly Prat — okay, I made that up, anyone could notice the difference between dry and sweet vermouths — the newbie will notice the flavors they share: the fruity sweetness, the herbal bitterness, the slick texture. Each brand’s unique taste comes from the different herbs they use to infuse their wine. These herbs make Italy’s Cocchi tastes like Italy and France’s Lillet tastes like France.

Armed with knowledge, orange peels and ice, I returned to the grocery store to buy a sweet red Spanish vermouth. I left with Portuguese red wine. Despite its popularity within the country, Spanish vermouth remains rare abroad.

Spain produces and drinks more vermouth than their foreign presence suggests. Compared to Italy or France, the Spanish vermouth shelf appears bear: Lacuesta, Yzaguirre and Miró among other. It’s vermut de grifa — tap vermouth — that distinguishes Spain’s vermouth culture. 

Tap vermouth is simple and cheap. It’s slightly bitter but still sweet, as if a bottle of coke had half the sugar and none of the carbonation. When drunk in a skinny glass over ice, preferably with a citrus twist, it tastes of al fresco cocktail hours, kids playing soccer in squares and the relief of resting tired feet. It is simple and elegant and that’s how you feel drinking it. Even within Spain it looks understated compared to goblets of sangria or jugs of tinto. Ordering vermouth means ordering a glass of Spanish summer. 

In lieu of Waitrose, I headed to the bar. But the furrowed brows when I asked for a Cocchi Americano over ice warned me that my Euro affectation was not welcome (not, I admit, a new experience for me). I sought an analogue in Pimm’s and rosé and gin and tonic. The flavors were different, but the ordering was as easy as a sunny Spanish day.

And when I want to taste those Spanish summer? I open my mind and take a sip and find that the taste of vermouth is just as good as I remember. At least, in memory.