Gas Company Commercials From The 60's and Early 70's

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dirtybuck

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 9, 2008
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Location
Springfield, MO
Ah, nostalgia.

Every time I see the ads on POTD about natural gas drying, water heaters or stoves, I can't help but think about the commercials I saw as a kid about these things. They were always shown during the weather portion of the 6 PM local news, and were sponsored by Southern Union Gas Company, which was El Paso's main supplier at that time. However, on the 10 PM news, Reddy Killowatt and the EL Paso Electric Company got in their plug as well.

Some of the gas commercials included:

Older brother looking for younger brother to come and take a bath. Younger brother doesn't want to, for fear there won't be any hot water. Older brother assures him there will be plenty, thanks to new gas water heater installed earlier in the day.

Housewife is praising the benefits of washing her dishes and using natural gas to heat the water. Show her going to beauty parlor and having her hair washed, and then to grocery store. Comes home and starts making family dinner on (what else) gas stove.

Married couple takes a newlywed couple out to a movie. They come back home and make a late night breakfast. Lady of the house asks newlywed wife to watch the bacon while she goes do something. Newlywed wife starts to freak, as she's never cooked with gas before. But everything comes out perfect, and newlywed wife is now sold on gas cooking.

Lady is doing exercises in front of gas dryer, since gas dries clothes so fast, she can find time to do the things she really wants.

Gas light lawn ornament ("A little jar of moonlight all it's own, called Gas Light").

The tag line for these commercials was always the same ("If you want the job done right (gas flame igniting), do it with gas").

Does anyone else recall commercials like these in their area(s) when they were younger? I tried looking on You Tube to see if there might be some on there, but no such luck.
 
I Remember The Billboards

PG&E had them peppered all over the northern 2/3 of the state, but they were pushing electricity instead of gas. 

 

Two stand out:

 

"Don't be a dishwasher, buy one."  That one featured a cartoon image of an unhappy homemaker facing kitchen sink drudgery.

 

And . . .

 

"The Ice Follies of 1963*" -- as in locally based Shipstads & Johnson -- with another hapless homemaker making an unsuccessful attempt not to spill water while defrosting her outmoded refrigerator, and suggesting the purchase of a new frost-free model.

 

Those were the days!

 

 

 

 

 

* <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Give or take a year or two</span>
 
I remember commercials about "its more fun cooking, cooking with Caloric" and radio commercials where "The best chefs cook with gas" which I think are a lot easier to hear than the ones we see all the time now about shale and "it means jobs".  I also don't like the idea of burning natural gas for electricity when it is far more efficient to burn in appliances.  The commercials now are just so serious, not at all encouraging.
 
Fun....

Here is a AO Smith Gas water Heater.
Notice their Dishwasher is a Gas Preway!

 
Gaslights

My Grandparents had a gaslight post in the front and backyard shortly after they built their house in Bloomington Mn in 1957 along with a natural gas grill. The lights were converted to electric and the grill was replaced with an LP gas unit. But cheers to the old days.
 
I suspect some of our UK members will remember Fanny Cradock doing gas adverts.

In Chicago, condo conversions at the tail end of the 70's marketed by Urban Search (local realtors) always seemed to put gaslights out front. Buildings that have them almost always were converted or rehabbed in the late 60's/70's and still have them, even with leaky mantels. After about 1980 the gas company, Peoples Gas, started to crack down on new installations and more than a few buildings had to have them removed.
 
ARKLA Sun Valley were the first Gas central AC units. Friends who had one said it gobbled gas and electricity.

WP bought Servel to get the ice maker.

We had a gas lantern, but after the energy prices started going up, the gas company was billing $20 a month for the thing, so my parents had the line, which came off the pipe before the meter, disconnected.
 
Radio commercial

Back in the late 60's every morning on the way to school we would hear a singing commercial for Fort Hill Natural Gas Authority.  I used to go around singing the commercial.  This commercial had big brass band sound and a very catchy tune.  The words of the song were...

 

"M O R E - people than   E   V   E   R    are cooking with gas!  And heating and cooling and drying, and refrigerating with gas!"

 

Then a man would praise the virtues of natural gas as being clean, efficient, and economical.  Then this man would tell you when you use natural gas you'll be using the  modern way to go to get things done and you too will be singing ...

 

(then the singers would chime in) "when you're heatING and coolING and dryING and cookING with gas!"  Then this man would tell you to contact Fort Hill Natural Gas Authority in Easley, SC today! 

 

I can't believe I still remember that catchy tune.  Lord help it's been nearly 50 years ago.  Thanks for helping me remember a moment from my youth! 
 
When we traveled with daddy during the summer, we would see, in some cities, after the Today Show was over and after Miss Frances Ding Dong School or Romper Bomper Stomper Room, a show called the Blue Flame Kitchen. Older home economists in white uniforms, with caps and hair nets and white tie up shoes (bubbe shoes=grandmother shoes) presented a show and at every step extolled the virtues of gas appliances whether it was when removing something from the gas refrigerator or plopping something down on the Burner With A Brain, these features were pointed out. I do not remember comments about the gas water heater when the faucet was turned on. Not nearly so spirited as Julia Child would be in years to come, but a cooking show for homemakers after they got the family out of the house and maybe the first load of laundry started.
 
Jim, you're quite welcome. There's nothing like a good nostalgia and reminisce session about "the good old days" from time to time.

Brent, the AO water heater commercial looks vaguely familiar.

Another commercial I remember dealt with smokeless gas broiling over electric broiling. There was a split screen side-by side comparison with one part of the voice over stating "with electric broiling, smoke pours out into the kitchen" (and that it did).

Southern Union also had a small "showroom" which displayed water heaters, stoves and furnaces in their payment centers (I believe there were two of them) that you could buy "for a small monthly fee" and have added to your gas bill.
 
I remember Jinx Falkenburg appearing once or twice as a member of the celebrity guest panel on quiz shows like "What's My Line" back in the 60's.
 
My link said she became spokesperson for American Gas Assn. in 1960. I don't know exactly how I knew her, but as soon as the guy said Jinx, her last name was there and that is mighty damn unusual these days.
 
Gas companies shot themselves in the foot with the $20/month charge for gaslight. The same electric light with 40W bulb costs less than 1/10th that. Then there was the constant replacement of the mantel. No wonder none remain today.

The Servel crescent icemaker was brilliant. I have a mid-80s Hotpoint with one in it in this rental. At the ~1956 Texas State Fair, the Servel booth handed out animated flipbooks of the icemaker working and I had one. Bet that's worth something today but no idea where it ended up.
 
Riverside, IL (a suburb of Chicago) still lights the village streets with authentic gas lighting! On a snowy night it look just beautiful!

We have a gas light out in front of our house. We had it put there because most of the homes where I grew up had gas lights in front of them. Actually ours is there for security reasons. Our front door is in a recessed alcove and at night it's pitch black in there. If the electric light over the door isn't on you can't even see the doorlocks. So we put in a gas electric light. It lights up the doorway like daylight.

Recently we had to have the gas line leading to it replaced. Our light was out for a month. Our neighbors commented to us how they miss it. We were surprised by that. We get quite a few power failures here and no matter what the status of the power is, our light is always on.

I calculate that it costs about $15-$18 per month to operate and the mantles last over a year, provided that nobody runs into the post with a lawnmower or car. All I ever have to do with it is every 90 days take the glass panes out and wash them with some Dawn to keep the light sparkling clear. A two pack of mantles is $8 at the gas light store.

When we bought ours we paid for it through our gas bill. The thing was about $400. installed and we could pay it on our gas bill with a 0% interest. But I was recently told our gas company stopped this practice several years ago.

Some people down the street have two of those large lanterns on their garage (one on each side) that doesn't use mantles, it's just a flickering flame. But those were turned off last summer and haven't been on since. I wonder if it's a maintenance issue or a cost of operation issue?
 
Here's an old natural gas ad from Ireland in the 80s :)

This is the only gas company commercial I remember as a kid!

 
Natural Gas

You guys are so lucky to have that. Here in Maine, it has only been the last few years that its been available and only in the bigger cities. Its 9 miles to the closest pipeline from me, so I will probably be on propane for life. As a kid, we had "City Gas" piped to the homes that was very unreliable. Turning the stove on at dinner time meant a tiny flame on the burner because all the users were doing the same thing. Maine Utility Gas Company had 3 gas plants in the state and basically bought many radio commercials an hour that were the same over and over ending every time with "Gas is best by every test." Now that company is paying millions of dollars in cleanup for the toxic coal tar thay dumped into the waterways.
 
We'd "town gas" well into the early 1980s here in Ireland as natural gas was only found off the south coast in the late 1970s. Before that, there was no supply at all.

There were a lot of issues with clean-up of some of those sites in Ireland and Britian. They would have operated since the Victorian era. The first gas lights were installed in this part of the world in 1792!!
 
I miss the American Gas Association

ads from the late 1960s to early 70s. They were either stylish or funny. Funny one featured a carnival dunking tank, and a harvest pair of Speed Queens, dryer gas. I remember them most for sponsoring National Geographic/Undersea World of Jaques Cousteau. I've tried to find them on YouTube, but without luck.

I DO like the British Gas ones, not the newer ones pitching call out boiler service and "stuff" like that but the "Cookability...that's the beauty of Gas" ones, and the one where Madeleine Bell is singing about "simmering the pot....water nice and hot...." I believe, but am not certain that particular one is "Wonderfuel Gas."

There is a very funny one with Joan Collins and (I presume--) the White Knight gas dryer as well......she demands that it be gold plated immediately since it's so inexpensive to run.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
E.M. Forster's story The Celestial Omnibus mentions flying over the gas works near a town; probably a toxic cleanup site now.

Our post lantern was often the only light on nights when an ice storm had knocked out power. Shining in through the large windows, it made the living and dining rooms light enough to walk through, but not light enough for reading. During one such storm, a mocking bird perched on the brass eagle finial on top of the lantern for a couple of days to enjoy the heat since all of the tree branches were coated in ice. We used to buy the Coleman lantern mantles for ours in the hardware or sporting goods stores. After the lanterns became so expensive to use, a company came on the scene offering electrification of the lanterns with bulbs that looked like the mantles.
 
I enjoy reading the comments about the gas lights. And yes, whirlcool, they do look cool on a snowy night, especially if it's during the holiday season and they're decorated.

To the best of my knowledge, there were only two families who had these in the neighborhood where we lived for 10 years before we moved. The family right next door to us, the McCuaigs, and another family up the street (and I kid you not, this was their last name), the Butts. I seem to remember a few years later when we had a visit with the McCuaigs, they had also converted to electric.

When we packed up in '72 and moved to a developing suburb outside of El Paso, my dad was very anxious to get a light for the driveway/parking area of our new house. An employee from Southern Union came out and surveyed the area Unfortunately, he delivered bad news. There wasn't a gas line in that area, and to add one would be some outrageous amount. Needless to say dad nixed that idea rather fast, although he did talk about having an electric one installed...but it never happened.
 

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