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Duncan Hines Cake Mix Commercial (1980)

Duncan Hines Cake Mix Commercial


This movie is part of the collection: A/V Geeks

Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: commercial

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Reviewer: doowopbob - - April 10, 2010
Subject: ....Let's All....
....Have Some Cake & Be-Hinds..(No Chocolate Please..!)...I Be Dunkin' Inta Da Sump Pump..!

Reviewer: Classic_TV_and_Radio_Fan - - November 26, 2008
Subject: Yummy
This commercial is better than an entire seasons worth of The Betty Hutton Show.

Reviewer: lump516 - - July 13, 2008
Subject: A Source of Poisitive Black Images--Commercials--Surprise!
From the 60's on, there were more black actors included in films, television shows, etc., but one of the few mediums in which they got to play pleasant, middle-class people (you know, like the majority of black people in real life)is in television commercials. This commercial itself isn't anything special, but it's a reminder that one of the few fully-integrated media outlets is--commercials . . .

Reviewer: Robin_1990 - - January 17, 2008
Subject: Effective Advertising
Clever and cute commercial, Prehaps unremarkable, But still fun to watch. I noticed it features African Americans, "Black Sitcoms" were very popular back then so this commercial seems natural. Sure makes me hungry for cake!

Reviewer: Wilford B. Wolf - - April 16, 2006
Subject: African Americans in Commercials? Brilliant!
Fairly routine cake mix commerical from 1980. Mother makes Duncan Hines cake, cute kid samples cake before frosted, Father condones son's actions by having some cake to underscore how moist the cake mix is. Similar mini-sitcoms to shill products have been a Madison Ave staple since the 1930s.

What is noteworthy is the inclusion of an African American middle class family in this little tableaux. After the success of Roots in 1977 and the Black themed sitcoms of the early 1970s, advertisers began to realize that they could use a more multiracial mix in commericals and not worry about backlash, as was the case up through the 1960s in some part of the country. These days, such mixture is more common (still mostly in the tokenism when showing groups of people), but at the time, it must have felt validating at some level.