Friends don’t let friends trip alone.  The inexplicable terror of the otherness of time, to borrow the cocktails-at-seven phrase from Freud, has overwhelmed this television ad in many ways.  Forty-odd years later it seems like an odd relic of some civilization of indeterminable musical taste and choice in travel.  Most haunting of all might be the realization that it was our civilization.

The color has faded from time; most color film shot between the 1960s and 1980s didn’t have the chemical additions to hold the complementary red and blue tints for tungsten and daylight film.  I don’t even know how to address the sound.  All I can imagine is that it was an intentional, cartoon voice meant to …. I have no idea.

This was produced in 1968/1969 when advertising firms had begun to experiment with subliminal and unconscious advertising, and perhaps they felt that running children in various states of ecstasy could reflect the joy of the INTER-nation-AL HOUSE of PAN-cakes, as the helium-induced voice emphasizes.

It’s standard ad-fare once we get inside.  Mom is attractive and Dad is happy with the prices while the kids salivate over their late-afternoon breakfast menu.  The familiar coffee pots are there.

This is a cultural cadaver, but a fruitful one to pick over.  Let’s examine IHOP for a moment through the years.

1983

In just ten years the entire dynamic of IHOP has changed.  No more running through the fields with the mysterious balloons, no more jingles.  What has taken its place?  The Rooty-Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity.  A catchy item, an idea on the menu that stands in place for the entire experience.  Also, notice the hypnotic power of the continuing zoom-in of the plates.  Remind you of anything?

Correct!  The hypnotic spiral; we’re being hypnotized by our breakfast.  But most importantly, we’ve swapped an obviously idealized experience for an everyday collective experience.  Not only is everyone already familiar with the lure of the Rooty Tooty, but they’ve all put effort (obviously after much private discomfort) into preparing a solution to their embarrassment.

1989

Now we have been taken out of the IHOP and into a neutral area with only two signifiers:  the (gorgeous) IHOP waitress and the Rooty-Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity.  We are still exploring the conceit of people being embarrassed to order the Rooty-Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity, but the experience has been broadened to a comment on national desire.  Because we are not inside a restaurant (or any defined space), we are in a proverbial dreamworld — a collective unconscious mind.  ”They love the breakfast,” the waitress says, “they just hate the name.”  We the viewers are now members of an undefined ‘they’.  We have breakfast everyday and love the breakfast at IHOP.  It is silly yet subtle.

The spiraling hypnotics of the food still remain, but other subliminal touches have been added too: notice how many times the waitress (she really is beautiful, and not in the ‘let’s put girls in bikinis in this!’ commercial way¹) repeats the word “breakfast”.

Present Day

We have reached the age of immediate gratification, of food pornography.  ”Come hungry, leave happy.”  Nothing could be put simpler.  For a restaurant, this is the bare minimum that attempts to communicate a near categorical imperative.  (Hospitals should be so wise:  ”Come sick, leave happy.”²)

We’re a long way from the balloons in the field because it would be such a hassle to get up and drive there.  There’s something inexplicably terrifying about having to actually wander out there and wait in line.  The collective unconscious has sat on the couch and is quite happy there.

And ordering in sounds so good.

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¹I can’t believe I have a crush on an IHOP waitress from 1989.  I would have been three years old.
²Note the language!  You’re not leaving well, you’re leaving happy.  You could still be sick and dying, but if you’re happy…