Taking a Journey in the YouTube Time Machine

Screenshot of a vintage Netflix TV commercial with a man sitting in an armchair beside a mailbox and the text at the top: Netflix.com. $22 a month. Not late fees.

Fellow, dinosaurs, if you want to feel old I saw a screenshot making the rounds this week of a question posed by a young person watching old movies and TV shows who wondered if people really used to commit phone numbers to memory back in the pre-cell-phone era. The sad thing is there are still a few now useless numbers that I can perfectly recall.

Anyway, speaking of old shows, Ron and I have been watching episodes of a reality show that first aired more than 20 years ago. Ron remembered enjoying the show Wing Nuts when it first aired back in 2004. It follows the exploits of the employees/owners of a company called MotoArt that makes furniture and such out of old airplane parts. We went looking to see if the show was on any of the streaming services but had no luck.

Then we hit up YouTube, and found that MotoArt had their own YouTube channel, and they had uploaded the episodes of their old Discovery Channel reality show. It looks like maybe they didn’t have access to the show’s master recordings for the first two episodes because those uploads were clearly recorded off of a television with the original commercials included.

The show is entertaining, but the first two episodes on YouTube are extra special with the commercials in them. It really feels like traveling back in time, a time when free local calls and long distance access in a hotel room were very desirable features, a time when going over one’s minutes was a pressing issue on many people’s minds. We laughed when we saw the ad for an exciting new company called Netflix that allowed you to rent movies on DVD by mail without having to leave the comfort of your own home for just $22 a month with no late fees.

Perhaps my favorite commercial that aired during the first two episodes of Wing Nuts, though, was an ad for Auto Zone. The auto parts store commercial has this jingle in it:

If you want it

And you need it

Just ask us

And we’ll get it

Yes, this is really the jingle. No, it does not rhyme in any way shape or form. But at least it’s a fun and catchy song, oops, no it’s not that either. I guess it is more or less factual, which let’s face it is almost refreshing when it comes to jingles. I mean there is a current Cat Chow jingle that is maddeningly annoying. First of all nearly all the words are “chow” and it also contains the weirdly phrased and not at all true line, “Everybody’s wow about the chow.” So compared to that current doozy, that vintage Auto Zone commercial is a breath of fresh air.

If you’re finding the pace of modern life just a little bit too exhausting or you just can’t stand hearing that Cat Chow song one more time, I recommend taking your own journey in the YouTube time machine.

— Alissa