You know, I've always been a fan of the Jetsons Radioshack commercials that aired in the late nineties. While commercials with classic cartoon stars are a dime a dozen these days, they were still relatively original back then. These ads also featured some great artwork and animation, although unfortunately, it's unknown who worked on them. Here are all the commercials below in 360p glory.
Now, remember two sentences ago when I said the crew behind this was a mystery? Well, that was the case until about two weeks ago. Skull Island Productions, the social media handle of animator Spike Brandt, recently revealed some great storyboard panels for this campaign. You can check all of them out here, but I'd like to show off a few, right next to the finished product. In hindsight, I'm not surprised this was his work. He's done plenty of HB-themed commercials beyond this, including a Yogi Bear mortgage commercial I looked at last year. If that interests you, you can find that here.
Another interesting tidbit Brandt mentioned regarding these was this wonderful "Gift Cel" given to those involved in the campaign. It's a pretty nice cel featuring the entire Jetsons family, sans Rosie.
And, as a tiny bonus, here's another Jetsons Radioshack goodie. This is an Astro alarm clock that was sold at the store, depicting the canine of the future on a treadmill, not unlike the one seen in the show's credits. Nothing too groundbreaking, but a novel piece of Jetsons merchandise for sure.
In addition to Jean Vander Pyl and Janet Waldo reprising their roles as Rosie and Judy, these ads also had Lauri Fraser as Jane and Jeff Bergman as Elroy, with Jeff also doing George and Astro in some ads and Billy West doing them in others. Scott Innes also did Astro and I think Elroy too in one ad.
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