Commercial Break: Communist Era Estonian Meat Commercial

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July 24th, 2008 9 comments link to (permalink) posted by david

Words… well, they just can’t describe it.

tags: commercials

9 responses so far »

TND : Jul 24, 2008 at 2:38 pm

:O

although in a category of it’s own it definitely beats the classic pentax commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrjqiG-YNfc
austin : Jul 25, 2008 at 4:38 pm

“Kana” is Estonian for chicken, while “hakkliha” is beef. So apparently they had some crazy chickenbeef product there back then!
Martin : Jul 25, 2008 at 6:57 pm

“Hakkliha” means minced meat.
Michael Condouris : Jul 25, 2008 at 8:05 pm

Here’s what I don’t get. In a communist economy, why run commercials at all? If more chickenbeef gets sold, do you get into the politburo or something?
admin : Jul 26, 2008 at 8:06 am

@Michael. This is an interesting point. Obviously the idea of a Communist commercial seems like an oxymoron. I’d be interested to hear from anyone living in the Soviet block, as to whether there were (m)any commercials. For example, there are a few listed as such, on Youtube, from Hungary and East Germany but this was one of the only ones from the former USSR.
dataphage : Jul 27, 2008 at 2:03 am

The fact that it had to be advertised even in a communist state probably says more about the product than anything else. Minced chicken doesn’t light my candle. A lot of chicken sausages are sold here in Oz, I tried one once. Once and only once.
Popop : Jul 31, 2008 at 6:19 am

Hey, there’s a bit more Estonian commercials from that era in Youtube. I guess all of them made by the same guy – Harry Egipt.
The thing is that somebody in Estonia had an idea that there had to be commercials in TV and he managed to sell this idea. But it didn’t have much to do with selling the products because the shops were empty anyway and you bought whatever you got. So there were commercials advertising oranges but the ” ordinary people” mostly hadn’t even seen an orange in real life and you couldn’t buy it anywhere.
So it was mostly just sadistic artform.
808 : Aug 30, 2008 at 6:23 am

Have you ever seen the Hungarian “hurka gyurka” commercial?
From the same area and promoting greasy sausages.
check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV30cyo2zMU
shibata : Apr 1, 2010 at 6:35 pm

This concept of trade is unbalanced and is the face of the 80s.

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Commercial Break: Communist Era Estonian Meat Commercial

July 24th, 2008 9 comments link to (permalink) posted by david