Before I give a few examples, here’s a summary of what you get for $29.99 You get whole episodes of Kukla, Fran and Ollie; Lassie; Ding Dong School; Time for Beany, The Paul Winchell Show and more, including my own personal favorite memory: Winky Dink and You. Not only do you get whole episodes, but each disc is set-up as a typical Saturday morning programming block. You will be immersed in the closest thing to a time machine real life offers—if you can call Saturday morning TV from the 50’s real life.
Here are a couple of highlights:

1. In an episode of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Kukla (the clown, I suppose—and I was about to say “the puppet with the red nose”—but of course, these are all in black and white) is slowly reading a copy of “Life Magazine.” Now what I mean by this is not that he was reading it out loud, singing, making jokes, doing flashbacks and all the other things TV characters do today (if you can even imagine them reading a magazine on a Saturday morning show.) No, Kukla was sitting there silently staring at the page, every once in awhile turning to the next one. The gag, if any, was that “Life” was a big magazine and Kukla was a very small clown so turning the page was somewhat awkward. That’s it. For a long time. Longer than either of my kids were ever expected to sit still when they were young.

Implication for marketers: While boomers have learned to multi-task and take in life in at the speed of sound bits and clips, boomers also have a different sense of pacing built into their DNA than do their children and grandchildren, for whom every moment is packed with multiple layers of input. Don’t be afraid to linger lovingly on a single image—a butterfly sucking nectar, a tree blowing in the breeze on a hillside, on occasion. Their subconscious minds will thank you for it.

Then Fran (Allison, the actress) and Ollie (the alligator?) come on-screen and have an intelligent, no put that in caps, INTELLIGENT discussion with Kukla about some government census that everyone in the US was supposed to take, categorizing people according to cultural tastes (i.e. which type of music they listen to) rather than age, race or religion. They expressed their mixed feelings and had a conversation that was vaguely reminiscent of one of the higher-toned exchanges in an Obama/Clinton debate.

Implication for marketers: Boomers are issues-oriented. What’s more, apparently the urge to question authority came way before the Kennedy assassination and Watergate, but had even been built into the fabric of their iconic TV show.

2. In my favorite show, the kindly host instructs his young viewers to get their Winky Dink kits out, taking the camera “into a viewer’s home” to demonstrate how to overlay the plastic sheet the kit contains on your television screen. (To the young eye, it looked as though the host in the studio and young girl demonstrating the procedure at home were conversing with one another, as if the television screen were naturally a means of two-way communication.) You take out your magic crayons and erasers, and then you’re good to go. Go where? Into an experiential interaction with none other than Winky Dink him(?) self. While Winky Dink’s friends show (drawn) photos from their family album full face on the TV, it is up to the viewer to enhance –per step by step instructions--whatever’s up on the screen. So, for instance, an Uncle has no nose. The viewer adds it in. Another relative is missing her pearls, and so the necklace is drawn on. Sometimes, what has been drawn has been left on the screen to enhance the next subject that arises (“a build”), other times, the participant is instructed to erase what he/she has just drawn. What was most interesting to me about this segment was, after years of embellishment in this viewer/participant’s imagination, how unbelievably primitive the character Winky Dink actually was. Winky is little more than the kind of one-dimensional, static scribble mascot you might get on a low-brow direct mail piece selling carpet installation. But in my own memory, he was not only fully realized, but compelling. (I should also mention that while I knew Howdy Doody was a puppet, I never noticed until this most recent viewing that Howdy’s mouth clicks open and shut non-stop, whether words are coming out or not.) I took no greater joy than to draw a bridge for Winky to cross (for example), and one of my most vivid childhood memories was misplacing my magic screen, drawing the bridge on the TV screen, itself, more afraid of letting Winky down than of my mother’s ire .

Implications for Marketers: While Gens X and Y think they invented “interactive marketing”, Winky Dink and You clearly laid the foundation for the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and a whole generation of boomers who embraced the participatory nature of computer technology. Not only can the roots of interactive computer marketing be traced to Winky Dink, but so can the success of the American Idol phenomenon, blurring the lines between observer and participant—a line that boomers have been straddling happily since their earliest memories.

Hurry kids, and order yours today from www.ShoutFactory.com.