12/5/05: Santa Claus & Mattel Electronics! Look, any commercial that stars Santa Claus in a football helmet talking about handheld electronic games and single-serving glass bottles of Pepsi is worth a Christmas parade float tribute, but I'm trying to look beyond the obvious and tell you a little more about the ad. It's from the early `80s, but when I say the early `80s, I mean the very early `80s, and I mention this for a reason: Christmas commercials from the very early `80s universally used the same guy in the role of Santa Claus, something I write fully knowing that it can't be true, but I've nothing to disprove it. Nobody was getting fancy with their Santas back then -- there were no jive Santas, no hard rock Santas, no robot Santas. There was only one kind of Santa, and maybe it's the grainy residue mucking up the old footage, but I'd bet the manhood that one single actor managed to gain exclusivity rights to the role. Santa was charged with explaining a pretty complicated promotion -- something to do with saving money and buying Pepsi and getting coupons and buying handheld Mattel electronic games and ho ho ho and I just have absolutely no idea. It's hard to pay attention to Santa Claus when he's wearing a football helmet; the ad has proved at least that much. If you can train your eyes to self-clean and digest really damaged video footage, you'll notice a nice spread of classic electronic games on Santa's display table, which very oddly isn't drenched in a tablecloth full of sewn-in poinsettias. Game Boy and its many competing distant cousins have all but eliminated the single-game handheld market, or I might be wrong, in which case I expect you to e-mail me and be really mean about it. For a time, the single-game handhelds were a terrific Christmas present. Not "the" present, mind you -- not the "big one." As stocking stuffers, there was no woman finer. My favorite got-for-Christmas handheld was this old Donkey Kong 3 title (which wasn't actually called that, but you shot bug spray up his ass, so that's all I know it as), which had the standard calculator-esque screen and a pair of very odd circular controllers attached via retractable wires. I guess that means it had two-player capabilities, though I don't remember ever playing against one of my friends. Because I did not have any. Click here to download this commercial! (.WMV, 5 MB) ....close this window!