Just for fun, here are two old Australian TV commercials in which the Metro/Taiyo Jet Hopper R/C buggy is shown as one of the hot toys for Christmas. The ads are for the Australian department store Myer and the Australian K-Mart supermarket chain, and both date from Christmas 1986.
It’s funny to look at how much TV commercials have changed. Back in the 1980s, department store commercials were often about mood and ambience – shopping was depicted as an elegant, relaxing, even luxurious experience – bathed in warm light and the love of family. Oh yes.
Silly it may have been, it’s not hard to feel a pang of nostalgia for the images that were presented. And in a lot of ways, our own memories of those days are probably just as rose-tinted and sentimental, as those glossy commercials seem to us now.
I recently came across two old Australian TV commercials from Christmas 1986 – one for the Myer department store, and another for K-Mart, in which two of the hottest toys that year were the legendary Teddy Ruxpin talking teddy bear and the Jet Hopper R/C buggy. Both make brief appearances, which would have been more than enough to get my attention as a youngster…
In the Myer ad, a woman holds Teddy up to show her partner…
While in the background, he has discovered the Jet Hopper…
(See what they did there?)
In the K-Mart commercial, a whole shelf filled with Teddy Ruxpins can be seen in the background at one point…
And in the next scene, it’s a whole shelf filled with Jet Hoppers.
Either shelf-load would be worth a bomb today.
View both clips here (note – there’s a random Shell petrol commercial in between them)…
And while I’m at it, here’s a newspaper ad by department store Grace Bros (the NSW sister store to Myer) from 1987, featuring the Metro/Taiyo Jet Hopper, Mini Hopper, Bullet 4WD, Racin Hoppers and Super Turbo Train…
Christmas dreams indeed.
Oh mate…I can clearly, clearly remember that phrase “The modern hypermarket way” and it makes me cringe incredibly because the Aspley Hypermarket was the happening shopping centre on the northside at the time, so they had to come up with something to deter people! Ooh it gives me the irrits!!! Interestingly enough both the Hyperhole and Super K were the same distance from my house in Chermside West.
Oh, and I STILL remember going to Super K’s midnight shopping, where you could shop overnight before Christmas! And most importantly, one year I got my Nikko RC truck then. I was hoping it would be on this site (which is how I found it!) but isn’t, which is OK. Great site!
Thanks for that Braithe! Midnight shopping back then would have been a pretty radical new idea, but I think I remember when it started too. Kind of exciting when you’re a kid!
Let me know the name of your Nikko, you never know… I may have it (or something very similar) for a future article 🙂