That Applebee’s commercials rely on the theme songs from Cheers and Welcome Back, Kotter to encourage a return to in-person eating tells you something about the chain’s target audience. Cheers signed off twenty-eight years ago; Welcome Back, Kotter, forty-two years ago.
[Let the record show: Elaine and I have been to an Applebee’s just once. We did not laugh; we were not needed; and no one knew our names.]
Monday, May 31, 2021
Some of the old songs, Sam
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lots of advertising for restaurants
page three has an ad for two coney dogs for only 30 cents.
that's good eatin'!
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=q09DtPQ_434C&dat=19630829&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
There was a Dog n Suds not far from us, closed years ago. I had no idea there were other locations.
I’d like to add that the Welcome Back, Kotter theme also seems to be another example of lyric/product confusion. The song welcomes the new teacher back with gentle and self-deprecating irony. His “dreams” were his “ticket out” of the neighborhood and the school tha he once “laughed about.” If we follow the parallel, we’re returning to Applebee’s after failing at some better thing.
Dog n Suds was a happy part of my childhood. I assumed that they were everywhere.
Yes, it’s, as a crossword might say, INAPT. I’ve read that they were running the same commercial last summer, which makes it even more awkwardly inappropriate.
I should’ve realized Dog n Suds was more than one location, as they had their own root beer brand. But I always thought it was something like the labels that orchards stick on the mass-produced jams and jellies they sell.
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