Ray Bradbury's futuristic prune commercial

Inuvikphil sez, "'In the future, man will travel in pneumatic tubes Also, apparently, eat prunes!' So nice to see authors in commercials. Ray Bradbury comes across as really personable here." Ray Bradbury Prunes Commercial (Thanks, Inuvikphil!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Jim Dandy

#24, well, we did have Steven Hawking hawking U.S. Robotics modems.
Takuan

so if he were selling bird phlegm DNA samples for falconers he’d be Hawking hawking hawking hawkings.
Neener

Sounds like Don Pardo????

[SPUTTER]

that sounds EXACTLY like Stan Freberg!!!

Actually it sounds NOTHING like Pardo, because Pardo has a New England Accent and Freberg has a Southern California accent.

Do you mean that they both sound like they are mocking 1940s radio announcers? In that case, yes, they are both doing that, but I’m old enough to remember when Gary Owens was the premiere post-modern mocker of AM Radio.

This reminds me of a weird geeky guy at work who had never heard Tom Lehrer. In my generation, as young kids, the kids whose parents had one Tom Lehrer record would seek out the kid whose parents had a different one. How does someone get to be 25, be of the personality to like both Freberg and Lehrer, but not know about them?

Dare I say it’s by playing videogames instead of learning about American culture via TV and movies. It’s sad for someone my age, but I suppose the people into videogames aren’t sad about it at all.
historyman68

Takuan. Awesome.
simplewonder

#12, my thoughts exactly!
Anonymous

A letter to SunKist regarding their individually wrapped prune idea…

Are you out of your minds!?!

Ok, I admit I’m trying to charm you out of individually wrapping prunes.
But; are you out of your minds. Do you know every ounce of plastic ever
produced is still sharing our planet with us?

I like your prunes. I eat them all the time but I won’t continue to buy
the product of a company acting this irresponsibly. INDIVIDUALLY
WRAPPING PRUNES! OMG! I can probably find another brand I like just as
well. I don’t know, I can’t remember ever eating anyone else’s. But I’m
going to try some now.

Why individually wrap prunes? So I can carry them around in my pocket?
Really not necessary and I don’t know anyone that will do that. The few
(hopefully) who do will peel this artifical skin from the prune then
look around for a garbage can (or to see if anyone is watching) and then
if the can isn’t within 2 feet (and if no one is looking) they’ll throw
it on the ground and we’ll have little Prune Prophylatics laying around
everywhere. If SunSweet is lucky right? They certainly won’t carry the
sticky things with them any distance.

What a contradiction!!! Such a natural product convoluted to help
pollute the planet. Do you live on this planet too?

Here’s how you turn this thing around before it’s too late. Recognize in
commericals that you came to your senses and to help save the planet you
will NOT be individually wrapping prunes. INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPING PRUNES!
OMG! I bet it will have a bigger POSITIVE response from people than the
positive response you got from people learning they con now carry prunes
around in their pockets.

I’m not a real tree hugger or anything. This is just caught my attention
as being such a bad idea that I had to write.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I’m looking forward to the commercial.
Prune Prophylactics; I think it’ll catch on.
agraham999

Along with my jetpack…where’s my prune of the future Bradbury? Huh!!!

They promise you future prunes…but do they deliver?

I’m sticking with future plums and electric cars for now.
chrisd

Ah this is great! And as has been pointed out- the exciting part is Stan Freberg; (and also love the Tom Lehrer mentions). Here is a Freberg interview…
http://www.cosmik.com/aa-october99/stan_freberg.html

He did a wonderful airline promotion- for people afraid of flying, they painted trains on the side of the planes and as they took off, there was the sound of locomotives puffing along over the intercom.

Well- in a different vein, we now have Jon Stewart- very wonderful in the “news” realm….
Bodhipaksa

Makes me want to see Isaac Asimov advertising baked beans and Arthur C. Clark touting cigars. And maybe Heinlein doing toothpaste.
Drang

I’ve never thought Freberg was funny when doing comedy bits, but always funny in his commercials. Lower bar, I suppose.
vespabelle

This is good timing, the Italian plums are nearly ripe in Oregon. Pretty soon, we’ll go pick 40 lbs, dry them in our food dehydrator, and then we’ll have delicious sweet snacks again! (we’re nearly out!)
Chocolatey Shatner

I’d rather have Glagnar’s Human Rinds. They’re a buncha muncha cruncha humans! I could eat them with my Thompson’s Teeth. They’re the only teeth strong enough to eat other teeth!
Vanwall

The Zardoz of Prunes – out there in a tubular way. Who’d'a thunk it?

Mr. Bradbury actually is really personable, btw.
travelina

I love how he delivers the “badly wrinkled” line. Much better than Brad Pitt in this Japanese canned coffee commercial: http://www.japanitup.com/japanese-commercial-brad-pitt-drinks-coffee-255/
igpajo

That’s Awesome! Funnier than 90% of the commercials out there right now. I love it.
Tim

One thing they didn’t foresee is the marketing change from “Prunes” to “Dried Plums”
Cat Chew

I love Stan Freberg’s work, everything from voicing one of the Goofy Gophers to the prune commercials.
Recently found his radio shows from the late 50′s here:
http://www.archive.org/details/stan_freberg_show
Speculist

Once again we have reality overtaking future speculation. Sunsweet recently introduced prunes in single packages (called “Ones”) even smaller than the snack pack shown in the Bradbury ad, that you can eat as a snack without getting your fingers sticky. And the current proprietary Sunsweet pitting process, which pushes the pit out through the end without trauma to the prune plum also reshapes the prune into a shape resembling a wheel. Because it is reshaped and loses almost no flesh in the process, wrinkles are virtually eliminated. It sure beats the old canisters. (And they even now make candied prunes – Plum Sweets). Who knows what fruit will look like tomorrow!
Samurai Gratz

Speculist, you know way too much about prunes.
Pipenta

With the landfills brimming and the gyres aswirl in rubbish, individually-wrapped prunes are a good idea? The hell with the state of the world for future generations. Let’s just be glad we don’t have sticky fingers right now.
Apashiol

America already produces 40% of the waste in the world. Now you individually wrap your prunes to avoid sticky fingers?
U.S.A. #1
Takuan

so logically,if had also won the muleskinner’s Best Left Turn competition; Hawking, Haw King, hawking hawking hawkings.
Michael Leddy

Could that be Don Pardo doing the voiceover? The voice sounds a little too deep at the start, but “they’re not candied” sounds a lot like Pardo.
Trvth

America already produces 40% of the waste in the world.

Of course we produce more waste, we consume more simply because we can afford to, and have a greater selection of foods available. Countries that have had problems providing enough food for their people naturally tend to be more thrifty and waste less food and therefore less packaging. Talk to someone living in the US around our great depression in the late 1920s and 30s and you’ll see that they are just as appalled about the waste as anyone.
ill lich

You are what you eat– people travel through tubes the way prunes travel through your colon.

No sh!t.
Certhas

Trvth, that’s hardly a convincing reason. Many (though by no means all) European countries produce less waste while being quite a far shot away from “having problems providing enough food”.

The “well they just don’t pollute because they’re poor” line is defeatist and ignorant, and just shows unwillingness to substantially question your (countries) behaviour. After all you can hardly be held responsible because it’s just human nature, and in your position everybody would act that way, right? Well no, not right: wrong.

I think we very much can and must try for more sustainable behaviour/culture instead of just hoping that minor adjustments to our consumer culture will do (and while some European countries are doing ok in some respects, that is true for all of western culture, nobody has an even acceptable record so far).
Drew from Zhrodague

As a warning, do not eat more than 14 prunes in one sitting. They may taste yummy, but their effects won’t be noticed until it is waaaaay too late!
Jake0748

Hey Buzzkills, I thought we were talking about prune commercials. The US does produce 40% of all solid waste in the world, but it also produced 100% of all the Ray Bradburys.
Anonymous

i always thought self-effacing, ironic ads were a relatively modern development, developed for our more cynical society. i find this perversely comforting.
Editz

Kind of reminds me of this ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiZ7RTmby-Y
five

takuan, with #29 you have just done your best fonzi impression and jumped the shark. too much of a good thing is a bad thing. especially with prunes…