The other day I got sucked into a vortex of 1980s commercials on YouTube. It all started with this:
I have had this commercial stuck in my head for 23 years. No joke.
Whatever happened to Lee Press-On Nails? I suppose they went the way of these:
I have no memory of Krazy Nails, although I don’t think, at age 7, that I was really the target demographic. The Miss Lee ad clearly worked, though, because I’ve been walking around for years with the line “Smaller sizes, what she means!” flitting across my memory from time to time…
Now let’s enjoy this grown-up Lee Press-On Nails commercial, in which we are treated to a “rainbow array” of plastic nails in pink, purple and red, and in which we watch the hand model type on what looks like the keyboard to an Apple IIE:
Finally, a product about which I had completely forgotten:
Those eye shadow sticks! The lighted compact mirror! For me, however, it was not to be. No way would my mother (despite being a theatrical makeup artist) ever have allowed Sweet 16 Makeup into our house. She struggled enough with how Barbie might warp my self-image. (It’s OK, Mom, I turned out fine. Except that I paint my nails every day and spend a lot of time on the Internet talking about foundation.)
