Chasing “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Punky Brewster,” And Other TV Classics

A Retro Active Perspective Across Television Time Slots And Real Life

“Is it real or is it Memorex?”

Remember that phrase?

If you’re over 50, you probably do. And maybe you’ll recall it even if you’re over 40.

But 39 and under?

Probably not.

The term is actually a slogan from a television commercial for Memorex audio cassette tapes. From a time when TV commercials were a few minutes long, told stories, and were fun to watch, as opposed to being annoying to the core in every which way, as they are today.

Commercials of TV’s past which may be viewed somewhere on YouTube (like everything else in the multi-communicative world) were and remain unmistakably remarkable. Pre-YouTube, however, great commercials would actually be inserted and run between episodes of great TV shows such as the following family, mother-and/or-father-based, non-supernatural sitcoms (initially filmed in black and white) from the 1950s and early ’60s, each of which remain unique unto themselves, with their own individual brand of humor and perspective:

Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, The Donna Reed Show, Father Knows Best, The Andy Griffith Show/Mayberry R.F.D., or The Adventures…