“We used to be a country. A proper country,” or maybe the prim and properness went down the drain as we grew up. As you walk through the old rubble of memories, you pick up the stride and hum to an old tune, which you never quite forgot, and it keeps levitating in your mind, why? The bubble gum isn’t that class apart but you keep singing about that black cat….maybe sing it aloud for us?

Commercials and Pakistanis go hand in hand since the country’s creation; give us a good tagline and we will gobble it up day and night. There is surely something about these commercials that hits home. Either it’s the soapy ads for Ramadan or desi wedding bashes, showcasing a wide variety of  biscuits, chocolates, teas, soft drinks, ice cream, skin cancer-inducing products— you name it, they’ve got it. 

Not only do they contain colorful elements and aesthetic frames, but the same old jingle they repeat for every new concoction is still sweet to our ears. It’s like the memorabilia of our life is stored in these musical taglines, mostly as old as we are, evoking a sense of belonging to a place where we have spent our whole lives. Since these ads essentially display cultural themes, they age well with time. Probably the reason why everyone remembers the McDonald’s number (proceeds to dial it). 

Moreover, from a company’s standpoint, jingles are made to be melodic and concise enough for memory retention, consequently influencing the consumer choice. No wonder we still like cocomos despite them being devoid of any chocolate and an alarmingly low quantity of biscuits, or preferring Dalda oil as a child on an errand just because of their whole heart warming parent-children duos ad campaign. And the song, who could possibly forget that!

However, we have come a long way and a long way means more leading competitors and more jingles that slap so let’s play a little quiz where you perform the recitals of each of the listed brands (you can personally skip out Ariel, we don’t like it). 

How many of these can you remember? 

#1 Lipton

#2 Kisan cooking oil    

#3 Surf excel

#4 Servis

#5 Dawlance                 

 #6 Cocomo 

#7 Candyland Fanty  

#8 Ding Dong bubble gum

#9 Master paints  

#10 Everyday

#11 Gala

#12 Tarang 

#13 Tapal 

#14 Shan

#15 Mezan cooking oil 

#16 Bright

#17 Dairy Milk

#18 Knorr noodles

#19 Ariel

#20 Ufone

If you got most of them right, congrats and if not, what were you doing all this time? If nothing more, we knew what we were doing back then when time felt still: listening to these bangers!

By Tajwar Qaisar
TLC Writer

Note: the views expressed in the article solely belong to the writer and do not reflect TLC.