Here we have an "in-show" commercial from The Flintstones that has Fred (Alan Reed) and Wilma (Jean Vander Pyl) hawking Welch's Grape Juice, which was one of their sponsors. Jean also did the voice of Pebbles.
As a kid, I was an enormous fan of The Flintstones but this did not cause me to down large quantities of Welch's Grape Juice. All products of the Welch's company were verboten in our household. Why? Because a very wealthy man named Robert Welch had helped found The John Birch Society, which was a reactionary political group. I guess it's still around but you don't hear much about them these days. Back in the sixties, however, they seemed to be all over California and the TV news, with their crazier members demanding that the U.S. drop a couple of atom bombs on Moscow.
Robert Welch made his fortune from candy products he'd invented, including the Sugar Daddy, Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. He and his company were apparently unconnected to the Welch's Juice Company but most people didn't know that. It was a pretty common misconception among my family's circle of friends and I'm certain I saw it stated as fact in several newspapers. Anyway, we didn't want any of our cash going to the Birchers so Welch's products were not on our shopping list. I didn't particularly want to eat any of them but for a time there, Welch's Grape Jelly came in great looking Flintstones glasses and it was sad not to be able to drink my milk from one. Years later when I found out that we'd boycotted the Welch's grape product people under false assumptions, I wanted to run right out and see if the markets had any grape jelly with Fred and Barney on the jars but I was about fifteen years late. Sigh.
Here's that commercial…
