Here's one of those commercials I saw so often as a kid that I could sing the tune in my sleep. It's for the Milton Bradley game, Mystery Date. I never played it — it was a "girl" game, obviously — but I gather it was some sort of card game where the young ladies would try to match up points and if you won, you "won" a theoretical blind date with a guy whose photo would then be revealed. He might be a dreamboat or he might be the slob and if you got a night on the town with the latter, the other players could then mock you and be glad it wasn't them. Someplace in there was a terrible, cautionary lesson for young women about something.
I think it's also amusing that the photo of the horrible date is not of a guy who's obese and wild-eyed and holding a live chicken. It's a picture of the same kind of handsome male model, only not dressed well. It's like in the romance comics where you had these stories of the two young ladies: One is viewed as gorgeous and the guys are mud-wrestling to see who'll get to ask her out. The other is so homely that she couldn't get a date if she owned the company that made ketchup. And the two women, of course, look pretty much the same except that the unattractive one is wearing glasses.
Apparently, whatever company now owns Milton Bradley (is it Hasbro?) has recently tried selling an updated version of this game that includes a toy cellphone with recorded calls from the Mystery Dates. I think it oughta come with a little cardboard Chris Hansen who surprises the Mystery Date on Dateline NBC and gets him arrested as a sexual predator.
Here's that commercial…