11 Delightful Vintage Farm Commercials

For many decades, farm life has been trotted out as a picturesque, wholesome ideal, to peddle everything from hotcakes to soap. We’ve rounded up 11 of our favorites for your Friday viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Borden’s Egg Nog[/mf_h5]

In the middle of a barn dance, the crazy-eyed emcee reveals he’s a paid shill for Borden’s. The kids don’t mind at all.

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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Maxwell House[/mf_h5]

At the Taylor horse ranch, Ursula schools us how to make coffee. Then her husband says he is very lucky and she says “No I’m the lucky one” and gives a meaningful look that might be about sex.

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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Borden’s Hot Chocolate[/mf_h5]

Back to Borden’s. Two bros are in the barn, dressing their horse in a tuxedo. One of them decides it’s hot chocolate time, and “Pete” should make it for them. But wait, Pete is the wild-eyed square dance emcee? Why is he still hanging around? Time to head home, old-timer.

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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Ivory Snow[/mf_h5]

This man is a baby farmer. It says it right there in the commercial. Laws were different then.
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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Post Toasties[/mf_h5]

This one’s a little psychedelic. After a dizzying tour of country corn signs, an unseen hand squeaks open a corn husk and a bunch of sentient cereal flakes burst out. As they float into the bowl, the soundtrack gets spooky and we want the trip to end.

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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Jones Dairy Farm Sausage*[/mf_h5]

The best part of this quick-browning sausage commercial is the unctuous quote: “Everything about them is real, even the farm…Honest.” Sure thing, lying man.

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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Jones Dairy Farm Sausage, 2[/mf_h5]

Spices from India: $98,000. All-natural pork: $7.5 million. Sausage casing from New Zealand (?): $750,000. The Jones Farm family are the artisanal OGs.
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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Dairy[/mf_h5]

Pretty standard nightmare material.
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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Toastem Popups[/mf_h5]

Originally made with Michigan apples, California strawberries, Great Lakes blueberries…oh Toastem, how far you have fallen.
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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Ferguson Tractor[/mf_h5]

Greedy “city slickers” are smoking cigars, declaring the age of the horse to be over. A farmer then beats a man in a horse suit while a baby cries. Buy a tractor? Confusing message.
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[mf_h5 align=”left” transform=”uppercase”]Ford Tractors[/mf_h5]

This one is our very favorite. It’s a mini-movie, where a urban man’s car breaks down and the farmer’s daughter rescues him with a tractor. The man and woman engage in sparkling, old-timey banter, on par with Tracy and Hepburn. You almost forget it’s a tractor commercial! (Bummer it’s 15 minutes long, because no one will watch it, ever.)

*Is it weird that Jones Dairy Farm doesn’t make dairy products? No? Carry on, then.