What a Day...What a Place!

If you've been reading this blog, you've learned a lot about me thus far. Here's something else you may not know about me; I am a HUGE fan of jingles, especially those written in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I'm also a fan of theme parks. So it comes as no surprise that I am a big fan of Great America's commercials from the late 70s-mid 80s.

Business Bite: Six Flags Great America was once half of a twin set; back in 1976, Marriott, the hotel chain, decided to construct a theme park franchise, starting with three locations- Santa Clara California, Gurnee Illinois, and Washington DC. Santa Clara and Gurnee were built, but Washington D.C. was not.

By 1984, the Gurnee park had been sold to the Six Flags park chain, who still owns it to this day; the Santa Clara park went through messy negotiations with a proposed sale of the park to the city itself. It. was finally sold to Kings Entertainment, which would eventually be engulfed by Paramount Parks. Now, it is owned by Cedar Fair, the company who owns the famous Cedar Point theme park.

Enough history. Check out the videos, more so for the jingles, but the video as whole brings them together. This is pure 70s/80s cheese, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Commercials have gotten into such a habit of using music from established artists that it seems that the art of the jingle is lost on marketing execs nowadays. I still think that a well placed jingle beats out any Billboard 100 hit inserted in a commercial.