Get Malacca For the Money, Rattan To Go
June 27th, 2007, 18 Comments »
Does anybody else remember that phrase? It bubbled up out of the hazy corners of my memory today, as it does every once in a while. There are only three results for the phrase “rattan to go” on the Web, but Nadya over at Retro Junk offers a good introduction to this strange local commercial from the eighties:
What was it advertising? I think it was a furniture store; in fact, I could be almost positive it was a furniture store. Yes, actually, it had to be. Now that I’m recalling the deeper meaning of the lyrical content, there’s no way that it couldn’t be an advertisement for a furniture store. As a child, it was just an astonishing, mesmerizing array of visuals, accompanied by a few scant lines of dialogue containing words that were meaningless to me, as I didn’t understand them. Allow me to illustrate: an ebony-skinned man with a large smile, wearing a white suit and white gloves and matching white top hat, slinking around a darkened environment.
Stavros fills in a few more details.
I wonder when in the eighties that was? Some time in the mid-eighties, I’d guess. You probably have to be over thirty to remember it.
I recall that the actor–one Blu Mankuma, apparently–had the darkest skin I’d ever seen in my young life. There was a very kind of colonial, Caribbean groove, and there may have been a woman dancing around in the background. I’m probably confusing that with an ad for champagne from the same period (I can still hum the jingle. The woman sounded like Julie Andrews and the name of the wine sounded like ‘hawktala’).
Do you remember this ad?
I’m incredibly tempted to give Mr. Mankuma a call, and see if he has a copy of the video.