Excellence in Advertising: Mark "Jacko" Jackson for Energizer

Before God invented Netflix and PVRs, you had to sit through a battery of commercials every time you turned on the idiot box. Most of them made you wonder why the hell Philo Taylor Farnsworth didn’t also invent something to block out commercials. Like Netflix or PVRs. 

But occasionally, a television ad struck gold to where you’d sit through a seven-hour Cannon marathon to see it again. And now, thanks to the magic of YouTube (which we can thank God for inventing) you can relive the magic at the touch of a mouse. Here’s today’s nomination for Excellence in Advertising.

In the mid '80s, North Americans suddenly developed an inexplicable infatuation with all things Australian. For that, we can largely thank Paul Hogan, personable star of those famous "shrimp on the barbie" tourism ads and creator of the "Crocodile" Dundee film franchise. Then again, we could also thank Men at Work, INXS, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Midnight Oil, and Yahoo Serious.

Okay, maybe not Yahoo Serious.

The fact that the Land Down Under was doing a booming business does little to explain why, when it came time to launch its new Energizer battery line, the folks at Eveready opted to hire a brash, loud, and quite possibly brain-damaged ex-footballer to be its pitchman. Mark "Jacko" Jackson, quite possibly the most Australian man who has ever walked God's green Earth, was a decent kicker but he was more famous for his on-field antics than for his playing. In North America, on the other hand, he was famous for almost nothing. Oh, sure, there was this, which got some airplay on Much Music back in '85:

Aussie rules football was drawing big crowds to exhibition matches in this hemisphere, and games were even being televised, but that wasn't quite enough to make stars of its players. Somehow, though, Jacko parlayed his Australian notoriety into a post-retirement gig as an international television-commercial star. His performance style mostly consisted of stomping around and bellowing "Oi!", but that, it seemed, was sufficient.

Sadly, Jacko's tenure as a battery huckster was short-lived. In perhaps the greatest indignity of his career, he was replaced by a fuzzy pink rabbit when the Energizer Bunny made its debut in 1989. Oi!