Until all the 70s , we expected the moment of advertising … now as soon as it arrives we change the channel. I kind of regret those moments when we were told “and after Carosello , everybody in bed”!
In fact, as children, dear Discolovers, the moment that marked the end of the day was represented by the broadcasting of five advertising announcements (the word spot did not yet exist) preceded by very short TV series, animated drawings or animated puppets: the Carosello .
The Carosello television broadcast was born on February 3, 1957. To avoid running into criticism from those who paid the license fee and who did not appreciate advertising on television, RAI thought it best to associate an introductory mini-film to each commercial release that summarizes the stories of complete meaning in a few minutes. .
The production of these mini-films thus became a training ground on which all the major national directors made their bones. The success with the public was such that even the most famous actors did not disdain to participate in these skits. Among the directors who tried their hand at the Carosello we can include the Taviani brothers and Ermanno Olmi while among the actors the participation of the great Eduardo De Filippo and the future Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo is certainly to be remembered.
But Carosello had precise rules imposed by RAI: the duration of each single advertisement was set at two minutes and fifteen seconds, of which a maximum of thirty-five seconds could be dedicated to the actual advertising message. Since 1974, the duration of each single communiqué was shortened to one minute and forty seconds.
The censorship became iron: no inappropriate or allusive words could be used. During all the commercials of Carosello the word “bird” was never used. A well-known brand of laxatives in boasting the qualities of its product has never been able to use the phrase “regulates the intestine” but has always had to keep in a much more chaste phrase: “regulates the organism”.
But which ones do you remember of those ancient advertisements?
I remember: the Bialetti coffee makers, which had the “little man with a mustache” as their testimonial, designed by Paul Campani.
Caffè Paulista, an advertisement created by Armando Testa who invented the pair of puppets made up of Caballero and Carmencita for this café. Between guns and Mexican peons with a Neapolitan accent, the phrases remained in our memory: “Child, you are already mine, turn off the gas and come away!”.
And do you remember the Cynar carousel? A stately actor sat at a table in the middle of the traffic of a big city and sipped a liqueur: it was Ernesto Calindri who advertised the bitter Cynar to fight “the wear and tear of modern life”.
But above all I remember Calimero, or the testimonial of detergents Mira Lanza. The little black chick perhaps became for us children of the time the most famous character of Carosello but his contribution to the success of the detergents with which his stories were associated was not at all high.
This whole world of advertising minifilms ended after about forty-two thousand films on January 1, 1977 when the last Carosello was broadcast: the last advertisement was from the Stock and the burden of saying goodbye to this cult program was assigned to Raffaella Carrà who , with evident emotion, he thanked all those who had worked on the success of this twenty-year program.