These commercials were ubiquitous in the 1970’s.  If you were a small child, you could rattle off the trademark slogan without even understanding what it meant, and adults would find it extremely funny.  (The ad actually isn’t terribly funny by itself.  The 1980’s had a plenty of inspired commercials. but the few I can remember from the 70’s were generally lame.)

Anyway, fast-forward about 12 years to when I was a senior in high school … a buddy of mine actually handed me a can of V8 and dared me to pound it in one gulp.  (For those not in the know, the product is a phenomenally awful beverage concocted from vegetable juices.)  I took the dare.  And I wound up projectile vomiting like a god damned fire hose — all over the rear bumper of that 1972 Plymouth Duster that I loved so much.

I suppose that I could try to blame my lifelong abhorrence for vegetables on that experience, but I hated greens even when I was a kid.  (I was endlessly sneaking them to the dog at the dinner table; I wrote a story about it in the second grade that my parents nevertheless found amusing when I brought it home.)

The V8 vegetable drink is still around; the company is owned by Campbell’s.  Somebody should find out where it’s canned, break into the place at night and just machine-gun all the cans in the same manner as Ripley shooting all the alien eggs at the climax of “Aliens” (1986).  It would be a public service.