In 1983, the band Cinderella made a commercial for a chili dog restaurant called Pat’s. In 30 seconds it combines wonderful local advertising with a snapshot of a band on the rise.
When the band Cinderella was still a rising force in the nascent hair metal scene, they starred in a local commercial for Pat’s. Located in the Philadelphia area, where Cinderella was also based at the time, the commercial seemed like natural synergy. The band could make some extra money and get some free advertising for their new album.
Pat’s on the other hand could attempt to attract all those hungry kids who were stumbling out of music clubs late at night. While the Cinderella Chili Dog commercial ran only locally on MTV in the area, it has since gone on to become a cult hit on the internet.
Pat’s Chili Dogs had two locations. The one at Route 420 and McDade Boulevard in Folsom, PA and a second on Route 291 in Lester, PA. Both locations were open 24 hours a day. Sadly Pat’s didn’t stay in business!
In an interview with Loudwire, Cinderella frontman Tom Keifer related the tale of how Cinderella came to make the ad: “In recent years, the commercial “Pat’s Chili Dogs” I did with my band Cinderella years ago has been surfacing on the internet quite a bit lately. And the way that came about was, that was right when early ’80s MTV was just starting to take off, and we were a young baby band kicking around in the clubs in the Philadelphia/Jersey area, and we wanted to be on MTV, and we sent our video, which was horrible, to like Basement Tapes or something like that. They wouldn’t play it, they wouldn’t touch us. So a local proprietor who owned a chili dog stand asked us to sing. He saw us in a club and he liked us. He said “would you do a rock ’n’ roll commercial for my place?” And he said “We’re gonna buy local TV advertising on MTV,” and the light went off, we were like “Well, we’ll be on MTV, then!” [laughs] Only locally, but that’s what it felt like to us, so we said “Sure, we’ll do it.” Plus we got free chili dogs any time we wanted.”
Asked if he had any memories that stand out from the commercial shoot, Keifer said: “Not really… I really don’t. I barely have any memory of it. We just kind of pulled up, and it was the first time we had done anything like that, and before I knew it, it was over.”
(via Retroist)
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