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Apple Lemmings Commercial

1985 - When you hear “Apple Superbowl commercial“, you instantly think a woman running down a hall with a sledgehammer ready to destroy oppression. But there was another commercial. The Yang to the Macintosh Ying.The Lemmings commercial was aired for Super Bowl XIX. It was a commercial for Macintosh Office. Blindfolded businessmen marched off the edge of a cliff to a dark rendition of “Hi Ho”. The last guy in line – realizing his blind mouse wasn’t in front of him anymore, peeked to see what happened – only to find he was one step away from oblivion; Another line of Blind mice coming up behind him.

The big difference in this commercial is that it was a horrific failure. The consumer felt insulted more than enlightened. If that commercial would have aired the year before for Macintosh, Apple would have been done. What a difference a year makes, eh?

Wikazine – Full show notes for January 20

• Robert and Carleen Thomas (Amature Action BBS) were raided
• Microsoft market value surpasses IBM for the first time to $26.78 Billion
• Microsoft sells all shares of Comcast

Tagged as: aggregator, amature, apple, BBS, blind mice, blind mouse, businessmen, carleen thomas, comcast, Geek, IBM, iTunes, january 20, lemmings, mac, macintosh, macintosh apple, macintosh office, Microsoft, microsoft market, oblivion, oppression, rendition, RSS, sledgehammer, super bowl, Super Bowl advertising, superbowl, superbowl commercial

Article by Jeffrey Powers @geekazine

Jeffrey has written 381 awesome articles for us at Day in Tech History