Ah, the good old days.

One can gained a wealth of information about Chinese culture thru those commercials.

Silly Chinese baby. I think I'll have a wooden spoonful tonight. Thanks Jell-o.

Think that's bad? I remember going here for pancakes as a kid.

C'mon, those people are not Chinese. Chinese people have buck teeth and pigtails, like Mr. Magoo's houseboy, Charlie.

Just one year before Mickey Rooney's racist tour de foce as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I love that animation, but hijo de chino!
This was probably running concurrently with the Linus the Lionhearted TV cartoon, featuring So-Hi the Chinese Boy.

MC @ 7: Hmmm, no pigtail, but the coolie hat, topknot and fu manchu are quite authentic.

What a difference a half-century makes.

what's funny is, that you CAN eat jello with chopsticks! I've done it.

@4 - You'll find that if you do enough looking around about the Sambo stories that they aren't racist, at least not the originals. A kid and a tiger - not exactly setting off alarms. I went there as a kid too and don't recall the racism. It's not like Coon's Chicken or something...

Not that surprising, half the Asian characters in American movies are still either overly-sexed dragon ladies or marshal arts fighting, one-dimensional stereotypes. Sometimes both.

For a lot of strange reasons I'm not an expert on, progress has been slow in this area.

Weird fact, in American WWII propadanda, the Japanese are often represented as monkeys.

In Japanese WWII propaganda, the Japanese are often represented as... monkeys.

Go figure.

Typical orientalist bullshit. The one I remember the most from childhood is the Cartwright's cook on Bonanza, Hop Sing.

Well, thank goodness we don't have anything like that anymore.

Sambo's was one of my favorite places to eat as a kid. There wasn't anything racist about it.

I remember this commercial airing after 1960 - more early 60s. These were the days of the Frito Bandito and other phenomena we now regard as racial slurs. Classic Aunt Jemima was starting to disappear as were re-runs of "Amos and Andy." But it wasn't just racial insensitivity back then. I remember a Calgon commercial with a Japanese motif having a song with these lyrics:

A woman's born to softness,
And that's the way it is,
A soft and magic creature,
So man can love it.

Cigarette ads were king though - even the Flintstones smoked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZvHiiWFbBU

And oh yeah, you could go to the drug store or the five-and-dime and buy candy cigarettes.

So, the Chinese baby with stereotypical Japanese pronunciation issues? Just part of the mix.

The story of Little Black Sambo, despite the title and our current reaction to it, was not only not racist, it wasn't even about Africans nor did it take place in Africa. It was written by an English woman about India during a time when the English did call Indians black.
The story is perfectly unexceptionable -- it's
only the original illustrations that raise eyebrows these days.
If you find a copy that has been re-illustrated, you'll find that the tale of a very resourceful little boy and some very vain tigers is as enjoyable as ever. Ask your local children's librarian.

So, wait, I don't get it. Do (some) Chinese people not talk like this? And I'm not being facetious. I don't know why this is so offensive if it doesn't show anyone being ridiculed or tortured only because of their race. Plus, babies are not that smart to begin with so it makes logical sense that chop sticks wouldn't work. Unless you're a baby. All this PCness is erasing legitimate cultural differences.

^5 on the love for Sambo's. I ate at one in the late 70's in California and I remember being very bummed when I found out it closed. Ruined my kindergarten year...

#19, they replace Ls with Rs, not the other way around. Jello should be Jerro. Bring should not be bling. Herro?

Other than that, hirrarious.

ditto @9. I'm not an asian language expert so I'm not sure if Chinese people have similar prononciation difficulties with the rs and ls, but it seems (for the ultra PC folks) portraying ANY (asian) accent is immediately racist. If they had said "Oh poor little German baby. Vaht vill he do if he cannot eat his sauerkraut?" would that also be highly offensive?

Am I the only one that thinks this commercial is actually--GASP--kinda cute, in that old-fashioned way?

Maybe if they had a bigger budget and did the commercial in color, the "Chinese type baby" could SEE if the Jell-O was Glape or Olange.

mintygreen @ 22: Perhaps if there had been a "German Exclusion Act" and German-Americans had been confined to "Germantowns" by restrictive covenants prohibiting the transfer of property to people of the "Germanic" race, well, then, yes, you might have a point.

Sounds like sour glapes.

Did you know that thousands of German-Americans were put in internment camps in WWII? It's true.

@4: I was so sad as a kid when our Sambo's closed. I LOVED that place.

My parents explained to me it was racist: At the time I didn't understand because I'd never met anyone except other white people.

They replaced it with a Perkins... I learned to love that too. When it became Denny's it was just a little too much.

I like to eat my Jello with a straw. :o)