Mayberry Minutemen

Funny, I was just eating a nutritious bowl of Grape Nuts ice cream when I happened upon this little treasure.
That Barney Fife...what a nutty guy!
At least it was good practice for his next Post cereal commercial:

Hey, don't forget, back then, commercials used to be good. Besides, it didn't last too awfully long, as I understand it, parental groups demanded that the shows stop doing their own commercials, because apparently it was "evil" for the characters to be selling products to kids.

Take a look at some others...

HOGAN'S HEROES Jell-O Commercial:


THE MUNSTERS Cheerios Commercial:


THE ALVIN SHOW Jell-O Commercial:


I know there was also a GREEN ACRES commercial where Oliver and Lisa met with Carol Channing (apparently she popped up in a lot of those commercials) to promote an orange juice brand, but I can't seem to find it anymore.

I can see that. I've heard of certain examples where that was actually pretty effective... like take Wallace and Gromit for example: they made that Wensleydale (or however your spell it) cheese famous, and up till then, nobody ever really heard of it, and because of that, they pretty much were going to stop making it altogether... but Wallace is so crackers about cheese, especially his Wensleydale.

SEINFELD apparently did the same with marble rye.

I remember as a kid, when ED, EDD N EDDY came out, we all started crampin' our jaws on jawbreakers. :p

Yep. In addition to that SAM AND FRIENDS show, commercials were Jim Henson's biggest source of income for the Muppets.