We’re not sure what was in the water at the ad agency Ford hired to create this commercial for the 1960 Falcon wagon. This is truly the kind of thing nightmares are made of, but we’re sure all the executives who signed off on this thought it would be clever. Maybe the Alice in Wonderland theme sounded good on paper, but the end result of a man in a rabbit suit was just plain creepy.
What we have here is a nightmarish adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Sure, the book is crazy compared to the Disney cartoon, but for some reason Ford thought making it more like an acid dream was a good idea. We can only imagine how many kids were frightened of the Easter Bunny for years after witnessing this atrocity.
Ford was trying to make a splash in the compact market, but horrifying people as they watched TV wasn’t the way to do it. Thankfully, despite this ad the Falcon was a success when it launched.
After the Alice in Wonderland spot is a Peanuts commercial. It’s far more enjoyable as Linus admires the Falcon wagon and compares it to his little red wagon. We’re thinking commercials like this were more appealing to people, but maybe the freaky-looking rabbit costume had its appeal.
While the Ford Falcon only enjoyed a production run from 1960 to 1970 in the United States, it was offered in the Australian market all the way through 2016. We’re not saying it was the freaky commercial in the US which doomed the Falcon, because this television spot aired at the launch of the 1960 model year, but it probably didn’t help thing. We dug up a few commercials from Down Under and they’re far more normal, so there’s that.