Elsewhere: William Shatner Shills For The VIC-20

Next week, a new podcast.  (I hope!)  In the meanwhile, here's something visual...

Before the Commodore 64 made its indelible mark on the 8-bit computer gaming scene, William Shatner was hired to push its predecessor, the Commodore VIC-20:




Note that while Shatner's presence did not bring with it any rights to the Star Trek property, the ad still does its best to imply a connection, including "beaming down" Shatner to the TV and a kid to the VIC-20 keyboard, using cheap 1980's video effects.  Note also that while the ad begins by talking up the machine's keyboard and "Wonder Computer" capabilities, most of the displays shown are games -- we see a slot machine and Space Invaders, and the ad ends by promoting the upcoming home versions of Bally-Midway's GORF and Omega Race.

The only productivity application shown appears to be a random graph that resembles a... random graph displaying numerical percentages and 2-character codes.  Maybe it's a spectrographic analysis of chemical elements.  I can't quite make out the text on freeze-frame, but whatever this kid is analyzing appears to have a lot of gold (AU) and chlorine (CL) in it.  Maybe it's William Shatner himself!

Oh, wait, it's even more amazing!  The numbers shown add up to more than 100%!  It must be analyzing William Shatner... OF THE FUTURE!