Apple Spoofs Ghostbusters in Outrageously Cheesy 1984 Sales Video
In 1984, Apple spoofed the classic Ghostbusters song by Ray Parker Jr, and this outrageously cheesy video is the result.
The video apparently played as the introduction to an Apple corporate event held in Hawaii to rally the international sales team. Instead of Ghostbusters, it’s “Blue Busters”, with Blue of course being a reference to Big Blue, or IBM. John Sculley and Steve Wozniak even make appearances in the video, and supposedly Steve Jobs is somewhere in there too as a Ghostbuster along with a few other Apple execs, although I couldn’t identify everyone, if you happen to know them all do leave a comment.
What a hilarious find by TheNextWeb, who also found a few more details from a YouTube commenter that happened to be at the event:
I was there in Oct. 1984. This was not an internal ad. I was a 1984 state of the art multimedia slide show with audio by Ray Parker Jr. who sang the original. There were also live dancers on the stage.
This was the opening presentation of the International Sales Meeting that introduced the Lightwriter later renamed Laserwriter.
Apple always used a current movie as a them for the sales meetings. in 1985 it was Back to the Future.
So, anyone found that 1985 video yet? We’ve got the “Leading The Way” video from 1984 in the meantime… enjoy that one!
Apple history at it’s finest, or funniest at least.
[…] tumultuous history with IBM, the famous “1984″ commercial, and the internal Apple Ghostbusters spoof, it’s pretty great to see the old rivalry between tech superpowers is obviously far in the […]
Steve is featured as a Blue Buster in the last few seconds of the uncut version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpzKJ0e5TNc
[…] OSXDaily Trött på din gamla dator? Köp en ny Mac – från 9295 kr inkl […]
[…] [Fonte – OSXDaily] […]
[…] of Apple, IBM was largely considered the companies biggest competitor and enemy of sorts, as is demonstrated in the Ghostbusters spoof and of course the classic 1984 Superbowl commercial that launched the first Mac. […]
I think Jobs is at 1:11 in the video
Cheesy? Perhaps by today’s standards – but as someone who worked in the audio visual (av) industry for twenty+ years – I have to say that the production was very good indeed. The av company would have shot hundreds of still images on to 35mm slides and use a rostrum camera (probably a Forox, Siccles or Marron-Carrell) to line them all up. Then they were painstakingly programmed on a Genesis system (IBM XT) PC. This would control a bank of 9 or so Kodak Carousel slide projectors, which, in this instance were all focused onto a single screen.
All clever stuff in its day. Then came death by PowerPoint…
I agree with you Gary.
I am an old professional of ROSTRUM CAMERA and for me this audiovisual is an old treasure.
And I think is an overlap.
Regards!
Esteve
No it’s 9 on 1, though the images are an odd aspect ratio – about 2×1.
Another funny one from the 80’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUtqNJebrTM&feature=plcp&context=C34cbc7aUDOEgsToPDskKqJAkHb_VwuW4nVc6aXHEh