“Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans that you’re wearing?”

In the late 80s, the Bugle Boy clothing brand released a couple of comical commercials which featured a man clad in Bugle Boy jeans who gets asked by a woman if those are Bugle Boy jeans he’s wearing…and it turns out that that’s all she wants to know from him.

One of the commercials dates from 1989 and features a man in a condominium situated amidst the backdrop of the Miami skyline. He’s sitting in a chair, and he receives a phone call, at which point a woman’s voice on the other end of the line asks if he’s wearing Bugle Boy jeans. When he says yes, she thanks him and hangs up.

Another commercial takes place on a nearly empty desert road. It features the same guy from the previous commercial, standing on the side of the road, seemingly waiting for someone to stop and give him a ride. Suddenly, a black Ferrari speeds right past him, only to quickly stop and go back in reverse to where the man is standing. The driver of the Ferrari turns out to be a woman, who happens to ask him, “Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans that you’re wearing?” He says yes, she thanks him, and then drives off.

By the way, the woman in this commercial is a British former model named Annabel Schofield, who had appeared in Versace ads in 1985.

 

 

There’s some debate as to the year in which this latter commercial aired on tv. The person who posted the video of this commercial on Youtube listed the year as 1988. However, someone left a comment on the video‘s page saying that they believe the commercial is from the 1990-1991 period. It’s likely that the commercial was still being aired in 1991. Though I know for certain that it aired in 1990 because I traveled to New York that year and I went shopping for clothes there with a cousin of mine. One of the items I bought was a pair of Bugle Boy jeans, and later that day, my cousin and I were joking about the Bugle Boy commercial, mentioning that “the girl takes off after asking the guy if he’s wearing Bugle Boy jeans.”

One interesting thing about this latter commercial is that it went on to be quite well-known by the public -- it became a meme of the popular culture of the late 80s/early 90s -- and was even parodied various different times, including in a music video by the band Genesis.