MOMOYA TV-Ads146-1979-Ta-Re-Mi-Fa

Time: 30 sec.

Product Name: YAKINIKU-NO-TARE

Description of Product: YAKINIKU-NO-TARE is a sauce for “Yakiniku” which literally means grilled or barbequed meats.

Year: 1979

Advertiser: Momoya Co., Ltd.

Advertising Agency: YOMIKO Advertising Inc.

Production Company: Cinq Co., Ltd.

Description of Title: This title, “Ta-Re-Mi-Fa,” is a sort of a wordplay which used the phonic similarity of two words; one is “Do-Re-Mi-Fa” of solfege in music, and the other is “Tare” that is a part of the product name of this TV ad.

With a burlesque of a famous Scottish folk song “Comin’ thro’ the Rye,” an extreme long shot of pastoral scenery zooms in livestock and a white homestead with a red spire, and then dissolves into a shot of a boy and a girl in Kimono, who enjoys Yakiniku grilling as a picnic lunch. Then, a cow, a pig, a sheep and a chicken come by a fence to join them. Partly, the voice-over narration parodies the lines of “Iroha,” an old Japanese poem which contains 47 characters of the Japanese syllabary exactly once. Also, the melody, from low to high then back to a low tone, is quoted from “Do-Re-Mi,” a well-known tune of a musical and movie “The Sound of Music.”