Commercials - The first TV commercial advertisement was sponsored by the Bulova Watch company on July 1, 1941. Bulova paid $9.00 for a 10-second Bulova Watch Time announcement superimposed on the test pattern at 2:29:50 P.M.. At 2:30 P.M. the telecast began from Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn with announcer Ray Forrest doing the play-by-play of a baseball game between the Dodgers & the Phillies. There were 4000 sets for the first broadcast. The program was locally broadcast by WNBT in New York. In 1952, Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on national television. The first television Network sponsor of a sporting event was Gillette Razor Company with the telecast of the Joe Louis vs. Bill Conn heavyweight Boxing match on June 19, 1946. Their commercial spotlighted a line drawing of a parrot called Sharpie and their commercial slogans "Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp!" and "How'r 'ya fixed for blades?" Kraft Foods was the first company to sponsor an hour long drama as they lent commercial support for their dramatic anthology KRAFT TELEVISION THEATRE/NBC/1947-58. Their first drama was "Double Door" and starred John Baragrey. The first animated commercial to use identifiable characters was an Ajax cleanser commercial which debuted in 1948 and featured the antics of three energetic pixies (The Ajax Pixies) who cavorted about the kitchen and bathroom cleaning dirty surfaces. The first television commercial filmed in color on the CBS network starred actress Adelaide Hawley portraying "Betty Crocker" America's fictional housewife. The 1951 broadcast featured a mystery fruitcake. The first color commercial televised in a local show was commissioned in March by Castro Decorators, New York, in a contract with WNBT. It was first telecast on Aug. 6. 1953. In response from pressure from a number of concerned citizen groups, the NAB in 1958 outlawed the "Men in White"  commercials which depicted actors who simulated doctors recommending medicines to the American public. To get around this ruling, one advertisement later featured a commercial that began "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV" On January 2, 1971, a federally imposed ban on television cigarette advertisements went into effect. In 1971, The Federal Trade Commission ruled that such euphemisms as "Leading Brand," "Brand X" and "The Leading Foreign Import" were only confusing to the public and must be discontinued. This was the birth of the television commercials that directly attacked another product by their "brand name" such as the phrase "More people prefer Pepsi to Coke." In a unique collaboration of commercial marketing, the Alka-Selzer Company and H & R Block Company joined forces in the spring of 1987 to calm the queasy feeling that Americans get at tax preparation time. The commercial pitch was "Take Alka-Seltzer and call H & R Block." This was the first time two major companies jointly pushed their products. By sharing costs, the joint venture would allow the companies to reach a larger group of consumers in both supermarket and tax offices. In May of 1988, rock star Michael Jackson starred in five Pepsi Cola commercials aired in the Soviet Union to an audience of 150,000,000 people. The commercials were seen during a week-long series called "Posner In America" hosted by Vladimir Posner, Russian journalist/broadcaster. This was the first time in history that an American commercial was shown behind the Iron Curtain. See also "Contraceptive Commercial"