Today’s installment of YouTube Comment of the Week comes from a Halloween-themed ad for Toys R Us that ran for approximately 900 years. At the end of the commercial, you can see a little “(c) 1983” in the lower left-hand corner, but the tape from which this was digitized was made many years later, and the ad continued to be run each October for several years after that. It was an evergreen reminder of the season, like fake cobwebs on hedges, or dire warnings about evil strangers who might put staples in your candy.

We had no Toys R Us where I grew up, and yet would get ads like this on local TV out of The City, which of course made me extremely envious of relatives who lived within driving distance of one, or friends whose indulgent parents would drive to far, far away places like Paramus to go to one. I don’t know why I wanted to go there so badly, since I couldn’t have afforded to buy anything I wanted anyway. I do know that it was a horrible tease to see commercials for this wondrous fairy land on TV when the closest location was a good 40 miles away. Chuck E. Cheese did the same thing, those cruel bastards.