That was actually a little painful for me to watch. Entering into the 1970s, the most unattractive decade known to man.

And just Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was with Alvin (or was that Theodore?) singing the jingle? Blech!

Actually, during the Church Hearings of the mid-70s, that Congressional oversight team found that this commercial had been an MK-Ultra CIA experiment to test how families would be controlled by mass media.

The strange strobe-like music repetition and the choice of balloon colors were specifically selected for their mind-dulling attributes thus opening the viewer to certain suggestive qualities.

And the "commercial's" presentation of the entire family as "mindless children" was an effort to reduce adults to seeing themselves as no different from their own kids: babies of the state whose only desire is base sweets. That's why they specifically chose IHOP focusing on, not pancakes, but the more highly concentrated sugar-based menu items due to sugar's poisonous mind-control properties.

True story.

Or maybe I'll making this up. :)