Your Favorite Time-Life Commercials?

[Menard]

I think the commercial was for Civil War history books.  It was out in the 80's and all I can remember is a bunch of rednecks getting ready to fight.  One of them says, "Wanta rassle for it?"  My younger brother and I use to crack up.

Was that the Time-Life books or the collector cards?

I remember the collector card sets where they would send you what was basically a recipe card holder and about 12 or 24 cards a month; apparently randomly sorted. The cards were about the size of a large recipe card and were available on subjects such as World War II, Sports, American History, (I believe) The Civil War, and a host of other subjects; apparently including recipes .

This was late 70s to early 80s and they ran commercials about father and son talking sports and competing for who gets what card, and I somehow seem to recall either two brothers (or whatever they were) arm wrestling, or perhaps challenging each other to wrestling, over a particular card.

I had the World War II set and didn't even fill half the box before I realized how dang expensive it would be to continue collecting the cards. They were pretty much a bottomless pit.

[Katie]

Menard...these were definitely not cards.  The two men rassling were adults and I think it was over gold or something. 

[Menard]

The two men rassling were adults and I think it was over gold or something. 

Somebody sounds Southern.

[Katie]

Southern, Cantucky! 

[Menard]

The correct spelling too.

London-Somerset area?

[Yaddo 42]

Maybe one of those Civil War chess sets that they advertised the hell out of back then?  Franklin Mint Civil War Commemorative plates perhaps? Tre' 80s.

One of my uncles had the entire Time-Life WWII series of books. I think it was between 24-30 books. He was very proud of them and treated them like they were a leatherbound first edition scholarly library, no idea if he read them all. Then again he is the prime demographic for the Hitler History Channel. He's disappointed they don't show more WWII shows.

My cousin had those card sets, must have been several or he had a large world history/American history/general knowledge set. On the one hand I liked looking through all of them for the illustrations, but found the info sparse beyond some dates, names, and numbers (say casualties from battles, sports stats, etc.) and lacking context. Probably too much to ask from cards, but we and some of the relatives had encyclopedias I always had my nose in.