Throwback Thursday has come to Ace Metrix! With so many classic television ads floating around the internet, we couldn’t resist gathering data on what consumers think of these throwback commercials. Throwback ads will be scored and rated like all our other ads–against a population of 500 consumers balanced against the U.S. census for age, gender and income.

We’re accepting #ThrowbackThursday recommendations, so feel free to tweet us your favorite vintage ads.

“Pepsi Generation”  – an 80’s classic starring Michael Jackson – seemed like a great way to kick things off, and we weren’t disappointed.

Our survey respondents loved the ad. It scored 75 points higher than the best soda ad from the past year, although maybe thats not a fair comparison.

Interestingly, it wasn’t just GenX that reacted so positively to the spot. Scores were high across all age groups. In fact, although the ad was a full 90 seconds, only two consumers even said that the ad was “long” – a rare occurrence for an ad of this length.  Seventeen percent of the free responses mentioned the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, and another 14% mentioned Pepsi.

The ad also seems to have stood the test of time. Ninety percent of respondents thought the ad still represented the brand well – despite some hindsight reservations about Michael Jackson’s proximity to all those kids.

Seventy-six percent of respondents thought the ad was better than current Pepsi ads.  As we do more of these, we’ll learn how much of this is colored by nostalgia.

Bonus points for those who recognized the kid as Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air!