From sledgehammer-tossing freedom fighters to misunderstood teenagers at Christmas, Apple’s TV commercials have hit us with some truly iconic imagery over the years. But when a company has been around since the 1970s, it’s no great surprise that a select few ads would slip our collective memory.

After scouring through hundreds of big-time commercials and tiny TV spots that promoted Cupertino’s products over the years, here are our picks for the Apple advertisements that time forgot. All of them are worthy of a second look — and almost all of them for the right reasons.

Wow, this is incredible. Redditor Kepgnar works in the tech department of a charter school. Every month, one of the departments has to put together a message for the school’s official announcement chalkboard.

Here’s what Kepgnar came up with: a meticulously drawn “Think Different.” logo with an actually working QR code which, when scanned, leads to the YouTube version of the original commercial narrated by Steve Jobs.

How’d Kepgnar do the QR code? They designed it, then projected it onto the chalkboard and traced it. Talk about thinking differently.

Source: Reddit

Guy Kawasaki was one of the Apple employees behind the legendary marketing of its 1984 Macintosh, and he’s well known among the Apple community for being a former evangelist of the Cupertino company. You might think, then, that when Kawasaki’s phone rings, it’s an iPhone he pulls out of his pocket.

Well that couldn’t be further from the truth. Kawasaki’s a diehard Android fan, and he has been for about a year. He no longer uses any iOS products at all — not even an iPad.

Here’s something cool you may not have noticed yet. With its new Keynote update, released alongside Pages and Numbers yesterday, Apple replaced the unique icon that features the somewhat depressing lyrics to The Bitch of the Living by Spirit Awakening with a new 2012 icon that displays a famous quote from the company’s Think Different commercial. The same quote now appears on several of Apple’s Mac OS X icons.

It’s not uncommon for Apple to hide little treats within the icons of its Mac apps, but it’s always nice when we stumble across a new one. The latest comes with the new Notes application that will launch in OS X Mountain Lion next month, and it contains a famous quote used in Apple’s Think Different ad campaign.

Author of the new book, “Insanely Simple,” Ken Segall got to do something most can only dream about: work one-on-one with Steve Jobs, creating some of Apple’s most iconic products and ad campaigns.

From naming the iMac, to helping develop Apple’s famous Think Different ad campaign, Ken has 12 years of stories to tell about what it’s really like to work with the man most of us Apple fans revere: Steve Jobs. And on episode 10 of The CultCast, Ken opens up on who Steve was, what his creative process was like, and the best ways to not get yelled at.

To hear Ken’s fascinating insights and amazing first-hand accounts, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes.

Have you ever wondered what it was like behind the scenes of Apple’s famous ‘Think Different’ advertising campaign? The 1997 ad was mainly attributed to Steve Jobs in Walter Isaacson’s biography, but there’s more to how it all went down.

An advertising executive that helped create the campaign has taken to Forbes to set the record straight, and the truth is that Steve Jobs originally hated the very ad that brought Apple back from the brink of destruction.

Looking for last minute gift ideas for the proud rebel or misfit in your life? What about this beautiful letterpressed poster by Brightwurks replicates the full text of Steve Jobs’s iconic 1997 “Crazy Ones” ad, with all proceeds going to Acumen Fund, a charity that helps relieve poverty.

The poster is printed on 140# paper and measures 10 inches wide by 26 inches tall. It’s stunningly beautiful, but letterpress isn’t cheap: expect to pay $95 for it unframed, or $195 framed. Full poster can be seen below.

We’ve mentioned before that TextEdit’s icon under OS X has Apple’s entire “Think Different” essay written on it, if you blow it up big enough.But this one’s new to us: it also appears in its majority on Lion’s new All My Files icon.

Here’s to the crazy ones indeed… crazy to write an entire essay on an icon meant to be rendered in less than 80 pixels squared. Very cool.

[via Finer Things In Mac]