Ad-ing it up ...
Not long ago, while watching a Star Trek marathon (something that could safely be interpreted as a cry for help), I wrote down just a few of the commercials that came on TV during one episode.
To put it into context, we were watching one of the growing number of cable channels targeted to men ages 18-29, or longer for men in New York, where adolescence typically lasts until around 40. (Much in the way that we would weigh less on Mars than on earth, because of the difference in gravity.)
In other words, this unnamed channel (rhymes with "G-Bore") offers programming for men in that halcyon period between the time they're are old enough to have jobs and sufficient disposable income to buy tons of video games, but before they have wives or girlfriends who will forbid them from purchasing said products. Thus, many of the shows on this channel are video game-centric, which I just don't get.
Although I'm not a "gamer," I can at least see how video games might be fun if I had a serious head injury, for instance. But watching a TV show about video games? Come on. I like shopping for shoes, but I wouldn't watch a show about people shopping for shoes. Or even a show about shoes. If I'm not personally shopping for them, I just don't care.
My husband, who is 34, loves video games. If only we lived in Winnipeg, he might have chosen to marry "Doom 3" instead of me. Because in countries such as Winnipeg and Holland and the Netherlands where same-sex marriage is allowed, the next logical step is for guys to start marrying beer. Or even wine coolers.
Except that - oh, crap! - in countries where gay marriage has been legal for several years, pretty much nothing changed. Except for gay people, who now enjoy a fundamental civil/human right (I won't even add "to be miserable," as the joke goes, or even "to sit around watching Star Trek marathons in a legally sanctioned union," although that should probably be worked into most legal and/or religious wedding vows).
Watching these commercials, it occured to me that the products they're hawking just might hold the key to everything that is wrong with our country, if not our species.
Let's start with SweeTarts Squeez, what appears to be a petroleum-based confection that (finally!) eliminates the exhausting task of chewing a SweeTart.
Full disclosure: when I was a kid, I absolutely loved SweeTarts, but was forbidden from eating them except on rare occasions. I felt very victimized by the fact that my mother, who is a teacher, was so adamantly opposed to children - me in particular - enjoying such delightful all-American treats as SweeTarts, Nerds, Lik-M-Aid (you know, where they give you the sugar stick to lick and dip in the colored sugar packets?) and any cereal that was "part of this nutritious breakfast!" I often wondered if I could make a case for abuse to child services for being forced to eat stuff like fresh vegetables and other food that was "grown on a farm." Sheesh.
I clearly remember my mother denying my request to buy a bag of SweeTarts, saying, "those things will rot your teeth out, and then how are you going to chew them?"
It may be 20 years too late, but finally - there's a comeback! I don't need no stinkin' teeth now that it comes in a tube! Best of all, with SweeTarts Squeez (no "e" at the end, 'cause they're cool like that), no need to burn the extra 2 calories involved in chewing.
Irony of ironies, this "fine addition to the SweeTarts family of products" comes in something that looks suspiciously like a toothpaste tube. At the risk of sounding all conspiracy-theory-ish, you have to wonder if this product wasn't the diabolical brain-child of some underground society of evil dentists, perhaps the Dark Knights of the Bicuspids, who want to buy more vacation homes on St. Barthes? Think about it: dentists could be the new hedge fund managers if more people would just "squeez". Or maybe it's designed by Jenny Craig in an effort to get more male clients between the ages of 18 and 29?
But seriously - as rates of Type-2 (adult-onset) diabetes are growing to epic proportions among U.S. children - to whom the cartoon TV spots are heavily targeted - how isn't this a public health hazard? How does this get FDA approval? Most of all, how do the people putting this crap out there even manage to sleep at night?
The late comedian Bill Hicks once said that the marketing and advertising people in this country should just kill themselves. He had a point.
The next spot was for the Triple Whopper with Cheese (comes with a free defibrilator) at Burger King. Unless you're a professional athlete, you're not burning enough calories to justify a whopping (no pun intended) 1230 calories and 82 grams of fat. And if you are a professional athlete other than possibly a sumo wrestler, you're probably not going to eat a triple-decker Whopper with cheese, for the same reason that you're not likely to juggle chainsaws; someone could get hurt.
(LEFT: The Triple Whopper went down to Glamour Shots at the mall, and this is the result. Heck, we all have to treat ourselves sometimes!)
The Triple Whopper started as a cross-marketing ploy in 2005, to promote the movie King Kong, but has since been added as a permanent menu item. It was pitched as a solution for "Kong-sized appetites." In other words, if you happen to be a giant gorilla, this is for you. Which would be a long-overdue nod to the mutant gorilla community, except that gorillas are almost exclusively vegetarian.
I'm not one to blame fast food for making people unhealthy, but ... okay, let's indulge in a little of that. I guess they wanted to make the Whopper seem like a "lite" option, kind of like those Victorian women who used to go around with monkeys on a leash, so the ladies would seem prettier by comparison. The standard Whopper sans cheese has a mere 670 calories.
Again with the how can they even sleep at night?
Bringing us to the next ad, which was for Dominos square brownies. I really thought I was hallucinating the first 4 times I saw this commercial. If Paul hadn't been there to confirm that it was real, I might have called a hotline for immediate psychiatric help.
The star of this commercial is a bizarre brownie-creature, a short person (either a midget or a child who's going to be telling this to an army of psychiatrists someday) dressed in a square costume made of fake brown fur. The square rings a suburban doorbell alongside the Dominos Delivery Associate, who, unlike an actual Domino's employee, doesn't seem even slightly disgruntled. As the square steps back, we see that the hug-ee is covered with, well, what might come out of a person after eating this crap.
Because, of course, nothing says "yum!" like brown plush fur and diarrhea hugs.
As you might expect, the Domino's customer looks utterly horrified by this turn of events. It's one of those moments where everyone, from the viewer at home to the Key Grip to the SAG member in the plush suit, feels a bit dirty.
Not that Domino's is any stranger to annoying ad campaigns, but as corporate mascots go, this one is just weird. In the day, the Noid might have been worth avoiding, but this one is actually repulsive. I'm not a scientist or anything, but isn't the purpose of a commercial to - I dunno - sell stuff? Unless you have some scat fetish, you're probably not reaching for phone to call Domino's.
All I can guess is that the folks who came up with this idea must've been on some serious pharmaceuticals. Or maybe they were just hopped up on spoonfuls of SweeTarts Squeez?
To put it into context, we were watching one of the growing number of cable channels targeted to men ages 18-29, or longer for men in New York, where adolescence typically lasts until around 40. (Much in the way that we would weigh less on Mars than on earth, because of the difference in gravity.)
In other words, this unnamed channel (rhymes with "G-Bore") offers programming for men in that halcyon period between the time they're are old enough to have jobs and sufficient disposable income to buy tons of video games, but before they have wives or girlfriends who will forbid them from purchasing said products. Thus, many of the shows on this channel are video game-centric, which I just don't get.
Although I'm not a "gamer," I can at least see how video games might be fun if I had a serious head injury, for instance. But watching a TV show about video games? Come on. I like shopping for shoes, but I wouldn't watch a show about people shopping for shoes. Or even a show about shoes. If I'm not personally shopping for them, I just don't care.
My husband, who is 34, loves video games. If only we lived in Winnipeg, he might have chosen to marry "Doom 3" instead of me. Because in countries such as Winnipeg and Holland and the Netherlands where same-sex marriage is allowed, the next logical step is for guys to start marrying beer. Or even wine coolers.
Except that - oh, crap! - in countries where gay marriage has been legal for several years, pretty much nothing changed. Except for gay people, who now enjoy a fundamental civil/human right (I won't even add "to be miserable," as the joke goes, or even "to sit around watching Star Trek marathons in a legally sanctioned union," although that should probably be worked into most legal and/or religious wedding vows).
Watching these commercials, it occured to me that the products they're hawking just might hold the key to everything that is wrong with our country, if not our species.
Let's start with SweeTarts Squeez, what appears to be a petroleum-based confection that (finally!) eliminates the exhausting task of chewing a SweeTart.
Full disclosure: when I was a kid, I absolutely loved SweeTarts, but was forbidden from eating them except on rare occasions. I felt very victimized by the fact that my mother, who is a teacher, was so adamantly opposed to children - me in particular - enjoying such delightful all-American treats as SweeTarts, Nerds, Lik-M-Aid (you know, where they give you the sugar stick to lick and dip in the colored sugar packets?) and any cereal that was "part of this nutritious breakfast!" I often wondered if I could make a case for abuse to child services for being forced to eat stuff like fresh vegetables and other food that was "grown on a farm." Sheesh.
I clearly remember my mother denying my request to buy a bag of SweeTarts, saying, "those things will rot your teeth out, and then how are you going to chew them?"
It may be 20 years too late, but finally - there's a comeback! I don't need no stinkin' teeth now that it comes in a tube! Best of all, with SweeTarts Squeez (no "e" at the end, 'cause they're cool like that), no need to burn the extra 2 calories involved in chewing.
Irony of ironies, this "fine addition to the SweeTarts family of products" comes in something that looks suspiciously like a toothpaste tube. At the risk of sounding all conspiracy-theory-ish, you have to wonder if this product wasn't the diabolical brain-child of some underground society of evil dentists, perhaps the Dark Knights of the Bicuspids, who want to buy more vacation homes on St. Barthes? Think about it: dentists could be the new hedge fund managers if more people would just "squeez". Or maybe it's designed by Jenny Craig in an effort to get more male clients between the ages of 18 and 29?
But seriously - as rates of Type-2 (adult-onset) diabetes are growing to epic proportions among U.S. children - to whom the cartoon TV spots are heavily targeted - how isn't this a public health hazard? How does this get FDA approval? Most of all, how do the people putting this crap out there even manage to sleep at night?
The late comedian Bill Hicks once said that the marketing and advertising people in this country should just kill themselves. He had a point.
The next spot was for the Triple Whopper with Cheese (comes with a free defibrilator) at Burger King. Unless you're a professional athlete, you're not burning enough calories to justify a whopping (no pun intended) 1230 calories and 82 grams of fat. And if you are a professional athlete other than possibly a sumo wrestler, you're probably not going to eat a triple-decker Whopper with cheese, for the same reason that you're not likely to juggle chainsaws; someone could get hurt.
(LEFT: The Triple Whopper went down to Glamour Shots at the mall, and this is the result. Heck, we all have to treat ourselves sometimes!)The Triple Whopper started as a cross-marketing ploy in 2005, to promote the movie King Kong, but has since been added as a permanent menu item. It was pitched as a solution for "Kong-sized appetites." In other words, if you happen to be a giant gorilla, this is for you. Which would be a long-overdue nod to the mutant gorilla community, except that gorillas are almost exclusively vegetarian.
I'm not one to blame fast food for making people unhealthy, but ... okay, let's indulge in a little of that. I guess they wanted to make the Whopper seem like a "lite" option, kind of like those Victorian women who used to go around with monkeys on a leash, so the ladies would seem prettier by comparison. The standard Whopper sans cheese has a mere 670 calories.
Again with the how can they even sleep at night?
Bringing us to the next ad, which was for Dominos square brownies. I really thought I was hallucinating the first 4 times I saw this commercial. If Paul hadn't been there to confirm that it was real, I might have called a hotline for immediate psychiatric help.
The star of this commercial is a bizarre brownie-creature, a short person (either a midget or a child who's going to be telling this to an army of psychiatrists someday) dressed in a square costume made of fake brown fur. The square rings a suburban doorbell alongside the Dominos Delivery Associate, who, unlike an actual Domino's employee, doesn't seem even slightly disgruntled. As the square steps back, we see that the hug-ee is covered with, well, what might come out of a person after eating this crap.
Because, of course, nothing says "yum!" like brown plush fur and diarrhea hugs.
As you might expect, the Domino's customer looks utterly horrified by this turn of events. It's one of those moments where everyone, from the viewer at home to the Key Grip to the SAG member in the plush suit, feels a bit dirty.
Not that Domino's is any stranger to annoying ad campaigns, but as corporate mascots go, this one is just weird. In the day, the Noid might have been worth avoiding, but this one is actually repulsive. I'm not a scientist or anything, but isn't the purpose of a commercial to - I dunno - sell stuff? Unless you have some scat fetish, you're probably not reaching for phone to call Domino's.
All I can guess is that the folks who came up with this idea must've been on some serious pharmaceuticals. Or maybe they were just hopped up on spoonfuls of SweeTarts Squeez?
posted by Marguerite at 4:53 PM
2 Comments:
The triple whopper makes me want to hurl. Actually, I saw the commercials for it when the King Kong movie was in the theatres. It featured a huge triple whopper, larger than a man. Then a man comes upon it sitting in the street and starts gnawing on it. Honestly, it looked like the man was a little overly stimulated eating this thing or should I say making it with it. Gross.
Ew. I didn't see that commercial, but it sounds like it's in the Why They Hate Us category. And it's basically a commercial for TiVo, whether it intends to be or not ...
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