Commercial rant time...

fuzzygobo

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 11, 2004
Messages
5,596
Reaction score
5,072
I'm amazed they're still selling The Clapper. The most useless product since Dehydrated Water.
 

Drtooth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
31,718
Reaction score
6,707
Okay. There's this ,,,thing that popped up when I was watching something late night on cable.

It's... well...the busiest thing I've ever seen to put it in understatement.

A Captain Morgan's Run ad featuring everyone's heads being super imposed with Morgan heads, a CGI mermaid figure head that doesn't really do anything, that takes place at a Korean Karaoke bar that's either part of the ship or that can fit an entire ship in it, while a bad parody version of Le Freak with lyrics in Korean with subtitles about how great this new rum is and how everyone's turning into the Captain and then the lyrics at the end get botched and the subtitles seem to make fun of them.

In other words, so much crap going on at once it's not funny, nor is it cool. It's nightmarish, but the very special kind of nightmare where everything's falling apart at once and the sheer surrealism wakes you up screaming.

And so, here's the link because I'm not going to post alcohol advertisements here.

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QrxPAOhGya0

Just... waaaay too much happening at once guys. Didn't anyone say "hey, we should tone this down?" or "does it have to be in Korean?" or even "isn't them turning into the Captain enough of a mindscrew?"
 

D'Snowth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2003
Messages
40,651
Reaction score
12,811
Everything being Korean seems to be something of a fad right now, kind of like how the whole world was Japanese there for the longest time, or how back in the 60s there was that whole British Invasion and such. I'm not exactly sure why Korean is trendy right now, but really boggles my mind is how there's all these vacation packages being offered and advertised for people who want to take a trip to North Korea - a terrorist country ruled until a fascist dictatorship that looks like a modern-day Nazi Germany. I mean, if you look up videos on YouTube on people's trip to North Korea, that country is extremely eerie.
 

Drtooth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
31,718
Reaction score
6,707
Actually, I'm second guessing if it's Korean. It could probably be Chinese? I dunno. It's an Asian language that's not Japanese. I can at least tell the difference there.

Off topic side, the Korean fad thing seems to just be a cuisine thing as far as I know with some stragglers from the short K-Pop craze brought on by Gagham Style (which itself was an internet meme Elle DeGeneres saw and exploited). There are also fans of Korean theater and soap operas and they did manage to show some from time to time. But it feels like an expansion of a pan-Asiamn fad that's still around. Still doesn't make a lick of sense in this commercial.

What's hilarious is how insanely defensive some not at all sock puppet accounts got over any criticism in the comments section. The video has half as many dislikes as likes (about), so I'm clearly not alone here. And the thing is, this commercial didn't have to be terrible. Just get rid of half the elements and it works fine. Too much at once that turns into nothing? That's what static is.
 

Drtooth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
31,718
Reaction score
6,707
Whoever does MetroPCS's ad campaigns really needs to be fired. Their commercials are just...lousy. Lazy, terrible attempts at humor to the point where they reached the nadir of terrible.


HAW HAW HAW! You see? It's funny because moving means two things. And I'm guessing were hoping their audience was too busy being mesmerized by popping and locking they'd be too distracted to see that they've made 30 seconds of a pun that's not even funny for 1 second, at which they were paid nicely for.

They're no strangers to terrible advertising. They had multiple ads featuring something that I can only call a poor man's poor man's poor man's Steve Carell either making doofy voices or abruptly cutting off cuss words with "Shhhhh!" which was about funny for 2 seconds. I mean, I've seen weak attempts at humor before, but whoever's writing these just... if they're trying to be so bad they're funny and tongue in cheek or whatever, they're certainly completely full of themselves because even on that level, they're just painfully unfunny.
 

D'Snowth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2003
Messages
40,651
Reaction score
12,811

"Three awesome things combined"? A puppy, a monkey, and a baby? What? I'm sorry, this is just way to freaky to be awesome . . . I mean what is this, some kind of a genetic experiment? I'll watch the YouTube videos about Typhon-02 if I want to see a genetic experiment.
 

Drtooth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
31,718
Reaction score
6,707
I was going to mention it on the Super Bowl Commercial thread, but...yeah. That's not funny, that's not even creepy. It's LAZY! It out-lazied the Metro PCS commercial I just mentioned. And at least Metro PCS did theirs on the cheap. This cost a fortune to realize a dumb as crap idea.

Seriously ad execs. STOP TRYING TO THINK LIKE THE INTERNET! You don't get the internet, you don't get weirdness, you don't get Dadaism, you just think you get it and make something idiotic like this. And...AND... you purposely did something stupid and lazy so everyone can talk about it. Really?!?
 

mr3urious

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2009
Messages
3,921
Reaction score
1,408
Plus, did the PMB really have to stand on that guy's lap to lick his face? It looks way too much like a lap dance. *shudders*
 

Drtooth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
31,718
Reaction score
6,707
I think that's the point. Remember what Buster Bunny said in the Bullwinkle parody "If you can't be funny, be confusing." Or in this case, intentionally overly creepy and awkward. It's amazing, though. Sure, we can mock the clip art with flickering mouths of the Kneebrace Hotline commercial, but at least that has the excuse to be awful. They clearly had a five dollar budget and it's used to advertise during old sitcom reruns. The staggering amount of money PepsiCo spent on a non-joke that's only joke is it being a non-joke. Maybe because I'm watching the shortened version for broadcast where the thing comes out of nowhere for no reason.

Honestly, I hate this commercial for the same reason I hate Stone Quackers. Disturbing does not equal funny nor does it equal clever or artistic. I see the intention of this ad as coming across. It's basically trying to be an internet meme from 2008 but being ironic about it but playing it straight all the while not knowing what an internet meme is. The creepy factor is so blatant because they knew everyone would be saying "Hey, you check out that creepy commercial and it was funny because it was creepy?" the next morning. I don't buy it. I see lazy attempt at humor. Then again, considering the demographic for a Mountain Dew energy drink (which frankly, isn't that bad. Got some samples of it last year at a convention), I can see 20 year olds loving this sort of thing.

But seriously. Creepiest commercial out there? The Axe Body spray with the huge, human version of those cheap Palmer Chocolatish Easter Bunnies. Sadly, him pulling the pieces off his body was actually less terrifying than his overall look.
 

Drtooth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
31,718
Reaction score
6,707
You know, after watching the commercials for Halos, I can't help but think there's a level of hypocrisy somewhere. The whole "give your kids something or they'll act like dinks" thing just feels off. I know they're done with a level of irony and all, but somehow it seem like if this product wasn't fruit, you'd have parental groups swooping down on them for it.

Meanwhile, the kids in junk food commercials are always well behaved. Maybe the Trix kids are jerks to the Rabbit, but even the kids that go after Lucky the Leprechaun aren't even that aggressive (It's not Strawberry Smiggles, after all).

Though, I do kinda side with the kids on the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese ads. I mean, you buy this bland food that only kids (or those with very immature tastes) could love for the express reason of giving the kids something they want to eat instead of something they're not adventurous enough to eat. And the adults steal spoonfuls of them anyway. I'd be ticked of, especially if it took a lot of polite convincing to get the parents to buy it anyway. Seriously, I always hated that. I'd ask for something, it would be a big production of convincing, and I got the least amount of the stuff anyway.
 
Top