What is up with these DISTURBING commercials, lately?

D'Snowth

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I love chicken however it's prepared (buffalo wyngs are the only spicy food I will voluntarily eat), but yeah, if I desperately need rotisserie chicken, I can get a whole hen at the grocery store deli. Then again, there's actually a butcher shop close to where I live where you can get all kinds of meat at very reasonable prices, so yeah, lol.
 

Drtooth

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To be honest, I get where they're going with the Hambuglar trying to purposely be creepy and make some sort of tongue in cheek stab at gritty reboots.

Happy Meal Man? That thing debuted in Europe before the US (natch), and it couldn't be more obvious they're just ripping off Minions. But I'll give them this. They own up to it. The Minions and Raving Rabbids Happy Meal promotions both had commercials with the Happy Meal Man and those characters, and the fact their gags were incredibly similar was not hidden. They know they're a ripoff, they get the license for things they've ripped off, and they have their ripoffs stand with the actual characters they ripped off.

that dove body wash commercial, the one where the woman says this before the commercial fades out, as she is rubbing the other woman's shoulders. stop me if this gets weird. the way that she was rubbing the other woman's shoulders, creped me out.
It's not Dove, but I can't remember the exact company. Yeah, I don't care much for creeper ads. Burger King did their King ads purposely creepy and disturbing because funny and years later I actually got the (no other words to describe this) offputting on purpose charm of the ads. I don't care much for Tony the Tiger being that sad coach/first marriage dad that hangs around with kids at their houses instead of his 80's/90's power up cereal bit. But I really have to ask what the heck where they thinking with these Leslie Mann ads? If they're trying to be tongue in cheek about how these ads always have someone popping up, they're not being very satirical about it. Instead we have throwaway disturbing lines about "You were alseep and I didn't want to wake you" and Leslie stroking a nude woman saying "tell me if this gets awkward."

Yep. Apparently Leslie Mann likes to molest other women. That's a thing now. How she didn't get the beyond stalker subtext in the commercials and agreed to them is a mystery.
 

Drtooth

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Oh... and I think I found the internet list article D*Snowth was talking about.

http://metv.com/lists/12-truly-bizarre-product-mascots-that-made-us-lose-our-appetites

And much as I said before, I do only agree with a couple of them.

To the defense...

Big Mixx is a pretty good character design. Too bad he was the mascot for a lousy product, a cereal made out of mixing a bunch of cereal remains.

I LOVE the California Raisins but actually dislike raisins as a food. Loved their TV specials and to a lesser extent cartoon series.

The Noid is freaking awesome and anyone who disagrees deserves to have their pizzas ruined, even if local Mom and Pop pizza shops are vastly superior to national chains.

And I really like the big Gnu for Combos. Sure, he's no King Kombo the Gorilla from Japan, but at least it's still a cartoonishly colored African animal, so...
 

scooterfan360

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To be honest, I get where they're going with the Hambuglar trying to purposely be creepy and make some sort of tongue in cheek stab at gritty reboots.

Happy Meal Man? That thing debuted in Europe before the US (natch), and it couldn't be more obvious they're just ripping off Minions. But I'll give them this. They own up to it. The Minions and Raving Rabbids Happy Meal promotions both had commercials with the Happy Meal Man and those characters, and the fact their gags were incredibly similar was not hidden. They know they're a ripoff, they get the license for things they've ripped off, and they have their ripoffs stand with the actual characters they ripped off.



It's not Dove, but I can't remember the exact company. Yeah, I don't care much for creeper ads. Burger King did their King ads purposely creepy and disturbing because funny and years later I actually got the (no other words to describe this) offputting on purpose charm of the ads. I don't care much for Tony the Tiger being that sad coach/first marriage dad that hangs around with kids at their houses instead of his 80's/90's power up cereal bit. But I really have to ask what the heck where they thinking with these Leslie Mann ads? If they're trying to be tongue in cheek about how these ads always have someone popping up, they're not being very satirical about it. Instead we have throwaway disturbing lines about "You were alseep and I didn't want to wake you" and Leslie stroking a nude woman saying "tell me if this gets awkward."

Yep. Apparently Leslie Mann likes to molest other women. That's a thing now. How she didn't get the beyond stalker subtext in the commercials and agreed to them is a mystery.
I could have sworn that it was a dove body wash commercial, well that commercial proves that product manufactures will do just about anything to sell their products, including making the commercial creepy like that.
 

Drtooth

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It'll be on many times again today. I swear it's something like Saint Johns or Saint Ives or something with that sort of name in it.

Anyway, when it comes to disturbing mascots, there are two that are far worse than anything on MeTV's list (though not too much creepier than the Krinkles Klown or early Ronald McDonald). The Mr. Bag I mentioned on this thread about a year ago that's somewhere on pager five of this, and the Honey Comb wolf creep gremlin thing, which isn't so much creepy as the fact that kids turn into one of those. Now that I remember that, there is one really disturbing ad from the 90's...

Isn't... isn't that what Fearless Leader did in the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie? Turning people into mindless vegetables (only with fruits here). How the heck did the product survive much less thrive with such a horrifying commercial? I don't want my candies turning my head into a piece of fruit. Slowly turn my blood into poison, maybe, but giant fruit head is where I draw the line. How the &^%$ did kids think that was cool? And apparently advertisers still to this day think kids think that's cool.

"Hey Look! Drinking Yogurt made me look like a freak! Radical!" is what no one ever said in the history of anything.

I really should have got into advertising. Apparently food having disturbing effects on kids makes it cooler. I could have won an award for an advertisement where eating some Fruit Bingle Bangles makes a kid grow a vestigial twin and triples the numbers of toes they have. or somehow makes their eyeballs turn into cans of spray cheese. Sounds like the LSD they have is premium stuff.
 

Pig'sSaysAdios

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I'm sure many of you guys have seen this. But for those of you who haven't, this disturbing commercial is an ACTUAL AD from a real company called " Little Baby's Ice Cream:
I don't imagine the company had very high expectations when they came up with this commercial. Although, this was probably very beneficial to their sales considering how many views this thing has.
 

Drtooth

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I don't even have to click that link to know that's a "head up its own butt" artsy incomprehensibleness for artsy incomprehensibleness sake ad. I get a distinctive "let's pretend to be a weird Japanese commercial" flavor from it too.

Plus it sounds like the company is relatively obscure and wants to make a crap ton of noise to say "NOTICE ME, DAGGNABBIT!!!"

I get the feeling there are only 2 kinds of commercials. Ones made specifically for an internet audience and ones made to be like the internet without getting what memes are about.

I was going to show one of those awful Southern Comfort commercials that...well...I can't describe but are on the TVTropes Horrible Advertising page. But the last link was set to private. So even that company knows it made a lousy set of surreal for surreal's sake ads that re offputting and ugly.
 

Drtooth

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So Honda made one of those "look at how freaking different we are!" commercials where everything but their one car is made out of cubes, especially the humans. Now, they could have been cute, got a license from Minecraft or something and used that. But no. They went the "let's make everything unnerving to look at because we're clever because it's more memorable to be creepy" route.


They made photorealistic CGI Cube people. Yep. For all of those who saw that one episode of Captain N where they go into Tetris Land and thought "Holy Crap! Someone's gotta turn that into a live action thing."

Jeez.

I hate the whole "dare to be different by purchasing a car everyone else wants" car commercial concept, always have. But this is a whole new level of "We am artists! We am make ARTZ!" that man shouldn't have attempted.

Now I'm just going to sit back and watch this become a Deviant Art fetish.
 

fuzzygobo

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Maybe a lot of commercials don't disturb me so much... maybe...maybe...maybe... because ....I...cut..DOWN...on...how...much...time...I...spend...in...front...of...the...screen...Might...work..for...others...if..not... everybody ...but..they're...your...eyes...
 

Drtooth

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Remember how I said that Mr. Happy Meal man was a ripoff of the Minions, but they don't actually back down from that fact?

Well, nothing says "Of course we're a ripoff, so what?" like this image...



Yep. They released a Happy Meal Toy of the happy Meal Man Minion Ripoff dressed as a Minion. I gotta give them credit for that level of acceptance and Mea Culpa.
 
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