Am I imagining this is? or is the theme song to the new midwest usa america toyota commerical the theme from “Bridge over the River Kwai” I’ve heard it twice today and looked up the theme on line and :eek: it’s the same. What were they thinking? Is our memory that short??? Maybe this should be in the pit.
Although the song is synonomous nowadays with The Bridge on the River Kwai, it’s actually called The Colonel Bogey March and was written during World War I. I’ve heard the ad’s soundtrack playing from other peoples’ TVs, but have not yet seen it. I’m not sure what context the song is used in the ad. Happily whistling the tune while working hard would make sense, the old “Whistle-while-you-work” (to steal a Disney phrase) ethic which happens to be how the song was used in Kwai.
But isn’t it slightly ironic? 
Ah, took me a moment to make the connection between Toyota—>Japanese—>forced slave labor. Yeah, it seems to be a bit in bad taste, but I suspect that the people who came up with the ad did not make the association.
I saw that ad last week and had the same WTF response
I noticed it the other day and while I didn’t think of the “forced labor” aspect, I did wonder why a Japanese company would want that song in a commercial for their product after it was used in a movie where they were the bad guys.
Reminds me of a Tommy Hilfiger ad I saw a couple years ago. It was just an average Hilfiger ad, super models larking about in the clothes and what not. The commercial’s music was CCR’s Fortunate Son without the lyrics, except at the end they played the snip of vocals, “Some folks are born made to wave the flag / Ooh, they’re red, white, and blue,” as they transitioned into the red white and blue Tommy Hilfiger logo.
Kind of funny, since Fortunate Son is about denouncing the “red, white, and blue” folks…
I believe the commercial is for Nissan, not Toyota. At any rate, the manufacturer is Japanese, and I also noted the irony when I saw the ad. As this Wikipedia entry mentions, the Colonel Bogey March stirred up a minor diplomatic flap when the tune was played during the Japanese prime minister’s visit to Australia in the early 1970’s.
The ad was for Wrangler. I can still link the snippet of Fortunate Son with the announcer saying the slogan, “Wrangler. Real. Comfortable. Jeans.”
Heh. The Colonel Bogey March for Nissan, What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor for Toyota… I so want to make the following commercial…
STOCK FOOTAGE: Japanese aircraft attack Pearl Harbor, with emphasis on A6M Zero fighters.
GRAPHIC: In 1941 Mitsubishi surprised America…
GRAPHIC: In 2006 Mitsubishi surprised America again.
MONTAGE of the latest-and-greatest Mitsubishi sports car slicing speedily along scenic roads.
GRAPHIC: Mitsubishi. Taking America by surprise.
Next we’ll have Elmer Bernstein’s theme to The Great Escape for a Mercedes-Benz.
“Get away from it all!”
Noted advertising genius Jerry Della Femina came up with something very similar for Panasonic .
The cite, unfortunately, did not include the next line from the book:
“Nobody laughed.”
One of the funniest vanity plates I’ve seen was back around 1990 when we were driving up a mountain to go skiing. The Mitsubishi Montero ahead of us had this plate: A6MTYP0.
LOL! I mean I seriously was LiingOL!
thanks
Brian
Hitler
Has only got one ball
Rommel
has two but they’re very small
Himmiler
has something similar
but poor old Gobbles has no balls at all
I know there are other versions of ‘lyrics’ for the tune. I was watching The Lady Vanishes from 1938 and the commentary track noted how when a character whistles this tune it was a tweek at the censors because everybody knew the dirty words but the words weren’t being said.
That’s brilliant.
Wasn’t Nissan a significant manufacturer in WWII as well–which is why they had to be Datsun for a while?
Eh, well, it’s nothing, really.
That “sixteen tons” spot for coal, with the models trying to look grungy, that’s sick.
Heh heh - are you familiar with the old Smothers Brothers routine where Tommy says they “whistled the words” to the song because the words were dirty?