I know it’s already been done in this thread, but the commercials themselves are so repetitive it just seems appropriate to repeat…
HEAD ON – APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!!
HEAD ON – APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!!
HEAD ON – APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!!
Oh, ya know, posting that about Head On, I just got how clever they are. They make the commercials so mind-bangingly repetitive in order to induce a headache in the viewer, so that we’ll go out and buy some of their product. Genius!
This is probably just a Massachusetts thing but on the radio there are these awful Empire flooring (or something similar) but they’ve had a particular jingle for many many years. It’s catchy and all, at the end of the floorman’s pitch you hear a woman’s voice singing: “588-2-300-EMPIRE today!” well, now they started doing
(floorguy)
“blah, floors installed next day, blah!”
(woman’s voice)
singing: “588-2-300-” music only, but notes sound like EMPIRE
(more floorguy)
“blah, huge carpet selection, blah!”
(woman singing again)
“588-2-300-” music only
(Even more floorguy)
“blah, we’ll come to your home to make the sale, blah!”
Now that they’ve tricked us the listener twice they finally do the entire sung jingle, every time I hear it I despise my falling for it, and by proxy Empire flooring.
After hearing this commercial over and over and over on the venerable KNX 1070, I thought Empire Flooring was an LA-only business. Then I started seeing the commercials on San Diego TV.
No, we have Empire out here in the east, Og help us. I can’t believe I didn’t think of those commercials. The most annoying jingle in history! My hand hits the off button on my car radio with lightning speed when one of their commercials comes on.
No, no, no. The reason is so that when you’re completely plastered, you can say “SoCo” and still sound like you have your shit together. Trying to say “Southern Comfort” will just give your drunk ass away.
Yes! I was mocking those commercials just last night. Suck.
I kind of like the Empire jingle, though, but it’s for reasons unrelated to the commercial.
My commercial hatred goes to Future Shop for that commercial where they dub in the name of the sale. It has two guys talking about whatever specific sale they’re running at the time, say, for example, Big Screen TV sale. Only the words “Big Screen TV” are always dubbed in in a big booming voice and the guys’ lips all move for way too long to make sure we fully realise it’s dubbed. They also have to put the dubbed part in the ad 92 times each ad.
Then at the end, the customer asks something like:
“How can you afford to sell at such great prices during the <big booming dubbed voice> BIG SCREEN TV!!! </BBDV> sale?”
The guy responds:
“Well, we just make one commercial and then we run it over and over for every sale, like this one, the <big booming dubbed voice> BIG SCREEN TV!!! </BBDV> sale.”
There’s a chance I might have thought the ad was funny if not for the explanation at the end. Like, if these ads just started popping up and it was like Future Shop refused to acknowledge the dubbing in their ads. The acknowledgement pushes the ad from “could have possibly been funny at one point” to “Please stop beating me over the head with a joke that’s only mildly amusing at best and intensely annoying at worst!”
They’re in Chicago as well.
I think I’ve seen this one recently, but it might be an entirely different horror. One mom is standing at the slide with her little kid, waiting his turn, when another mom comes up with her kid and shoves him onto the ladder in front of the waiting boy. The first mom confronts the second, saying her kid was next, and the response is something like, “Well, now mine is.” The first mom’s response is to grab her kid, leave the playground, and go buy a Hummer. Well, I guess that makes sense - if your kid is cut in front of and doesn’t even seem to care much, while some woman is a bitch to you, might as well go buy a huge vehicle so you at least won’t feel pushed around while you’re driving. 
And Baltimore.
Well, it’s good to know that if I have to suffer, other parts of the country suffer too. 
It’s worse than that, I think. I’ve know about, and used, the term SoCo for several years now. It’s always been known that the one and only purpose of Southern Comfort was to get you drunked up for cheap - I’ve always thought of SoCo as a derogatory nickname in a way, along the lines of “let’s shoot some Yeager and get wasted!” It’s really funny to me that the manufacturers are trying to spin SoCo as a classy liquer, as if it could hold it’s own with fine whiskeys. No, dammit, Southern Comfort is sold in plastic jugs with handles, not in a nice bottle in a fancy box.
Seriously! I’ve lived on my own for years, always been able to take care of myself. If Speedy Lube™ showed a commercial showing a woman ineptly trying to check her oil in the glove compartment or something, the hate mail would flow like the river Thames. Why is the reverse acceptable at all?
I second the rap pepto Bismol add. Just watching it gives me nauseau heartburn indigestion upset stomach diarrhea!
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
They’re *from * Chicago originally. I guess if you grew up with them, you don’t mind them at all. If anything, it’s taken me a bit to get used to the “800” that they wedged into the jingle.
The PartyPoker.net commercial where the guy plays poker with a blowup doll or his dog. WTF? “Come to our site, and play with losers like this guy!” Sign me up!
In Louisville only:
Wild and Woolly Video. The song is (probably) called “Gorilla Stomp” and the scene is amateur footage from the 70s with a man and a woman doing a rather awkward dance. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t begin to explain it to you. It’s the strangest thing ever, and doesn’t explain what W and W Video actually sells, although I have a strong suspicion I’d be uncomfortable there.
Mayo
Empire Flooring is everywhere! Their name is at least appropriate. I hate that jingle, too, but I don’t boycott them because of it. I think they may just be too big for me to want to deal with them.
My new annoyance is for some crappy malt liquor drink, Parrot Bay. Granted I am just assuming it is crappy since that is how most malt liquor drinks taste to me. Anyway, they play this song with unidentifiable words and the first several seconds of the song sound like it’s stuck. Then when it eventually moves past that it once again gets stuck in a loop. Then the damn thing gets stuck in your head! Please just make it stop!
Youve got Head On then youve got Fredhem, The only 1 application hemoridal cream, theyve also got some arthritis cream, and I think a fourth product.
They ALL repeat themselves.
Any diaper commercial that does one of the following:
Dresses the baby up as anything but a baby (cowboy, doctor, etc) especially if done with stupid props (hat & lasso, stethoscope) and not actual clothing.
Begins with a sentence like, “You’re two years old.” No, I’m not. And anyone who IS two years old and is watching the television likely isn’t your market audience. Their parents are. And the parents are not, I assure you, two years old.
Shows a hand caressing a baby bum. I don’t care how much you love your child, that’s not something I want a close-up of. Caress your child’s buttocks in private, thank you.
That’s all.
That’s what I thought, but the frequency with which I’d seen the ads in other cities was making me second-guess myself.
Between that and Luna Carpeting (sings, “773-202 (beep-beep-boop-beep)* LUNA”) I have carpet-jingle-on-the-brain.
The commercial where this yellow CGI critter comes along in front of a toe and lifts up the toenail the way you would lift the trunk lid of your car.
Nasty piece of work.