This is reminiscent of a series of KitKat commercials from back in the 80s. The tag line was, “Give yourself a KitKat, give yourself a break”. There was one in which a photographer was waiting patiently to take a photo at a zoo enclosure. He eventually decides to take a break to eat his KitKat bar, and while so distracted, fails to notice the pandas suddenly coming out of their cave to prance about, and thus he utterly fails to get the exact photo he’d been waiting to take.
My take away from it was, “Use our product, screw up your job!”
AT&T must have scrubbed it from existence, because I can’t find a link to it, but a few years ago they had an ad where a woman was working in her fancy greenhouse, and the husband said something or other about getting a new family plan, and the bitchy wife said something like “I should have married John Clark!”
The punchline (such as it was) was that this service was free, but she didn’t know that and was so fed up with his spending habits that she wanted him to know she regrets their life.
A classic example of a commercial with an unintended subtext would be Geritol’s old “My wife, I think I’ll keep her!” campaign, which aroused the anger of feminists.
I think even the makers of Geritol are embarrassed by it now. I tried searching for an example to link to, but I couldn’t find one. But given the amount of old 70s/80s-era ads that are on youtube, I thought it was strange that not a single one was available, as if they’d been scrubbed off the net.
Back in 1964, long before parroting memes was, well, a meme… we spoke in commercial punchlines.
My mom would do something, and my dad would sigh “My wife, I think I’ll keep her!”
Us kids kept yelling at her to elbow him in the ribs, but she played along, beaming like a bimbo 60’s housewife.
We also spouted lines like “That’s a spicy meeeeatball…” Or “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing…” and later “Where’s the beef?”
I keep hearing this radio ad for the genetic background test 23 & Me on the way home every day. In it, 2 people are talking and the woman keeps telling the man things like “I can’t eat ice cream because my genes are inclined toward lactose intolerance”, “I should go to bed early because my genes indicate I don’t sleep well,” etc.
My takeaway is that having this information will make me even more neurotic than I already am and afraid to live my life. Also, people who use their service are too dumb to use their own experience instead of mail-away test results to dictate how to live.
I wonder why her test didn’t tell her she was too easily influenced.
Viagra used to have commercials with the tagline “For guys who know how to get things done.” The problem is the guy is usually alone.
In one the guy is sailing a boat and some doohickey breaks, so he patches it with some other doohickey. (No, I don’t know how to sail why do you ask?) Anyway the SO is apparently back on dry land.
In another, the guy gets his pickup stuck in the mud while towing a horse trailer, so he gets the horses out and hitches them up to pull out the truck. There is nobody around for miles but the horses…
Cialis commercials where the 2 people are in separate bathtubs. HOW BIG IS IT GONNA GET?
Doubt the commercial I’m mentioning doesnt really match the topic but why is Danica Patrick (I think that was her) touting she quit school at 16, had some bad times but now…she is advertising fast cash joints?
Yeah that’s a good one. Kiddies leave school at 16 and you eventually make it!
What always got me was the (likely not unintentional) warning on the Viagra commercials about seeing a doctor if it lasts more than four hours. What guy wouldn’t think (Especially if he has problems getting it up in the first place) “Wow! A four hour woody!” :dubious:
Where are commercial potatoes USUALLY grown, anyway? :rolleyes: