How 'bout the singing, swinging, skeletal sisters: “there’s more to girls than meets the eye, we’re strong and beautiful, no lie…” Soft & Dri commercial. Yeah, man! Hot pants and high heels, a pseudo-military chant, and mirrored sunglasses. Kafka-esque.
Personally, I liked Joe Isuzu. And Fred Rated for Federated.
The singing belly buttons are indeed nightmarish.
I will second the aforementioned singing freaking bellybuttons, phone ads, and Epil Stop commercials (both spray and citrus) and I will also add the cel phone reception stickers (both kinds), any commercial narrated by a child, anything having to do with Old Navy, and all psychic numbers.
Am I the only one who sees the “College Girls Gone Wild” video commercial four THOUSAND times a night? The one that starts off with an Adult Material Not Suitable For Children disclaimer (as opposed to the adult material that IS suitable for children)? I hated that ad the first time I saw it and it’s just gotten more irritating through repetition. Honestly, if I wanted a video tape of girls flashing the camera I’d go to my group of community college buds with a camera and say “Hey, everyone flash me!”
It figures, my hundredth post and I’m whining about ads. Could be worse, though, my 69th post was about microwave pork rinds …
I don’t think Kafka would’ve thought THAT up even if he was tripping on acid.
I simply loathe those damn Geiko ads they repeat ad nauseum on MSNBC. They run three in a row…every single time they take a commercial break!
If I see that stupid lizard licking his eyeball one more time, I swear I’m going to hurl a damn brick through the tv screen.
Carl’s…Junior…
Thankfully I don’t see them much anymore. They were in full force when I was in advertising class, and I think pretty much everyone in the class agreed that they were disgusting, horrible, stupid commercials.
“If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t go in your face.”
BLEAGH!
Saw the bellybutton one once, thank the Seven Heavens, during a USA Network showing of Street Fighter: The Movie. I found it infinitely more stomach-churning than anything in the movie. Yes, it was that bad.
Agree on the unbelievably insipid AFLAC and GEICO commercials. Sheesh, how is poking fun at the name of your company supposed to sell anything??
Hate, hate, HATE the moronic, stomach-churning Movie Channel commercials which have the say the word “movies” over and over to Ode to Joy. It’s not enough that those barbarians had to bucher one of the finest classical pieces of all time, but they did it for a commercial idea that a SIX-YEAR-OLD could have thought up!
Patience wearing really thin with the American Express (or whatever, I don’t even bother to watch anymore) commercials that show a panicky woman rail on about her situation. Dammit, I don’t want to see human suffering! Just get to the freaking point!
Really wish BASF would just give it a rest already. All right, you make a lot of products better, you’re good people, we get it already.
It’s been ages since Budweiser has had a decent commercial. They should have killed the lizards bit at least six months before they did, and I don’t even get “Wassssup” or its knockoffs.
Please, no more talking babies.
Or talking animals.
The Sportscenter promos used to be funny, but now they’re flat-out surreal. Man, someone must be smoking something over there.
For sheer gall, however, nothing can top the smarmy Philip Morris commercials. I mean, my GOD. What, peddling your coffin nails isn’t enough; you also have to insult our intellgience?
Whew…I fell a lot better now. (The hell I do… :p)
The Desani bottled water commercials.
The ones I’ve seen feature R&B, and rap music legends, The Gap Band, and Sugarhill Gang respectively. They have these guys singing classic songs from MY youth to shill their water. (It’s alright if they use music from someone else’s youth) It might not be so bad if the actions in the commercial were even remotely related to the songs(!)
Any baby diaper commercial!
Typically, they have older children with full sets of teeth running around doing “adult stuff” (office work, etc) while wearing only a diaper. I swear, some of these kids look like they’ll be shaving tomorrow!
There’s currently some ad from a hotel chain that offers free travel points or something like that. All I know is that the ad ends with some kid playing golf with an old lady who keeps laughing like a hyena. How I hate this ad. The whole commercial is so obnoxious and even though I’ve seen it a hundred times I still can’t remember what friggin’ hotel chain it is and what the travel offer is. Good job, advertising agency!
That’s Holiday Inn. I’ve been to one twice, and both times I got horrible service.
So we hate lots of these ads. But notice that we often can’t remember what product or company they are for! It is not working! We get the joke or hate the joke or the jingle or whatever but we don’t know what is being advertised. Have the ads gotten to the point that they are only trying to be clever or artful or offbeat but miss the point? I can’t remember which clever ad is for which car. Is is just overload?
Oh yes. Carrot top.
I keep expecting him to suddenyl pop up in a regular show…
He is actually more annoying than Gilbert Gottfreid.
Would somebody please shoot that fool wearing The Riddler’s hand-me-downs?
And what’s with the jock making fun of the SportsCenter guy’s name?
I can’t stand any commercial for Jack-in-the-Box. I will never eat at that restaurant for the mere fact that the guy with the big white plastic head annoys the crap out of me. I want to smack it like a pinata.
My top hate commercial right now is (I think) from Buck-a-day computers.
It starts out with some really, really lame song “Do you really want a clone”
Cuts to some real ugly kid with braces (obviously the camera-mans kid or something) who shouts "Nooooooooo!"
Chorus again -“Do you really want a cloooone…”
Cuts to some other kid that they dug up just yells**“No!!!”**
They also have in real small print at the screen something like “$199 shipping and handling not included”
BTW - What the hell is a “clone” a “clone” of in this day and age? Its not like IBM is the premier making of x86 machines.
<gack!>
That arthritis drug where they sing the name of the drug over and over. Don’t know the name of it but it sounds like “Celebrate!” So it’s “Celebrate! Celebrate!” over and over again while the lady dances in the park.
Jack’s are about the only commercials I can tolerate. They’re even kinda funny once in a while (the first 800 times at least).
Thank the Good Dude that they’re not showing them anymore, but everytime I saw those freaking Verizon Wireless ads with the “People Just Wanna Be Free” song in them I thought to myself, hey - why am I not pouring boiling water on my genitals? If it wasn’t bad enough to torture us with these frickin slo-mo peace sign fake hippies once, they ALWAYS ran them twice in sucession, so you were gauranteed a double dose everytime.
I also despise the Cingular Wireless ads. “We’re a big heartless corporation that believes in self expression!” What the hell does a cell phone have to do with self expression?
Also, what the hell is wrong with Coors light? Does anyone actually watch their ads before the agency sends 'em to the TV studios? The “want a cold one” series is without a doubt the stupidest chain of ads I’ve seen in a long time.
And I’ll second the nominations for anything involving that little “zoom zoom” bastard. And the Aflac duck. And Geico. Damn I watch too much TV.
LOL yeah that one sucks pretty royally. It reminds me of another one. It’s for some type of denture adhesive. It has a bunch of oldies-but-goodies as a symphony biting in to corn et al while a conductor leads them.
Oh, great, bernse had to go and remind me of PeoplePC and their precocious (ugh!) spokeskid. 25 bucks a month for both the PC and the Net service? Yeah, right, what’s the catch?
I have to third the Epil-Stop commercial. And fourth it and fifth it. It is the worst.
I was sitting on the couch this weekend, eating Trader Joe’s spicy tortilla chips, drinking a Diet Coke and channel-surfing. What did I see? A loving close-up of some chick’s hairy armpit being spritzed with some spray. I wasn’t sure what to do first, throw up the chips or scrub my eyeballs.
Jeez, the next thing you know we’ll be seeing douche demonstrations.
Oy.
I moved a month ago, and didn’t order new cable television service. And my VCR blew up a week before the move, so I can’t get anything off the air. (I used an old Amiga monitor to display the picture.)
This thread reminds me of half of the reason why I don’t really miss TV*.
The other half of the reason was a calculation somewhat like the following:
[ul][li]Cable internet service from Rogers: $40/month.[]Minimum package of TV channels: $17/month.[]Package of TV channels containing channels I actually want to watch: $25/month.[/ul]Minimal cost including service charges etc: $84/month. And no roomates to share it with.[/li]
Of course, if you want the Fancy Digital Channels, the digital cable box is another 10.95/month. And then there’s digital programming packages and specialty channels on top of that.
So I could easily spend more than $100/month on cable.
[sup]*Except Teletoon. And The Simpsons. Oh yeah, and Space, the science fiction channel. And CBC Newsworld. But except for them…[/sup]