A favourite, but rather frightening commercial - Cats With Thumbs
In the new commercial the poor little girraffe is on a treadmill running 
Kylie Minogue’s Agent Provocateur advert. (mildly NSFW)
Also still enjoy this old Silk Cut cigarette commercial that was screened in UK cinemas in the 70s. (mildly politically incorrect)
Actually if you look at what he’s doing, and what the “real” giraffes are doing on the screen, he just mimics them. He’s walking when they walk, and when he starts to trot on the treadmill and giraffes on screen are doing the same.
My favorite will always be “Apparently riding the dog like a pony is FROWNED upon in this ESTABLISHMENT!” I always stop what I’m doing to watch it.
Most of the ads cited here are funny. In the “not funny” category, here is one of the more moving ads I’ve seen, which aired during the Superbowl in 2000. This was five years after Christopher Reeve had been rendered quadriplegic in a horse-riding accident, and in the commercial they portrayed him, sometime after 2006, walking again. Although fictional, that scene was quite controversial at the time, apparently because of the thought that some people might be given the false hopse that we were finally able to repair major spinal cord damage and render the lame whole again. In any event, it’s a rather emotional scene, to me at least, contemplating the “what if” of being able to give profound hope to people in the profoundly hopeless situation of quadriplegia. I get teary now just watching it again on YouTube.
Could it have been the Nike ads with Spike Lee playing Mars Blackmon (or Blackman)?
Joe
Another one in this category: the clysdales at Ground Zero.
For the love of cheese, the Cheez-its commercials with the “immature cheese” crack me right the fuck up. I don’t know why.
I hate that I love these.
No. The guy in the commercials was white and may have had red hair. It was from about the same era, tho.
The tag line was something about a crossroads, tho, I think.
If I could find an email link, I’d ask the guy with the coding help website http://shortlikeafox.com/ if he remembers or has the ads. He seems to have the line right: “They say I’m short… short like a fox!”
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfUyGI9mZLI
I can’t believe any of the male dopers haven’t mentioned the Beemans Chewing Gum ads from the late 80’s. Best. Girl Watching. Ads. Ever.
Found the Long John Silver’s ad with the cute doofus in the background.
Mark my words – we haven’t seen the last of him.
Here are a couple of others I like that started out in this year’s Super Bowl.
Carma - Bridgestone Tires: A beaver pays back a favor.
How many bloody G’s are there? - Best Buy: What the bleep’s a Bieber?
Another along the same lines is the recent Chrysler “Imported From Detroit” ad. The shortened version doesn’t really pack much of a punch, but the long version, which aired during the Super Bowl, is both a love letter to the city of Detroit and a short film about its people. As a native Detroiter, I’ve never had an ad make that much of an emotional impact on me as this one did.
The recent news of Aflac firing Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of the duck and the return of Looney Tunes to Cartoon Network reminded me of my all-time favorite Aflac commercial.
The Verizon commercials with the girlfriend/stalker. That’s crazy, right?
The Mayhem ads still make me laugh.
Thank you. I’d forgotten about that commercial.
If we can go truly classic, I nominate the California Raisin commercials.