I just saw a commercial for coffee, and I was so into the internet all I heard was “See a movie on Maxwell House”. Now, being the clean-minded individual I am, I immedieately thought of seeing a movie under the influence of coffee. The phrase “All hopped up on crack caffeine!” entered my head, and I blurted it out between paryoxisms of laughter. Luckily, I was alone.
Anyway, I got to thinking: What are some funny ads Dopers have seen? What are some stupid ads Dopers can cleverly make funny? I know you people won’t let me down.
Any of the ESPN commercials. The new CarrotTop one comes to mind. My favorite part is when he pulls out the “Bulls’ basketball” then proceeds to open it up, revealing a bunch of tissues inside, and then wailing “WHY?! WHY ARE WE SO BAAAAAAD?!” I think I almost died laughing. Also the one for ESPN the Magazine, with CWebb and Ray. That one’s funny because they are both such terrible actors and it is obvious in the commercial that they know it and are having some fun with it.
There was a series of commercials a month or so ago that I really shouldn’t think were funny, because they were actually pretty stupid, but had me rolling on the floor anyway.
They were for the X-Games(?) or Xtreme Games or something like that. Flat, cut-out, silhouette animation, more technically poor than even South Park, showing small furry animals doing things that our parents told (or should have told) us not to do years ago.
One was of a squirrel finishing a moto-cross type cross-country course, then being cheered to “drink the gasoline!”, which it does (pulling a straw out of some extradimensional space and sticking it in the tank) and promptly falls over dead, while someone offscreen pokes it with a stick.
Another had teddy bears skiing with scissors…the predictable happens. Decapitated and dismembered teddies everywhere.
These are really the kind of commercials you have to see to find funny, I suppose.
I just remembered one that I actually think is the best commercial I’ve ever seen. I only saw it once, on one of those commercial showcase hours that they run every once in a while.
It started out with a man buying a box of Trix at the store and bringing it home. Once he’s home, he locks his apartment door, reaches up to his face, and…pulls a Mission-Impossible type lifelike mask off to reveal the Trix Rabbit! Now, we viewers at home think “Yeah! He’s finally gonna get to eat some!” TR pours the Trix into a bowl, reaches into the refrigerator…and screams.
“Got Milk?” appears across the screen in big black letters.
I was literally rolling around on the floor at the end of this commercial. The super-hairpin turnaround on the premise just grabbed me. I swear I’ve been waiting for it to show up in a regular commercial slot ever since. Haven’t seen it yet.
There is a commercial for an alternate local phone service that says something like “If your home phone has been disconnected for lack of payment blah blah blah, then pick up the phone and call us now”. And always have to yell at my TV “Duh! If your phone has been disconnected you are not going to call anybody now.” It must have taken a real DMF to write that copy.
While I was sitting here, someone else has probably explained the commercial. I’ll have to check when I preview this post!
The Aaron Burr commerical was one of the best I’ve ever seen. The setting is a small room occupied by one man, and in the background you hear one of those radio trivia contests. The question has something to do with the famous Burr/Adams (?) duel, and the correct answer is “Aaron Burr.” The man in the commercial appears to have been waiting for this question all of his life; the room is littered with pictures and other memorabilia of the duel, including the alleged bullet (displayed with a two-word description: “The Bullet”). The question is read on the radio, and the man calls up the radio station. However, while on hold he stuffs a brownie in his mouth, and when the host puts him on the air, he discovers he’s out of milk! So all he can utter to win the Big Prize is “Aaron Burr” - in a very, very muffled tone. And of course the radio host has no idea what he’s saying, so he has to keep repeating it. He doesn’t have any milk to help him swallow the big brownie! His devotion to Burr lore has been all for naught!! Mass hilarity ensues.
Ohhh I remember the Aaron Burr commercial… my fave ‘Got Milk’ commercial though is the one where the guy is walking down the street on his cell talking to an employee. He proceeds to fire the employee as he walks into traffic and gets hit by a semi. He then wakes up in what looks to be heaven… huge chocolate chip cookies and a beautiful kitchen with a refrigerator full of milk… he eats some of a cookie then goes to get some milk and… all the cartons are empty. He screams and starts searching through the fridge but not a single drop of milk can be found. He isn’t in heaven… he’s in hell.
Another one I haven’t seen in awhile that I found funny was a Molson’s one. This guy goes to some place to buy beer (I think its the warehouse I dunno though but there is one of those roller slides along the side) He asks the guy at the counter for 20 Canadians (I think its 20… been awhile) and the guy yells into the microphone (like at a fast food joint) ‘20 Canadians!’ To the guys shock 20 people get pushed out on the roller thing not beer. You see a few go by then the next shot shows him sitting at home on the couch a bowl of popcorn in his lap and surrounded by 20 people.
I remember the Aaron Burr commerical too, IMHO the best of the ‘Got Milk?’ commercials. The question was, “Who shot Alexander Hamilton in their famous duel?” or something like that, and it was for $10,000.
I also like the recent Geico commercial about cheating the phone company (“Collect call from Bob Wehoddababyitsaboy”).
I recently was a ad that featured a dancing monkey, and two seniors were clapping it on. It does this for 25 seconds, then flashes “Well, we wasted seven million dollars”. I laughed me ass off over this ad.
Oh, i do love that one. It reminds me of the poorer days in hig school when I needed a ride and I would call home collect and say in the name space, “Molly needs a ride from School” hehe. My bad.
Although one of my favorite commercials on right now is for California Cheese. There are a bunch of cows in a feild, and they are all singing “I think I’ll Go for a walk out side” You know, that Brady Bunch song. Anyway, then the farmers wife sticks looks out the door, and there is a bunch of ssshhhh’s and then the cows all start mooing. Their mooing cracking me up everytime. I don’t know why. Anyway, then it say “God cheese comes from happy cows, happy cows come from California” hehe
This one shows a father and daughter at the pound and they are looking at puppies. The daughter admires this one little beagle pup who has a price tag of something around $400 and the father eyes a different cute, little scrawny pup that has a price tag of around $25(the other prices being marked off and down). The employee opens the cage to let them have a look and all of a sudden the employee is lifted off his feet and dragged half way into the cage by this little pup…the employee is screaming and yelling. A screen flashes afterwards that something to the effect of “some things are worth spending a little more on”.
Sorry I couldn’t give more specifics, I laugh every time I see this one and can’t even pay attention to the overall message!!
Speaking of puppies,
Its hard to beat the little sock-puppet dog for Pets.com (or whatever it was) when he sings wayyy off key,
KC and the Sunshine band’s
“Please don’t go…
Don’t go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o…
I just want you to sta-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay!”
In another one he’s sitting in front of an aquarium watching the fish, and holding his breath. After a minute, he caves, gasping for air.
There was this add for an insurance company that didn’t show anything much, but it had a voice over of something along the lines of
“Don’t you just hate it when you’re using your computer and you lose everything? That happened to me the other day. I pressed ctrl, alt, escape, and three other keys, just to see what would happen, and the whole house disappeared! Now, I’m not sure if you can be insured for that sort of thing, but… [blah blah blah, stuff about how to contact them]… or you can go to [their webpage] on the internet, if you have a computer. I don’t have a computer. I pressed ctrl, alt, escape…”
My current favourite commercial is the one for Smirnov Ice. Two guys are returning from fishing, when they see a bear rummaging through their camp. “He’s going after the Smirnov Ice! Bad bear!” One of the guys hits the bear with a fishing pole and immediately realizes it was a mistake. The other tries to calm the bear. “Nice bear. Look! Honey!” The other guy seems relieved that his friend thought of the honey and that the bear seems interested. But then the friend squirts honey all over him (the guy, not the bear) and the bear takes off after the hapless, honey-covered guy. It reminded me of the old joke: “We came upon a grizzly bear, so I put on my running shoes. My friend said, ‘You’ll never outrun that bear!’ I told him, ‘I know. I only have to outrun you!’”
I also like one of the earlier “Got Milk” commercials: “Is it the ring? Zirconia looks just like a real diamond… Is this about my time in prison?”
It wasn’t the commericial itself that I found so funny, but the other night I was watching tv with my brother, and we happened upon a Meineke (sp?) ad with Geroge Foreman extolling the virtues of good brakes or something. There was a shot of George and a smiling baby, so I immediately launched into my best Foreman imitation (which isn’t so good, admittedly, but it got the point across…) with “Do you want to grill and eat a baby, but you don’t like all that baby fat? Then get the new George Foreman baby grill…”, on and on for about 15 minutes or so. We were both in hysterics by the time I was through.
“Yum. That’s a gooood baby!”
Well, you had to be there. It was funny at the time.
The Aaron Burr milk commercial is a good one, but the funniest commercial I’ve seen in a long time is the one for Energizer batteries that looks like a political campaign ad.
The commerical starts out with the “candidate” in a playground pushing a little girl on a swing while the announcer talks about how Bob Whatshisname is concerned about families, he knows that children are our future, blah blah blah, so forth and so on. As the bunny rolls across the bottom of the screen Bob looks down and is shocked to see the bunny strolling by. As he stares incredulously, the girl on the swing arcs back, hits Bob in the head, and knocks him out cold.
Cut to the plug for Energizers, fade to black. It might be the byproduct of too much exposure to the Three Stooges, but I think this ad is funny as heck.
