In my area, there’s a c&w station that has commercials with little kids (5 and under, though I think there may have been one or two older than that) lip-synching their way through songs. Now, even when I mute the tv, I still hear the songs in my head because I can see exactly what they’re saying.
If that wasn’t bad enough, somebody decided to have some of the kids acting out the line from whatever song it is they’re syncing over. So with the line “this kiss, this kiss” the little girl leans over and plants one on the boy, who makes a face. It’s horribly saccharine.
The “act” that bothers me the most (after proclaiming “All-American music, words you can understand!”) has some little crew-cut tyke mouthing along to the lyric “There’s a barbeque stain on my white t-shirt.” Whoever choreographed this scene is up for an Oscar, because guess what the kid’s doing? That’s right, he’s wearing a white t-shirt with a red stain the size of his head on it, and pulling it out so we can all see that he knows he has a stain. And to make sure we the audience realize that he’s got a stain on his shirt, they show the kid three times at once - so there’s three equally annoying children showing you the same shirt with the same stain on it. We get it, Mr Director! The kid’s got a stain! The song’s saying he has a stain! How clever of you to make the connection between sound and sight!
…Ahem. I seem to have tapped a resevoir of venom in my psyche here. Best to stop now before it gets messy.
Full stop, backspace and hijack here. Jason Alexander had a really good Broadway career before getting sucked into Seinfeld. He won a Tony for Starting Here, Starting Now and appeared in several other musicals, including do a great King and I parody in Forbidden Broadway. He is a fine song-and-dance man and I wish he’d go back to it.
He also sang for McDonald’s commercials years ago, before getting sucked into the great vortex that is Jerry Seinfeld.
My vote for the Dumbest Commercial is one for an SUV that shows Dad listening to a tropical storm warning on the radio. He rushes into the bedroom, wakes up his son, and they jump into the SUV and speed off into the storm. Headed for a shelter? No, they’re going surfing! In a TROPICAL STORM!!! :rolleyes:
Well, I guess at least it’s not a hurricane. Unbelievable. I really hate any car ad that shows drivers acting like total idiots, but this is so much worse.
KFC, pretzels, whatever that other product was he was hawking…All his commercials are the same. He flies into frame at an angle, nudging between two people in a way that would get him a clop in the chops in real life, whips out the chicken leg, pretzel or whatever with a karate FX sound, presses one side of his fat face against the camera, and zooms off again to annoy another bunch of people.
Why doesn’t Wayne Knight do commercials? Now he’s funny. I’d laugh if he read the phone book.
I want to throttle whoever wrote that commercial. I honestly don’t think your Verizon phone is going to work in the middle of the jungle/cornfield/desert/tundra. There are NO FREAKIN’ TOWERS THERE!
Sorry. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
Skerri,
another 2600 fan who will never like Verizon
I, too, find it annoying to see the “Can you hear me now?” guy . . . on my TV . . . in my living room . . . WHERE I CANNOT GET MORE THAN A SINGLE BAR OF SIGNAL ON MY STUPID VERIZON CELL PHONE. I want to drag him to my house. “Can you hear me now? . . . Uh, wait, I think I’m losing you . . . Uh, hello? Hello? Crap, I dropped the call!” Surprisingly, I don’t live at the ends of the earth! It’s so freakin’ stupid to show him enjoying the use of his cell phone in the middle a swamp when I have to drive over the next hill of a well-populated rural area to get service.
This is not a big problem, because my mobile was expressely purchased for use away from home, and I symapathise with the difficulty of making cellular service available in all the valleys around here, but I still find the commerical annoying.
But I must agree with Jodi. The roll-on on the feet is definitely the dumbest thing on the airwaves at this moment. 'Cause, see, the antiperspirant doesn’t actually make you cooler. It doesn’t even claim to make you cooler! As far as I know, there isn’t any antiperspirant that claims this. Degree’s schtick is that it gets better at stopping odor and wetness when your body heat increases. So they can’t even seem to get their own stupid advertising claims straight.
/hijack/
antiperspirant on feet works GREAT for activities that are sure to cause blisters (ice skating, hiking, etc.) just rub it on the ankles and other spots that are prone to blister and viola!
And mine
I loathe that commercial. I wonder what idiot thought that showing a commercial with that twit would help sell cars? Am I supposed to relate to him somehow? Am I supposed to think well of him? It comes off as “I’m rich, rich, rich, super rich, and I’ll always be rich. I’m so rich that my very rich grandfathers used to be able to pay off various presidents. That rich. So buy my cars.”
My fave was always that old ad for some anti-deodorant shampoo where the guy puts brand x one one side of his head, and the promoted brand on the other. He then proceeds to explain that the good brand “tingles.”
That’s it. No explaination of why it’s tingling, or what possible good that is, just that it “tingles.”
I always wanted to dip his head into some low grade battery acid and ask him if he feels the tingling.
Anyway, I have to say the dumbest commercial of all time is one I heard on the radio about a year ago and still remember. That says something, I think. It runs something like this.
“Aww, look at 'er. Isn’t she precious? With those red tennis shoes and blue jeans. She’s your little girl. And you want only the best for her. That’s why you feed her chicken.”
WTF? Way to shamelessly abuse sentimentality to hawk a product completely unrelated to family life, guys. Brilliant.
There was one commercial in the early '80s that aggravated my mom and myself, for different reasons. It was for some kind of breakfast pastries. Dad, Sis and Junior all have to run out of the house in the morning: Dad has a meeting, Junior has to feed the classroom turtle, and Sis has cheerleader or band or something practice. Mom uses her box of Sweet-O-Crax to lure them all into staying, teasingly saying, “The turtle can wait!” “Keep 'em home for breakfast with [product]!” the voice over proclaimed.
Mom: “Yeah, keep 'em home for fat and cholesterol! And they’ll be shaking by 10am from the sugar rush!”
Me: “The turtle might not mind if Junior’s late, but the teacher sure will! Imagine telling a kid his responsibility is to get a junk-food fix, not to do what he agreed to do!”
DC-area TV stations run a commercial for WTOP talk radio that I loathe.
“Your favorite radio station doesn’t play songs!” The word “songs” said in a voice that implies you’re stupid if you like listening to music on the radio.
WTOP is not my favorite radio station, so shut up.
Is any there any ad more pretentious than the MCI “Neighborhood” one? Desperately trying to tie in free speech, the American way, and everything that is good and noble in life with some minute variation of long-distance service gouging just smacks of post 9-11 profiteering. I’m surprised the ad doesn’t end with the narrator solemnly intoning, “If you don’t switch to The Neighboorhood, the terrorists have already won.”
what about the one where a luxury car is going to dinner at an upscale restaurant and two ladies are fighting to be tha one to pull up “his” (the car’s) chair.
