I said please . . .
“I’m just too much for human existence – I should be animated.”
–Wayne Knight
There’s another one of those anti-flatulence commercials that made me howl with flabbergasted laughter. Young man escorts young girl to car for first date. YM opens door for YG and seats her. While he’s walking around to his door, she lets one rip that sounds like someone tearing a bath towel into two pieces. He gets in and says, “Have you met the Smiths?” She looks over her shoulder and there is another couple in the back seat! Bwaaaaaahahahaha! I don’t normally respond to lowbrow humor but this one really got me.
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
The 1-800-COLLECT guy must be the most annoying product spokesman I’ve ever seen. He needs to be put down like a dog.
cmkeller- Is that the Levi’s commerical where the kid is wheeled into the operating room, and suddenly starts singing “Tainted Love”? If so, I loved that commercial, but I though of the song almost as soon as the machinery started going. Guess you need a weird sense of humor and a large knowledge of '80’s songs.
Oh, and that damned Candice Bergen really…
Just kidding, Daniel. Put down the knife.
JMCJ
This could be YOUR sig line! For just five cents a post, JMCJ Enterprises will place YOUR sig line at the bottom of each message!
-Chef,
I remember that commercial. Somebody at one time emailed me a Quicktime version of the commercial. It is hilarious.
I’ll see if I can find it.
“It’s like banging your head against a wall because it feels so good when you stop.”
Well, it probably does deserve to go on or near the top of lists of influential commercials. That was the commercial that turned the Superbowl into the prestige commercial debut spot that it is.
And Apple execs apparantly hated the commercial, but they’d already bought two slots during the Superbowl. They tried to sell them, were only able to sell one, and so had to air something. Might as well be that commercial they produced . . .
As for why they never ran it again: they didn’t have to. A&E’s show on “The Ten Greatest Commercials” had an exec from either Apple or Chiat/Day (the agency that did the ad) saying that the free publicity and repeats of the commercial after the first airing would probably have cost them about $50 million to actually buy. Instant pop culture phenomenon.
It’s certainly a heavily-admired spot within the industry, both because it was well-made and because it had such an impact. Greatest commercial ever? All a matter of taste. (I’d probably vote for the VW Jetta “everything comes together” commercial set in New Orleans, myself.)
All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases.
It’s all frightfully romantic.
Heavenly Creatures, scr. Walsh & Jackson
Based on a classic urban legend, and well-done. It’s an ad for a pager or cell-phone service, though, so it apparantly didn’t do its job. (I.e., getting you to remember what product it was pushing.)
There’s a good archive of commercials online, including that one, at www.adcritic.com .
All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases.
It’s all frightfully romantic.
Heavenly Creatures, scr. Walsh & Jackson
Keeves wrote:
With good reason. That commercial was brilliant on many, many levels.
You must be a young whipper snapper. Have you never read George Orwell’s 1984? If you were familiar with 1984 and saw that commercial, it would have left an indelible mark.
It was about oppression, apathy, and the willingness of the masses to bow down to totalitarianism and autocracy. Big Brother (AKA Big Blue) ranting in the background, the hammer of defiance crashing through the screen… Then the slogan:
Directed by Ridley Scott, the commercial is rife with cultural, literary and technical allusions.
Check out the following page for a detailed analysis and QuickTime clips:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/adclass/1984_mac_ad.html
Why would Apple want to cheapen the concept by “milking” it? Think Different! Word of mouth about the commercial was so strong and then it became known that you could actually see the commercial at some of the retailers… I wonder how many of those people, who went in to catch a glimpse of the commercial that everyone was talking about, walked out with a Macintosh computer???
It was definitely a brilliant commercial and a marketing coup for Apple.
I agree with aha - any and all commercials regarding feminine hygiene products.
I also hate those commercials that have those fake dancing babies in them (and no, I do not hate babies/children).
How about that stupid, irritating commercial with the guitar playing guy singing about “Doxidan, gentle Doxidan” (like anyone would sing about a laxative, before or after administering the product). Man!!!
I’m also tired of all the entertainment personalities telling me to dial another 7 digits when I make a long distance phone call.
Some of those “sale” commercials, like “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” and the ones for the “clapper”. (Did Drew Carey watch a lot of these or what?)
And somebody do something with that “Taco Bell” rat, would ya?
(If you ask me, anything that doesn’t have the Lizards in it is boring.)
“My, my. Such a lot of guns around here and so few brains.”
~Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon”
One of the early Preparation H commercials had a spot with animated lightning bolts to represent the pain of hemorrhoids. Lightning bolts!
Heck, you guys, any of the commercials showing today beat the pants off the dreck we sat through in the early days.
The dancing Alka Seltzer (“Alky?”) was considered avant garde.
Video game commercials, especially the PlayStation games ads. Always the same thing, 27 seconds of annoying plot of the main character, followed by 3 seconds of clips from the game viewed super fast forward.
Internet web site commercials. “Hey, let’s take something unfunny and offending, and make it ten times worse. That’ll get some hits in no time.”
Any and all commercials showing men as overweight, beer swilling morons wearing football jerseys that only think about sports, sex, and eating!
The Volkswagon commercial set in New Orleans is getting pretty old, too.
“Hope is not a method”
‘Feminine Moisturizers’
Those commercials drive me nuts. I asked some women what it is for and they don’t know.
Is that the one where everything is timed to the music on the radio? That commercial is awesome.
The worst commercials belong to Dodge, and their unbelievably annoying “New Dodge,” and “Different” campaigns. How many times do we have to see the “new” Dodge? They’ve had the same stinkin’ commercials since '93! And why is every car red?!?
Ok, maybe it’s just me. But I swear I want to “Run away! Run away!” whenever I see these ads.
Adam
“Life is hard…but God is good”
The salad garden…bleech we went to one a few weeks ago…the service was so bad the manager had to buy our lunch. I wonder if they know what real Italian food taste like…
And the ford commerical…gonna buy me a ford truck and drive it up and down the road…
What moron thought of those lyrics to an already mindless shitty country song ( Crazy bout a mercury)
err mmm make that the olive garden :
Hmm Those damn Taco Bell commercials are annoying I really hate that stupid commercial for their Chalupas.
Anyway, there are a couple local commercials I despise.
One is an add for a car company. It shows a glass of water on a table, someone drops in a couple of alka-seltzers. Then about 2 seconds after they are dropped in, you see the glass get picked up. Then you hear annoying-as-hell gluping sounds and then the person puts the glass down. It’s obvious the guy likes eating the alka-seltzers too. So annoying I forget what types of cars they sell.
The second is a radio commercial. It’s about stalking, but the annoying part is when the guy says “it makes him jealousy angry”. Anyway, I always have to change the channel before the guy says it.
I also understood what the premise of that old Macintosh commercial was (the book 1984 and all that), but I dont see why people think it’s all that and a box of microchips.
It’s worth the risk of burning, to have a second chance…
Toe Fungus commercials.
Has anyone ever actually heard of a case of toe fungus other than in those commercials?
atheletes foot is a fungus but is usually between the toes.
And no one has mention those OLD NAVY adds with that old whoredog dancing around it makes me retch. Doesn’t she know those ugly white glasses just scream “HEY, I am old and ridiculous”!!!
I would quickly become violent whenever a specific Taco Bell ad came on. It was about 2 years ago, just before the annoying ratdog. It mostly featured an all-black screen and someone whistling a very sick melody. I think the point was that without Taco Bell, life is pointless and dreary. They showed it so damn much!! I was also a bit disturbed by the Hitleresque Taco Bell ads where the masses are saluting the wretched ratdog ‘seig heil’ style with tacos in-hand.
Sweet Basil
The one for the AIDS home-test kit which starts off with a girl saying “I’ve got a new boyfriend, and a new reason to be tested for HIV” and ends with her deep-breathing and repeating “I’m OK, I’m OK.” Like we were all waiting to see how her test turned out.
There’s also a highly irritating commercial that airs on Fox Sports World all the frigging time, for some kind of Viagra type medicine or something. Some short goofy bald guy in a doctor’s gown comes on the screen and says “Discussing men’s sexual behavior is always a very discreet topic.” Huh???