For a few years, a manufacturer of a popular back pain remedy has had commercials using a wooden marionette. They have a new commercial where the puppet is weightlifting, gets back pain, takes the medicine, removes needles from his back… the puppet has been described by others as kind of eerie, but they’ve been using it for the better part of a decade.
But I swear the puppet, though crude, has the same facial features as Putin. Sure, it’s vague. But it’s definitely there. Same nose, mouth and eyes, at least.
Well, I don’t see any resemblance at all. I see such a lack of resemblance that I would think you were projecting, if I could sense any reason for you doing so.
Indeed; according to Putin’s Wikipedia entry, in 1994, he was an official in the administration of the city of Saint Petersburg, having resigned from the KGB a few years earlier.
Is this the puppet that you’re seeing in the ad? (It’s an image from Robax’s website)
If so, I suppose that I can, very vaguely, see a resemblance to Putin’s face, but I would suspect that it’s just a coincidence. There’s nothing about what you describe in the ad itself which would seem to be trying to be a parody of Putin – especially because it sounds like the puppet is meant to be the beneficiary of the drug’s benefits (and, thus, a sympathetic character), rather than a villain or the source of the pain.
Putin has unusually deepset eyes, is bald on top, and keeps the hair he has very close cut. Then, his ears are unusually close to his head. The ears and the baldness make his head rounder than most people’s heads.
The puppet has no ears, hair, or eyes. I think those things are to make you project yourself-- or any face-- onto it, though, not to make it look like Putin specifically.
I’m guessing it’s a coincidence.
Albeit, I’d also guess there are lots of Putin dolls out there with pins stuck in them. No one looking for a way to take them out, though.
That is the product and puppet. In the commercial, there is a moment where he lifts a barbell, then his face moves upward and grimaces. It is during this shot the features look most like Putin. The character is long-standing and I am pretty sure it is a coincidence.
It is a reasonably common artist’s drawing puppet, seen maybe a dozen of them over the years. I might even still have one knocking around in the basement at my parent’s house.
Ugh, that thing is creepy. I don’t know if the commercial (at least the original video) would interest me in buying that stuff. I think nightmares might be the more likely outcome.
Did you mean to link to that? Your link shows a shapely nude female puppet. It doesn’t look anything like the one pictured in kenobi_65’s post.