Oh, and when I was in London, there was a great one (car commercial) where a woman was driving, and her husband was asleep next to her. She’s driving like mad trying to wake him up - down stairs, over curbs, taking turns at 90, no luck. She stops at a light or something and there’s a good-looking guy standing on the sidewalk. He smiles at her, she smiles back in a dopey kinda way, and her husband, whose face is turned towards hers (and away from the gent on the sidewalk) opens one eye and says “OY!”
It’s really hard to remember a commercial you like until you see it again. The only ones I can think of are the one with the Pouty Goth schoolgirl in the office supply store and then she says “I thought you said ‘School’s Out Forever’!?” Then the camera pans over to Alice Cooper in full makeup, tossing school supplies into a shopping cart who says in a sweet voice, “No, I said ‘School’s out for summer’. Nice try though.” Then he shows her some colored pencils or something.
I don’t even know if it’s for Office Depot or Staples or what, but I like that one.
The other one I can think of similtaneously annoys me because of it’s stupidity and makes me smile. It’s the one where the women are trying to inconspicuously sniff their armpits to make sure their deodorant is working. The one that makes me smile is the chick who’s dancing, I just think she has the best armpit sniffing technique.
I saw a new one last night that made me giggle, and that’s a rarity. It might have been for a Citibank credit card, but I may be wrong.
A magician was onstage and put his hand into a top hat and screamed with pain and pulled his hand out, a white rabbit clamped firmly onto his finger. The magician jumped around the stage trying to shake the rabbit off, screaming in pain. At one point he got it free and ran into the audience but the rabbit took a flying leap from the stage and got him by the jugular. The rabbit, BTW, was CGI, of course. Yeah, I know, a blatant ripoff of The Holy Grail, but it was still funny.
Why this would make me want to have a Citibank credit card is beyond me, though.
I like the Rubberband Man one for (IIRC) Office Max. I also like the Ev’rybody was Kung Fu Fighting and CD Song ones for GEICO.
The one I absolutely hate right now is one for Toyota. “It doesn’t even look like my car!” Lady, you drove in with a rustbucket Ford Falcon. That’s a brand new Toyota. Of course it doesn’t look loke your car!
My absolute favorite was the Sprint commercial (one of the ones where someone misunderstood someone else over a cell phone) where the misunderstanding was between “oxen” and “dachsunds” and you see dachsunds hooked up to plows and things like that. At then end someone off-screen yells “stampede!” and about a dozen dogs run across the screen.
Another is the Kevin Bacon commercial for a Visa Checkcard. He tries to write a check and when asked for ID he runs out and grabs six people, then shows how they connect him to the store clerk. Kevin Bacon playing the Kevin Bacon game on a commercial.
Actually, the Charlie Sheen/Martin Sheen checkcard commercial is pretty funny too.
These commercials are sponsored by Southwest Airlines.
Theres also the one where they show the inside of a shoe store. A clerk is down on one knee and takes a shoe out of the box for the lady thats sitting and stands it upright. A guy down the aisle spots this, sprints down the aisle and punts the shoe. “It must be football season”
Or how about the workers carrying the 6’ x 12’ painting through the art museum. Patron see it, sprints at it, and crashes through it. “It must be football season”
Or the the crowded aisle in the produce department. Some lady accidently drops a melon on the floor. Some guys all standing around see it hit the floor and immediately dive for it all at once. “It must be football season”
My current favorite ad is the one for Staples’ office supplies. It features Alice Cooper as himself and a dad getting school supplies for his daughter.
The girl, who kind of looks and dresses like Wednesday from The Addam’s Family, says, “You said school was out forever!”
It’s classic Guy, the whole thing. The candy-apple coloured car shining like a beacon in the grey street, the “trendy” slo-mo effects, the awesome timeless music. The wink, too. Guy’s a playful romantic.
I rarely look at tele in the States, so just about any time I see adverts, I end up just staring! Most, bleah, but the other day was mesmerised by one for laptops, I think, showing a Goth girl in her uni digs, and her very preppy Sloaney new roommate comes in. Partly it’s the utter acceptance of the preppie girl; nothing phases her! Partly is the awfully amusing contrast in their archetypes. And partly it’s that the diametric opposites who end up bonding cos the whole advert reminds me of a very close friend who is completely opposite me in just about every way, yet we’re in thick with each other. (Were we the girls in the advert, she would be the pink girl, and I would be the Goth girl).
PS My partner loves the advert cos he swears, at the end, when the Goth girl is adjusting the snake around the preppie girl’s neck, she cops a feel.
Jack-In-The-Box commercials are always entertaining. The new one, where Jack is being interviewed by a French reporter is a classic.
My current favorite is for some cellular company. A couple is driving down the street at night, when a man talking into a cell phone freezes in their headlights.
“Oh. It’s Joe. Daytime minutes cost too much, so he’s gone nocturnal.”
Follwing shot shows him being chased away from knocked-over garbagecans by an irate homeowner. But the last shot is the classic: He’s running through a backyard when the dog, a pretty good-sized beast, hits him with a flying tackle that would do Dick Butkus proud, and knocks the guy over a hedge.
Yeah, those were good, except what the hell’s the deal with the guy in the birds nest and the bird brings him skittles? I really hate that one, it freaks me out for some reason.
Another fan of the Citibank identity theft commercials (“Fifteen hundred dollars for a leather bustier? But it lifts and separates!”) and the macaroni minutes cell phone commercials.
How 'bout the Starburst commercial where the girl eats one of the candies - wrapper still attached - and pulls the wrapper out of her mouth, only to be trumped by the boy, who folds it into a crane with his tongue first? I actually enjoy any commercial where the guy isn’t portrayed as a bumbling idiot it comparison to the girl.
I just saw a new one I like. I believe it’s for some network security by AT&T. It’s a giant trojan horse rolling through a large city and talking with a rather dorky voice saying things like “can I use your network?”, “Low mortgage rates, attract women, grow um … hair!”, “I have candy”. It reminds me of those old Saturday Night Live bits with the original cast where they did the land shark, “Candygram!”
