Every so often, theres a commercial that’s just… creepy. Either it runs through the entire campaign, or there’s enough backlash that it gets pulled, or… they change it to not be so creepy.
I know I’ve seen a few of these, but the one that comes to mind now is the pistachio commercial with the elephant lying on the floor. ‘The Squirrel sisters came over last night. Man, it got crazy. Those girls, they know how to party. And they’ll do anything for pistachios. And I mean anythinnnnng! Stuff I don’t ever want to think about again, but I’m an elephant! I can’t forget!’
Creepy.
Now it appears to have been replaced with one depicting the elephant on the floor, but there is no implication of squirrel sex. Now Ernie the Elephant regrets getting a mouse tattoo.
I don’t think it was changed. I’ve seen both very recently. And one with the elephant in the park with a black guy and one with him at the supermarket.
I don’t know about “creepy” but the original Swiffer commercials had the discarded broom or mop desperately trying to get back into the woman’s life via flowers or song requests on the radio. And the woman would roll her eyes and slam the door or change the station or close the blinds while the forlorn broom sat outside in the rain, no doubt wondering why the woman didn’t love him any more.
Eventually someone must have puzzled out that the protagonist in those commercials was the mop/broom and the antagonist was the woman and/or the Swiffer that replaced it. So they tweaked the ad campaign to the commercials where the broom gets put in a closet and immediately falls in love with a bowling ball which even the human woman thinks is weird as shit judging from her expression. So I guess maybe they made it creepier?
those Kellogg’s pop tart commercials that were so well demented they took them off after parents complained for a while but were so popular they brought them back and make new ones today
Yeah, they made several different ads featuring the elephant in their current campaign. It’s just part of a rotation. I saw one tonight with the elephant buying a ton of pistachios in a grocery store.
There’s a cable TV ad where people were scratching their heads and complaining about all of the fees. People got so creeped out by that, that now the fees are crawling around on the table and floors, and not in people’s hair.
Yeah that is pretty creepy! And because of that, a pretty effective ad.
I think one of the creepiest ads I’ve seen in recent months is the Skittle Pox Skittle ads.
The damn kid freaks me out!
The reverse of cutting out the creepy part is the commercial with the dog named Duck. They only show a very shortened version of this but when it first came out, a cute girl asks him about the dog’s name and they show his preschool self not being able to pronounce “Duke”. I liked that but they never show it anymore.
I was going to discuss that in the OP, but I recognised my tendency toward loquaciousness and decided not to. Yes there are a few different commercials. [NB ‘the Black guy’ is Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman.) There’s ‘Ernie At The Ball Game’, ‘Richard Vs. Ernie’, there’s the one where he’s getting patted down by TSA, and there’s ‘After The Party’. It seems strange that they’d make a series of commercials, all in different settings, and then have two ‘After The Party’ ones. Maybe they made both versions at the same time. Or maybe they got complaints and changed the squirrel sex one to the mouse tattoo one.
Ha- Never realized there was fallout about it, but I remember laughing at it with my Wife. The sister was just a tad too come-hither with her glances and shyness. Couple that with the pompous brother, “It’s a long way from West Africa”. It was just too good.
I remember a similar one from my childhood that was about a little girl, and her much older brother Peter shows up to surprise the family for Christmas (Bringing the Folgers, of course). It was sappy and cute- perfect for the season. With that as a guide, how did they miss the mark so badly with the updated version?
While maybe not creepy, per se, but did anyone catch the Comcast ad that ran over the Christmas holiday? The one where the grandparents discover that their grandkids think visiting them is like “going to hell”.
I’m not sure how I feel about the ad. At first I emphasize with the grandparents, that they’re getting called out behind their backs, then I feel sad for the grandkids, that they’re getting called out in public at the end of the ad.
But mostly I feel bad for the grandparents knowing what a shock they’ll get when they open up their next Comcast bill and see what they have to pay, while living on a fixed income.
Glad to see I’m not the only one creeped out by that one!
Another one that’s not so much creepy as distasteful is the latest one for the POM pomegranate juice, where the juice turns into four archers who all fire their arrows…followed by the screech of a cat.
Yeah, kill cats. That’s a great way to get me not to buy your product.
