The Arch Deluxe, actually. And the ad I remember seeing for that was a Bring your Dad to School day, and he described how he makes the Arch Deluxe, and all the kids were like, “Yuck! Vegetables”, like only a grownup would like a hamburger with a reasonably-sized slice of tomato and lettuce on it.
What I can’t figure out are the “Obey your Thirst. Ignore Advertisements. Except this one.” :dubious:
Thanks. I have to clean the coffee off of my monitor now. 
Yeah but the ones that do suffer RA and were just sitting there wondering what to do about it are seriously spooked by this ad.
The medication comment made me think of all those ads that tout some new prescription medicine. They spend 15 seconds telling you how great it is and what it is for and the next 45 seconds telling you all about what bad things that it could do to you. Of course, then they suggest that you go ask your doctor if it is right for you. I don’t know too many people who would be willing to spend 100+ bucks to ask their doctor about a new medicine that might cause them more problems than it would cure.
To be more specific, those men are almost always dads. There’s some dumb cell phone commercial airing now that has a family of four at a mall, and the dad is giving instructions on who calls whom: “OK, so I’ll call Bobby, Bobby will call Mom, Mom will call Cindy. Got it?” “Uh, dad, we don’t have cell phones.” “Oh . . . neither do I.”
Then they go out and get cell phones, and–surprisingly–manage to use them correctly without shoving them up their asses.
And I’ve seen more than a few prescription drug ads that leave me wondering, “Well, what the hell disease is this drug supposed to cure?”
On the medication idea, the one that really gets me is the one for Wellbutrin (I think thats the one anyway) where they are going on all about how great it is and what good it does and then some girl pops up and says “I like it because of the low risk of sexual side effects”. Now the whole world knows what her favorite pastime is and I’m at home alone.
For some reason that reminds me of tampon commercials. According to some, if you use their products, you can run and swim and ride a bike. I should buy some, because what with all the ice and snow on the ground, I can’t do any of those things.
Yet.
I hate the Tampax Pearl commercial where the girl accidentally knocks her tampon out the window at a party (first of all, who puts their tampon on the windowsill??) and then goes to extraordinary lengths to get it.
While wearing white pants.
I don’t care if it’s summer and it’s allowed–I’ve never met a woman who dared to wear white pants on any day when she also had to put tampons in her purse.
There’s some ad for one of those goofy “TV gadgets” that have no practical application in the real world that drives me up the wall.
It’s a paintbrush on hinge. A springy hinge. There’s a standard shot of someone demonstrating how marvelously convenient it is:
It’s on the end of a pole, and they’re applying a strip of coloured paint in a stripe near at the top of the wall by the ceiling. Several other colours have been layed down, for a nifty decorator look. Or something. Anyway, the handy-dandy hinged brush makes a couple of passes around the corner, demonstrating how great it is for painting corners – creating big, ugly splashes on the ceiling and over the other colours that had been laid down, and dripping down the wall.
WTF? It looks like a Saturday Night Live parody commercial. Look at how well this brush doesn’t work!
Another big WTF goes to the life insurance ad with Mickey Rooney and his good lady wife, where Mickey has something like two lines, and spends most of the ad in the background pantomiming washing dishes with clearly visible empty hands in full view eight inches about the sink. He looks demented, and nobody on the set seemed to care. Were there worse takes? “Oh, good! Rooney didn’t crap his pants this time.” “Is he supposed to be washing dishes or conducting an invisible orchestra?” “Who cares? Wrap!” The wife slapping the cookie out of his hands seems to imply “Hurry up and die, already!” too.
And an ad that probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow is for a product I can’t even remember the name of. It’s the Cillet Bang! pretender. It’s a big name company. And they copy the name to the extent that it’s like “Ajax Bam!” or similar. But the commercial – the commercial is exactly the same as the legendary-for-being-an-incomprehensibly-cheesy-low-budget-ad that Cillet Bang! runs in the UK. Smarmy, much-too-enthusiastic guy. “Hi! I’m Bob LikeIShouldKnow for NotCilletBang!” Same rows of product. Same shots of it cleaning stuff. Same money shot of “Lookit the shiney penny!” Except, you know, it’s a Canadian penny.
So far, the Canadian ad has yet to become a cult phenomenon. I’m not holding my breath.
I hate this one too… because what is she implying exactly?
“I’m sorry, but I won’t take this medication. It has no risk of sexual side effects at all. I want one WITH a low risk, thank you!”
My personal favorite get-pissed-off-every-time-it-comes-on commercial is for Ambien sleep aid:
Ambien will help you sleep. Ambien is non-narcotic. Everybody can become addicted to sleeping pills.
Uh… makes you sleep, is addictive… isn’t that the definition of A NARCOTIC?
There’s one for…Chilli’s? Outback? TGI Friday’s? Something like that.
A guy is the the restaurant with his friends. He spots his wife a few tables over with her girlfriends, and goes over there. “Honey? Where are the kids?” “Oh, Grandma has them!” And they look over and Grandma and the kids are there too.
Sounds so nice, right, because everyone want to do the same thing, even on their night off.
Except the dad is a complete penis. The way he walks up and interrogates his wife sounds like he’s loudly casting aspersions on her motherhood, like she just left them locked in the basement while she went out to party, and how dare she go out on HIS night out?!?
Seriously, that scene makes it look like it’s going to be an ad for the Women’s Crisis Center, and how to get out of bad relationships. I exaggerate only slightly.
This was explained to me by a reasonably high-powered TV advertising executive at a large cocktail party a few years ago. (Like the rest of us, she’d had several drinks, so I’m not sure how reliable this is.) Here’s what she said (paraphrased):
TV advertising is heavily aimed at women - men don’t watch enough TV and don’t act upon the advertising enough to be of the same level of interest to advertisers. Marketing studies show that women respond well to ads that show men as well-intentioned but dumb, and the women as savvy. So you’re gonna see a lot of that.
If that damned SUV was so good, then why couldn’t he park it next to the house? (If it were a Jeep ad, you can bet that’s where the SUV would be.)
The other thing about that damn SUV commercial that drives me nuts is that between landing and opening the door to hop into the thing, his parachute just vanishes. I guess he must stash it under a rock while he’s at work.
I’d never caught the interrogation thing. What bugged me was the way the kids were some kind of boat anchor to foist off on someone else. Neither Mom nor Dad wanted to have fun with the family. Yay! we’re all going out to dinner! Separately.
I’m not familiar with Cillet Bang! (from the FAQ it looks like it’s marketed only in the UK and other countries in Europe). It makes me wonder if perhaps the Canadian “pretender” may be actually the same product, rebranded for Canada.
LOL I complained about that one in last weeks thread on commercials … =)
I just about “went Elvis”(shot out the picture tube) because of an ad for an anti-psoriasis med that included in its glib disclaimer that one of the side effects was lymphoma! They didn’t even have the decency to turn off the happy-chant theme song for that one.
Lymphoma is not "slight headache or dizzy spells,"people–it’sCancer . It’s chemo,possibly radiation as well, hair loss, immune system suppression, lots of things not warranting a bad theme song about no more scaly arms!
Will the drug company provide free chemo meds for those who get this “rare side effect”?
It’s at night at a beach. A bunch of beautiful young people are all having a good time being beautiful and roasting marshmallows around a big fire, presumably after a fulfilling day of beach-themed hijinks. One handsome man pours Bailey’s into a glass full of ice cubes. A beautiful woman wathces him pour the Bailey’s, lust in her eyes. Left without supervision, her marshmallow bursts into flames. Freeze frame on the shocked look on her pretty face; the words “Sense of Panic” grace the screen. Without thinking, she dunks the flaming marshmallow in the Bailey’s to extinguish it. All of the beautiful people around the fire laugh jovially. When she withdraws the marshmallow from the glass, it is dripping with Bailey’s and looks delicious. Amid various freeze frames encaptioned with words such as “Sense of Discovery” and “Sense of Adventure”, all the beautiful beach people ignite their respective marshmallows and dunk them in glasses of Bailey’s. This is very sexy, especially when two beautiful beach women each dunk their marshmallow into the same glass of Bailey’s simultaneously.
All in all, it’s a decent commercial. So was the other ad in the same campaign, whose symbolism was clearly “Bailey’s = Jizz” (in a good way). One little yet key detail bothers me, though: What kind of a dumb bitch panics when a marshmallow catches on fire?