Goddess, I’m glad I don’t subscribe to cable any more…
…but these damn commercials get me anyways. In Toronto during the late nineties there was Oliver, the jeweler who will buy YOUR jewelery FOR CASH!!! All over the radio. All over the TV. I tried to escape. So he took out ads in the theatres. Not only did we get to see him fifty times larger than life, but we got to pay through the nose for it too!! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Then there were the Al Palladini’s Pinetree Lincoln Mercury Ford “Any Palladini’s a Pal O’ Mine!!!” car ads that blanketed CFNY, an alternative rock station whose audience was characterised by college students, who as everyone knows have plenty of disposable income and live to buy new cars. Grrr. After fifteen years I still remeber them. And Al Palladini himself, a used-car salesman, went on to become <sob> Minister of Transport.
And of course the Bad Boy furniture-store ads, featuring Mel Lastman in prison stripes, and the immortal tagline, “Who’s better than Bad Boy? Nooobody!!!” This owner went on to become <whimper>[sub]Mayor of Toronto[/sub]. And his son carried on the tradition, ‘enhancing’ the ads with lame computer animation.
I think these ads partly explain the decline of Toronto.
The single-most annoying commercial I’ve ever seen is one that runs locally around here.
Nice, sunny kitchen–kids and Mom are eating breakfast, Dad is hurrying around, straightening his tie and gulping his coffee…
Voice-over says" Bob planned for his children’s futures, he invested and has money set aside for their college education…blah, blah, blah…Bob is well-prepared (or words to that effect)…But…IN TWELVE MINUTES BOB WILL BE DEAD."
At this point, I can no longer concentrate on the commercial or risk having my head implode, so I’m not sure if the commercial is for life insurance or a local church.
Another local commercial that just cracks me up is one for vinyl siding. The owner of the company is extolling the virtues of his company, the main one being “We don’t hire drunks or druggies.”
He says those exact words!
Gah.
There are a couple of radio spots that make me grit my teeth. One for Little Cricket gas stations, featuring a man singing with annoying children in the background.
“Little Cricket…DUMMY!”
Then there’s the one for a bail bondsman with a young woman singing quite soulfully “Call 1-800-blah blah blah…We’ll get you ouuuuuut!”
Really? I find it hilarious.
It’s funny because no matter where you live, local commercials are almost always mind-numbingly silly in the same sort of way.
Yes, I am looking forward to the day that exec gets fired because he’s taking really long coffee breaks in a bad economy.
But the old gevalia commercial was much worse. No place else have I seen 60 more bloated and sickening seconds… “If your love is coffee, your passion will be gevalia.” And that’s not even the worst of this poorly penned paen to (what I am told) is a very second-rate cup of swill.
I also hate: any food commercial featuring a person taking a bite out of something, while a look of stoned rapture passes over his or her face. It’s a god damned slice of pizza, not something that will bend reality for you.
Any commercials with babies.
And last, those ads soliciting donations for children in developing nations. Everybody knows that it’s a worthy cause. But why oh why do they insist that they need to take four minutes of your time to explain it to you? Do they not realize that people will change the channel or make a run to the grocery store instead of watching a documentary about starvation they’ve already seen?
The “Only men, women and children get AIDS” one is totally ruined by the sing-song end. It makes me crack up every time.
I don’t know if this is local or not, but there’s a radio ad for a brake repair place where, after hearing a shrill brake squeal, this woman shrieks, “YOU didn’t get the BRAKES fixed! Are you trying to KILL us?” Gah.
But the one that really bugs me is the one with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy advertising Denny’s where Miss Piggy orders 3 Grand Slam breakfasts. After that, they go on to tell you that half of the damn breakfast is bacon and ham. Then Kermit makes a lame joke about not liking French food because they eat frog legs, while Miss Piggy is chowing down on pork. The hell?
Carine:
I had no idea that Mattress Giant was a nationwide thing. The commercials are so low budget, I almost had a hard time believing (wrongly, I guess!) that it was a local Houston store and not one from my (much smaller) hometown.