For those who can’t stand the Jamaican psychic (whose name is Cleo, by the way), I have two further points of hatred:
I actually saw one of her commericals where she was shuffling her tarot deck, and one of the cards actually flew out of the deck and over her shoulder, mid-shuffle. my coworker and I almost needed oxygen from the laughter.
Check out the last few weeks of Boondocks (at ucomics.com), where they’ve been really givining it to Cleo and BET.
Arrrgh! Kyla! Why did you do that to me?
I’m a credit man!..I’m a credit man (to the tune of “Soul Man”)
I also hate the string of Mitsubishi ads that try to SHAME you into buying one of their cars. Like the guy in the gym who hears the announcement that there’s a minivan with its lights on and he ignores it, or the guy in the carwash doesn’t want to pick up his station wagon when it’s done, or the woman assumes her date’s car is the fancy sedan and it’s not…RUDE!
I know these have already been talked about, but I just had to add…
It’s gotta be the Domino’s Pizza “Bad Andy” commercials. What the hell is that thing anyway? Are we just supposed to accept him with no questions asked? He just shows up on our screen one day and we’re supposed to just pretend that he’s been part of Domino’s for all these years? There was no introduction, no preamble, no nothin’! Here’s Andy! First, what is he doing that’s all that bad? Well, the fact that he’s not funny is pretty bad. The fact that he’s annoying as hell is bad. What is he - a monkey? A dog? A rabbit? Looks like an old sock with some eyes stitched on at the last minute. Bad Andy? Bad concept. Needs to be completely re-thought.
Another bad campaign is the Pepsi commercials with that very, very scary little red-headed little girl. I believe that she must be possessed by some sort of demon or something.
And regarding the old lady and her dog in the “Old Navy” adds, I like my friends take on it. He fanaticizes that the old lady (who’s quite scary herself if you ask me) actually shaves that poor dog and uses his fur as the new Old Navy clothes. In fact, the whole company “farms” the hair off that (abused-lookin’) pooch. And what’s up with all those (not that there’s anything wrong with it) dancers and singers? They all have a very “cult-ish” look in their eyes.
Andy, the Pepsi girl and Old Navy scare me.
For the jewelry commercial haters, there was a great episode of The Family Guy where they received this inheritance. The wife was saying how she doesn’t need all that stuff, the mansion, the cars, the jewels, she loves the house they have and the life they live already and Peter says “But honey, you deserve nice things…Like diamonds!”
Flash to one of those shadow commercials. Man and woman meet and the man presents a big shiny diamond ring. The next thing you see is the shadow woman start to go down on the guy…cut to the tag-line “Diamonds. She’ll pretty much have to.”
I can’t help but think of this and laugh every time I see a DeBeers commercial.
Oh, and dublos, I had an RCA tv that had a timer/recall button in the lower corner. What you could do is set it (10, 20, 30, 60 or 120 seconds) and then go channel surfing. When the time was up, it would go back to whatever channel you had been watching.
And TwasMimsy, “If I want to get my mom a chainsaw and a subscription to Playboy, I will go right ahead.” I find myself strangely attracted to you…or your mom, either way. 
I would like to introduce you to strawberries, who would be posting this herself except for some strange reason SDMB doesn’t like her password. (I know she’s using the right password, I’ve got the mail message on screen).
Anyway:[/Ahunter3]
IT’S THE CRUNCHIE CEREAL BOWL! IT KEEPS YOUR CEREAL FROM GETTING SOGGY!!! What it really is is one of those micrwaveable plastic plates with the different sections. You put the cereal in one section and the milk in the other, and then you take your spoon and dip the cereal out of the cereal section and dunk it in the milk section. Then they say, “A GREAT DEAL- ONLY $19.99!!!(plus shipping and handling)”
The first time I saw it I thought it was a joke.
Ooo, I remembered another couple.
They don’t run them any more, but a few years back Juicy Fruit used to have a sequence of ads where computers were exposed to the gum and “computed” how incredibly tasty it was. The one I remember in particular was about a bar-code scanner at the supermarket; the register popped up something like “yum” on the price readout. I know, I know, mass marketing is aimed at the mainstream, and most folks don’t know that much about computers, but I refuse to believe I’m that much smarter and better-informed than the average.
And here’s another one that bugs me. There’s a new series of anti-drug ads currently running. One’s got a strange stop-action look, with a cone-shaped girl dancing blissfully in a park and casually beating the snot out of a couple of drug pushers. At the end, they flash up a picture of a real human, with the tag line, “My drug is dancing.” The other one I’ve seen is aggressively stylized computer animation, with a dude walking down a sidewalk while all these big shiny monsters incorporating drug paraphernalia (e.g., a scorpion with a syringe on its tail, IIRC) trying to attack him as he strolls along, but having no effect. Tag line, ditto with picture of guy: “My drug is music.”
So what’s my problem with these ads? THEY’RE THE TRIPPIEST GODDAMN THINGS ON THE TELEVISION. What does it say when your anti-drug ad can be fully appreciated only if you’re on drugs when you watch it?
Oh, and re the Bad Andy commercials: I have to admit, I sort of like them. The absurdity is the point, I think. Maybe I enjoy them just because they’re so different from anything else running, that they’re not just strange, it’s like they’re coming from way beyond left field… left field on some totally different planet. Commercials are usually so awful and boring, it’s nice to see something unique every now and then, something that really captures your attention and imagination. I like the ten-seconds-of-silence “I’m listening” ads for the same reason, though they’re getting old fast.
P.S. I meant to say before, that “red dot” commercial is just plain wrong in so many ways. Yeesh.
OK, I can dig the fact that you want to see something new and original in advertising, (I am sooo into different and creative things) but having a puppet as the mascot for a product is different to you? Andy is just a bad replacement for “The Noid” – anyone remember that annoying little character? When advertising agencies run out of new ideas, they just pull out the good old “annoying little character” concept. It’s all just a transparent attempt to appeal to children or worse, to sell little “Bad Andy” dolls.
But if “Bad Andy” was even remotely funny, I might like it. The fact that he steals all the heating cores to make a steam room for himself in the back room is funny? Then he pours water over the cores, makes some little “Andy noise” and makes a little steam for himself. Nope, still not funny. What about him jamming his face in the copy machine. Sorry, not even funny by accident.
God, I can’t believe I’m actually dedicating this much time and thought to Sad Andy. I apologize to my brain.
I can’t take anything with rap music. If I’m in the kitchen and can’t reach the remote, I’ll pull the plug from there to avoid hearing it.
Songbird is one of those that does advertise on TV. Unlike Beltone and Miracle Ear, they really are a hearing aid manufacturer and not a hearing aid dealer franchise. Songbird makes disposable hearing aids, which sounds like a great idea at first, until you realize that everyone’s ears are slightly different, and trying to make a “one size fits all hearing aid” is quite difficult.
The Songbird ads don’t bother me as much as the Beltone and Miracle Ear ones do, because the ads don’t go overboard with building up unrealistic expectations.
I hate these anti-tobaco commercials from “truth”. Especially the ones with hte bodybags in the club and the people are talking to them. At the end the kid holds up a sign saying “What if cigarette ads told the real truth”. THAT ISN’T THE REAL TRUTH. There are no dead people in bodybags in clubs. The one where they are piling bodybags outside of the tobacco company ticks me off too. Yeah, let HARASS the companies we don’t like. That commercial borders on promoting terrorism. I hate those.
Cervaise- It’s actually ANTI-drug, not drug. They’re against drugs, and that’s what they use to keep their minds off drugs.
Uh, yeah. I said that. My point is, the look of the “anti-drug” commercials is freakish and wild… like the sorts of movies drug users especially enjoy. That’s the contradiction. See?
I’m tired of the simple ones UPS and Amazon dot com have now. They are made of cardbard and a few “plain folks” actors and look like they were thrown together by an out-of work community theater group in a weekend.
Another “THE TRUTH” commercial on my personal “WHY, GOD? WHY!” list is the one where they encourage you to tear cigarette ads out of magazines. They then flash the message “Make sure to only tear the ads out of magazines you own.”
Pardon me?
WHAT THE BLANKETY-BLANK-BlANK WOULD THE POINT TO THAT?!?!!?!
Now I could understand telling you to boycott magazines who buy cigarette ads; that might make sense. But looking through the magazines you already own and tearing pages out? WHY? The companies in question already have your money. It forces you to actively seek out cigarette advertising. And you’re probably going to rip out sections of half the damn articles.
Of course, what else can you expect from a anti-smoking campaign funded by tobacco companies. I almost think the whole point of “THE TRUTH” is to be so stupid that it makes people want to smoke, just to piss of “THE TRUTH”.
The ones where they try to sell me stuff. Other than that, I like commercials just fine.
re: Jim Shapiro commercials from Rochester – see http://www.armchair.mb.ca/~scissors/rochester.html .
GAP COMMERCIALS! ALL KIDS WHO APPEAR IN THOSE PILES OF FECES SHOULD BE DRAWN AND QUATERED!
ARG!! I hate the Levis commercials with the Karaoke people singing “Downtown” so horribly… gah!
Well this is radio but I have to say it. In the Chicagoland area there’s a commercial for Max Madsen Mitsubishi. It has to be the most evil and hate filled monstrosity ever to reach my ears!
“He’s mad he’s bad but you’ll be glad when you meet mad max madsen.”
::shudder::
“I’m Tom Shane from the Shane Company…”
He tries to sound like the poor, local jeweler who’s trying to survive against the ‘big mall jewelers’. Yet his company is probably bigger than most of the 'mall jewelers COMBINED. Ever heard of a major metro area without The Shane Company?