Commercials: the good, the bad, and the Ugly!

[Thephantomprincess]

Lately, I've become more oppintionated on those little vinettes that we see inserted in the middle of our favorite television shows and before the movie previews. Some make me roll on the floor laughing, while others drive me insane. So, What are your favorite/least favorite commercials?

The one that annoys me the most at the moment is the Snickers commercial with the guy and the picture of the Panda. I want to strangle him so I don't have to hear tha annoying voice whine "pretty Panda dancing". It doesn't make me want to buy a Snickers, it makes me want to change the channel or buy ear plugs!

My favorite at the moment is the Dupoint commerical for carpet. You see a single guy in a house making a snack or lunch. Then cut to the mouse, the cat and the dog. You see there plan go into action as the dog distract the owner and the cat knocks the food off the table on to the floor. The owner sees the mess and gets stuff to clean it up. When he gets back, the dished are stacked, and everything is licked clean. The mouse burps. LOL. I thought this was so damn clever.

My pet peeve is when the show the same commercial back to back.

So maybe I havetoo much time on my hands. Nah, I justy have the TV blaring as backround noise while i type on the computer.

[This message has been edited by thephantomprincess (edited 06-04-2000).]

 

[Lasher]

I'm sorry, phantom, I'm honestly not trying to be mean here. I just think that oppintionateds is the funniest thing I've seen on the BB in a long time. LOL.

Anyways, to make up for that.... You're right about the back to back thing, drives me up the wall. It seems it happens all the damn time with the local commercials the sell to the cable channels. There was one running here for Muhammad Ali's daughter fighting (she's a female boxer - no shit) at Mountaineer Gaming Resort. And every damn time they showed it they showed it back to back...

As far as good and bad commercials, other than sports I don't watch anything on commercial TV, and I usually surf during commercials...So I'm not really any help there.

 

[Guest]

I can safely say I have never seen that Snickers commercial here in the midwest.

 

[SimplySouthern]

I don't have much time for television watching, so I'm not sure if this commercial is even running on TV anymore, but at one time Pine Sol had a commercial for some new lemon scented crap they were selling. The lady in the commercial sniffs it and goes on about how WONDERFUL it smells. The really annoying thing about it is that she never takes the lid of the darn bottle. For some reason that used to just burn my butt.

~Southern~

 

[Thephantomprincess]

There Lasher - I corrected myself! When I type fast, stuff like that tends to happen!

 

[CreamyLady]

I absolutely loathe the pets.com commercial, with that horrible puppet.

I also dislike the homegrocer.com jingle, which my daughter and sister sing incessantly, because they like it and know how irritating I find it.

My all-time favorite commercial has to be the "Whatever shape your stomach is in" commercial from Alka-Seltzer. That was great.

 

[Weird Harold]

I got a big kick out of the Tiger Woods Buick commercial where he takes out the announcers tower when there whispering about how he's trying and impossoble shot.

There are several of the commercials featuring Tiger Woods that are very funny if you pay attention to them. Some of the jokes are awful subtle though.

Commercials that I hated were the AOL commercials that highlighted just how strange AOL users can be. It was like they were saying "we've got the weirdest users and want more."

 

[Neoapril]

LMAO @ Weird Harold! That is so funny. Funny, but sadly true.

I actually like the Taco Bell commercials. That dog cracks me up! My husband, though, just about goes crazy, 'cause he can't stand Taco Bell or their dog.

 

[Expertise]

THE BEST commercial on TV right now is for Motts Clamato Juice. A non descript charachter is sitting at a bar sipping a "Bloody Caesar" when the announcers voice comes over and says "what do you do when you're about to be attacked by ninjas in a bar..." at which point our charachter produces two throwing stars constructed from cocktail coasters and fires them not at the ninjas but at the jukebox hitting two buttons ... the jukebox starts belting out "Kung Fu Fighting" and the ninjas break into dance as the announcer cuts back in explaining that no ninja in the known world can resist that song. It cracks me up without fail. Unfortunately like Red Rose Tea... it may only be available in Canada .... pity.

 

[Sonora]

I agree about that damn Panda commercial! I've got to add that any commercial that has someone gulping a drink (Pur water filters had one a month or so ago) is so offensive that I'll never buy the product.

The ones I like now are the Nike "Mrs. Jones" commercials. 'Mrs. Jones' has got a great voice and the mesage is good too.

 

[Magic Merlin]

The PETS.COM commercials are the worst of the worst right now. I will never buy anything from them.

About a year ago there were the ones of a naked guy answering the door, signifying that someone could buy anything and everthing through the internet and never have to leave home. An Internet startup company. Then the CEO of that company did an interivew on national TV while he was naked. Hopefully, they went under....Hated that one.

My Favorite - Currently the one with the 3 or 4 year old boy that drags his stocking feet across the carpet and wakes his dad up by shocking him on the arm. Then a voice breaks into the commercial saying, 'the Power of Discovery'. Then you see a light go on in the little boys mind as he looks at the little dog sitting on the kitchen chair. Then the dog just growls at him.

 

[Shylady]

i love those budweiser lizards i don't care how old or new they are that lizard gets me everytime!
i don't even understand the panda comercial it is the dumbest thing i have ever seen

 

[Guest]

Originally posted by thephantomprincess:
There Lasher - I corrected myself! When I type fast, stuff like that tends to happen!

Wow, typing fast can lead to typos Phantom? Imagine how much tougher it was for me when I was typing fast & crying.

 

[Jeff726]

Somebody kill Mrs. Jones please. That stupid cunt whines too much. "Women athletes don't make enough money.......WAAAAAAHHHHHH WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Well if the crap like WNBA was any fun to watch and there wasn't 672985687 turnovers every game we wouldn't have that problem now would we?

My favorites are those Wassup commercials, and I always was LMAO at that old snickers commercial about "Georghe Muresan Cologne". There is so many more I love but I have no time to say all of them here, hehe.

 

[Earthgoddess]

MM I lobve the discovery channel commercials also...and note to the Red Rose tea comment-I grew up drinking Red Rose tea. I am the proud owner of not one but two rather extensive sets of Red Rose figurines-and I live in MD,so they must sell it in the states.
I personally hate-no loathe- any feminine product commercial. I have been known to leave the room during douche commercials.
Why don't they advertise embarrassing male products like nose hair clippers or jock itch products?

 

[Skibum]

I hate that stupid cat that calls his equally stupid owner on a cell phone to tell him "Meow".

Since we only get one channel out here in thesticks, I have less to complain about!

 

[Bigdog]

I haven't seen the DuPont commercial that phantomprincess referred to, but I have seen the sister to it where the guy goes to the kitchen for a snack, the dog moves the footstool into the walkway, the man returns only to tumble over the footstool and snack crashes to the floor, ending with the mouse throwing paws into the air and cheering. Damn cute.

My all time favorite has to be for Stroh's beer with Alex the Golden Retriever.

I absolutely HATE the Carl's Jr. series of ads. "If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face." That's their excuse for making burgers like a 3 year old making mud pies. "Don't bother me, I'm eating." Huh? (Oddly enough, these would be great slogans for oral sex.)

Earthgoddess, the guys do have at least one "embarrasing male product" to deal with. How about "This is the face of E.D."? It's not quite on the same level as douche ads, but try explaining E.D. to an 11 year old girl! Cop-out answer was "Ask your mother."

We now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast...

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

I hate, hate, hate Infomercials. Not because they're dull or silly -- but I truly loathe the glee they seem to take in truth blurring. I told my agent that I will not audition for infomercials for the same reason I won't do overseas cigarette ads -- moral qualms.

I particularly hate the radio infomercials, because they work SO hard at sounding like a real show with the "Caller" being the putz selling his vitamins or hand tools or memory system or whatever, and because it's much harder for the audience to figure out that it's not a real show, and that they've been listening to an advertisement for thirty minutes.

I once did audience warm-up for that Jessica Hahn infomercial "Love Connection" -- what a lot of huey that was. The audience felt it too, and my job ws to keep them happy between takes so they'd clap enthusiastically at the appropriate times. I went home and took a good, hot shower after that gig.

 

[Sammyjo]

The snickers commercial sucks!

My favorites are the hockey commercials with the sperms "He shoots, he scores" those are great!!! If you've seen them, you know...Lasher, I'm sure you have...

Anything that reminds me of Toronto is cool...Labatt Blue, Canada Dry, McDonalds (ummm....yeah....and if I have the sweet and sour sauce....OH YEAH!!! heehee)

Ummm...many others, I'm sure, but the recollection of the sauce...I gotta go.

 

[Felix]

We've all seen good commercials, ones that informed our shopping or even made us run out to buy something that we didn't even want. We've seen entertaining commercials that made us laugh -- even when we forgot the product being marketed.

In the course of recorded history, however, there has been only one perfect commercial.

You probably never saw it -- the stone throwers circled quickly to eradicate such manifest greatness, and I don't know if it ran more than a day. For that matter, I doubt that it made anyone buy the product. Nevertheless, it was the greatest commercial ever made.

It was not a highly verbal commercial, and any description would necessarily fall short of its visual subtlety, but it went something like this:


It opens with a shot of an austerely beautiful room. It is expensively if severely appointed, with dark wood panel walls and floor-to-ceiling windows along the entire far wall. The windows reveal early dawn light warming a spectacular urban vista; this is clearly a penthouse apartment of some prodigious tower.

The room is sparsely furnished -- nearly empty, really -- but as the camera pulls back we see a gleaming chrome exercise machine in its center. We watch for a time as a shirtless Adonis strains his spectacular bronzed physique. He devoting maximum effort, and yet is clearly in easy control of his neat, efficient actions.

The view then shifts to a stunning, disheveled blonde wearing nothing but an loosely-closed men's dress shirt. She leans against the frame of the doorway from an adjacent room and watches him silently. After a moment, she asks, "Do you do this EVERY morning?"

It closes with a large, simple black and white logo "SOLOFLEX."


This works so well, and on so many levels, that not only could I not conceive of improving it, but that in fact I do not think that it is possible to surpass it. Such perfection was not meant to fit this mortal coil.

[This message has been edited by felix (edited 06-06-2000).]

 

[SpecialK]

Ahem!

The most recent commercial that made me go out and buy the product because I absolutely LOVE the commercial is the Molson Canadian (beer) commercial with Joe the Canadian. Joe stands up before a podium somewhere and there is a screen behind him. He clarifies many of the stereotypes about Canada, etc. I LOVE that commercial! I don't think there is a Canadian out there who doesn't at least smile when they see that commercial!

And heck, it made me go out and buy a Molson Canadian, just to be patriotic, even though I hate beer and hardly ever drink.

The commercial is on the web somewhere, on some top 10 ads site. I'll post the URL if I can track it down.

I also liked the Arizona jeanswear commercial where the big, black football player is in the showers singing "Lollipop, lollipop, oh lolli, lollipop..." only to discover the rest of the team is staring at him.

K

 

[Sonora]

Originally posted by Jeff726:
Somebody kill Mrs. Jones please. That stupid cunt whines too much. "Women athletes don't make enough money.......WAAAAAAHHHHHH WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Well if the crap like WNBA was any fun to watch and there wasn't 672985687 turnovers every game we wouldn't have that problem now would we?

What problem?? The fact that women are paid a lot less for doing the same work as a man?? You're the only problem I see in this equation.

Jeff you probably didn't want to get me started. I'm very tired right now and I'll spare you the remainder of my wrath. Suffice it to say I think that you are very misquided. But then what could I expect from someone that likes the 'wassup' commercials? Can you even explain to me why/how that commercial is supposed to sell whatever it is it's selling? It appears to me to be a bunch of men showing their inability to carry on an intelligent conversation. Give me the WNBA anyday!! Actually, you don't have to. I have courtside season tickets.


OK, I couldn't stay away. There is ONE commercial where Mrs. Jones addresses the issue of women making a great deal les then men. There is one about athletes being role modles and the third one that I've seen is about USA track athletes being more well-known in Europe than in the US. If you only knew what you were talking about this wouldn't have been so easy that even on the limited amount of sleep I've had the last three weeks that I can't call you out for the dick-breathed fool that you are!!!


[This message has been edited by Sonora (edited 06-07-2000).]

 

[ShynCarolina]

A great site to check out commercials is
www.adcritic.com

You need Quicktime 4 to view them and they also have movie trailers and movie videos.

I don't know if adcritic has them posted but I like the various Budweiser training scenario commercials long with the Lizards.