Sunday, December 21, 2008

Commercials - #10



Cooking With Nintendo
The latest Nintendo DS ads have dusted off the star-nonymous Lisa Kudrow. A new commercial promotes software for the very portable DS system, with the ability to provide step by step instructions for "whipping up" an exotic dish in simple fashion. Kudrow and her daughter (where's the man?) decide on Chinese food, somehow by touching a particular geographic area of the DS's world map. The recipe is verbally dispatched, and boom! They just happened to have green onions handy. And chicken. And a wok. It's just that easy! Being Nintendo, I was figuring little Mario would interrupt and say "ah come on-uh, you no wanna make-ah no ah pizza pie?" Then a barrel would hit him over the head.

Fathead
First of all, what a dismal name for a company and brand. All these "Fathead" things are gigantic, life sized "stick-on" posters of athletes that dateless, gourd-humping sports fans can hang on their walls. What red-blooded male wouldn't want to come home to a seven foot, two-dimensional likeness of a scary football player looming over his tacky furniture and empty beer cans? And the ladies! Come back to Joe Lunchpail's bachelor paradise, and listen to him pitch woo while Peytonzilla looms over his drooling, beer-scented mouth! Fathead. The first product line that was named for its consumers.

Heat Surge
I'm slightly disturbed by the apparent exploitation of a religious/cultural group. Heat Surge is some type of fake fireplace which safely acts as a heater. Fine. The advertisement becomes strange when the announcer touts the fact that these wooden faux fireplaces are made, by hand, by the Amish. The commercial goes on to show typical Amish-looking men (never women), with suspiciously fake-looking beards, hammering away at the product, as if part of a human assembly line. The worst part is when the marketeer claims that the deal is so appealing, "the Amish" have requested that each customer be limited to two "fireplaces" per order. The Amish? They make it sound like they can't speak for themselves, are basically "oompa loompa" creatures from the Willy Wonka factory.

Snuggies
A classic example of a middle aged woman writing the copy for this product, packed with some of the most annoying, waspy phraseology anyone could devise. It's basically a blanket with sleeves, and somewhat a cross between a blanket, robe, and sweater. According to their rhetoric, blankets are just oh so cumbersome, and restrict your arms from doing anything. What? It's a blanket, not a straitjacket. Move hand out from under blanket, grab remote, use remote, shut the hell up. The irritating soccer mom doing the voice over intimates that "bwankets be so bulky wulky, and can weed to cold footsie wootsies". Makes me sick. Then this incredibly effiminate product (and promotion) is purely targeted at old women, yet they show men wearing it while "grabbing a snack" (oof) and attending sports events. Any male wearing this hideous thing would be beaten to a pulp before halftime.

Obama Coins
Much like Sports Illustrated's "Champion of the month" promotions, now the greedy coin people are jumping on the "historic" election of Obama. His typically troubling visage is being pasted onto various alleged "coins", as if they were being produced by the U.S. Mint itself. Let's just cut to the chase here. The U.S. Mint does not make coins for slick, newly elected candidates with ugly color likenesses. Nobody's out recalibrating all the vending machines for the influx of the $20 Obama commemorative coin. It's not a coin. It's a piece of scrap metal, melted into something resembling a disc, tickled with a color-by-numbers likeness of the supposed new savior of the western world. Might as well be a poker chip. Sure, buy the coin now, and savor it during his first political scandal around mid 2009. Don't make me say "I told you so" again.


Geico
Now these advertising wizards are vacillating between the typical caveman adventures (in which now he seems to have a hot blonde girlfriend) and newer, disturbing promotions involving a stack of money with eyeballs perched on it. First of all, nobody, and I mean nobody, should ever believe that the hairy grouchy caveman idiot would ever bag a girlfriend, let alone an attractive one. The advertisers just had to antagonize the male viewing public by conceiving this whole "Beauty and the Beast" subplot. Not buying it, or your lame insurance. The gecko was irritating enough, but this beats all. It's even more disturbing than the latest spots, which showcase a personified stack of money, intended to be all the money we could save by switching to Geico. Trust me, I've done some web research...they aren't always going to save us money. My policy is nice and affordable the way it is, thank you, and isn't (and never will be) with Geico. I have a low rate from accident-free driving and never having been cited for a moving violation. (Personal message to one dear friend of mine: Shut up you!)

12 comments:

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The Vapid Voice said...

The Amish have spoken! I'm sure it's a dandy product.

Anonymous said...

What's even more disturbing... the Amish are making a product that's electronic? Um, so radios, tvs and cars are still out, but fake fireplaces are now OK? I'm very upset with my people. I'm boycotting Pennsylvania.

Anonymous said...

Do the Heat Surge folks Google themselves constantly? And can't that make them go blind?

Anonymous said...

I never have green onions handy. Or scallions.

Anonymous said...

Remember in Kingpin when the Amish guy took a dump in the urinal? He better not be making my faux fireplace.

Anonymous said...

Heres another scam... they say you get heater free, just purchase the attractive hand made mantel....For $500! WTF? Im pretty sure $500 would be a nice deposit on getting a REAL fireplace built... its ugly & tacky looking. Go to target in February & buy an electric heater 50% off...

Anonymous said...

Being a Nintendo plug, one would think Mario would be "fixin pizza pies". At least Mario is a familar Nintendo icon. Miss the days of Donkey Kong, remember playing the games vividly - clear-cut classics.

Anonymous said...

evrafter said...Being a Nintendo plug, one would think Mario would be "fixin pizza pies"...

J. McCrackan said...

http://www.snuggiepubcrawls.com/

J. McCrackan said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h05ZQ7WHw8Y

Wendi Manning said...

Just a question dear? Do you have insurance from either my favorite agent Flo or the semi hot E-Surance cartoon chick?