Category Ad Nausea

Ad Nausea: Can’t Stop the Music…But We’re Trying

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You know what’s been grinding my gears lately?

This ad for the 2016 Honda Pilot:

 

As you may know, this ad is actually a follow-up to a spot Honda did about 2 years earlier, but it’s the same basic premise: take a once cool rock song and all but ruin it by having a really cornball suburban family belt it out like the sort of bastardized version you’d hear over the PA system of a department store. First it was Black Sabbath’s “Crazy Train”, now it’s Weezer’s “Buddy Holly”. Who’s next? let me just say this: Stay away from Metallica. That’s the line.

I mean, come on, Honda. That youngest daughter looks to be about 6 and the younger son looks about 8, and we’re supposed to believe that these 2 and Gramps even know who Weezer is, let alone know the lyrics to a Weezer song that came out in 1995? I call baloney on that. Maybe the 2 teen kids might have heard the song once or twice as toddlers, but it’s really a stretch to imagine that little Mason and Chelsea are familiar with this novelty alternative rock song which came out at least 2 decades before they were even born, and there’s absolutely no frelling way that Peepop knows the lyrics to “Buddy Holly” unless he’s a retired roadie for the band. Also, how did the young 20-somethings in the other car hear the family singing when their windows were rolled up all the way?

Getting back to this ad’s 2012 predecessor for a second…

…As with the “Buddy Holly” spot, the ad makers went overboard with the casting, placing 7 family members into the Honda in order to show how many people it can seat; when the original spot came out, folks on YouTube went double-live gonzo over the fact that there was a black child riding along with this otherwise all-Caucasian family (guess which one’s adopted??), hitting cyberspace with such zingers as these:

mortimer-snerd

 

“They probably kidnapped the black kid!”

-Yeah, suburban white families abduct African American kids and force them to accompany them on leisurely jaunts on the road all the time. So…

epic_fail_by_danzilla3

 

And,

jackass

“It’s racist that the black kid is riding in the back!”

To which I say, Yes, he’s riding in the back of the car…

no-shit-sherlock

He’s a KID. He’s riding in the back seat of the car with all of the other KIDS. Would it have made you feel better if they had instead stuffed him inside of the glove compartment or bungee corded him to the roof?

-On top of everything else, the “Buddy Holly” family isn’t even doing the song right. They’re singing it too fast and completely ignoring the beat.

I’ll let the original artists show these folks how it’s done.

And that’s the name of that tune.

Ad Nausea: The New ‘Hipster’ Hamburglar

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As you probably already know by now, in order to promote their new Third Pound Burgers (and to boost sagging sales), McDonald’s has resurrected their famous mascot, the known fast-food sandwich snatcher the Hamburglar. But he’s no longer the chubby, adorable prison-outfitted ex-con thief….

“Robble-robble-robble!”

…No, he’s now a live, flesh-and-blood, unshaven hipster burger-swiping thief. Viz, THIS.

“Like, robble-robble, bee-yotches!”

What do we at Twinsanity have to say about this? Well, first…

..Obviously. Also…

  • Mickey D’s must have figured that Ronald McDonald shouldn’t be the only fast-food mascot to creep around the suburbs.
  • And you thought that giant plastic headed Burger King was the creepiest mascot around.
  • We suspect that he might be Macklemore in disguise.
  • This new Hamburglar is a suburban husband and father. Guess he’s been in the Burger Relocation Program all this time.
  • How does the Hamburglar manage to afford a home in the ‘burbs and support a family when his only skill is burger-bilking? Does he sell the cheese on the black market? Gotta get that cheddar!
  • He looks like he’s guilty of other crimes besides just stealing burgers. We think he’s been doing a lot of Quarter Pounding.

If you think this is bad, you should see McDonald’s plans to revamp Captain Crook.

“AAARRH! The Filet-O-Fish is a succulent seafood sandwich! Ye should buy it or I’ll lop off yer head, drink yer blood an’ plunge yer bones into the depths of Davy Jones Locker!”

Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba, I’m dreadin’ it!

Ad Nausea: Rat Fink and the Rad Rods

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Today’s Ad Nausea is all about…this guy.

“Vroom-Vroom, suckas!”

For those who don’t know, this charming gent is Rat Fink. Rat Fink is one of the several hot-rod characters created by artist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, one of the originators of Kustom Kulture of automobile enthusiasts, first appearing on airbrushed “Weirdos” T-shirts and in the pages of Hot Rod publications such as Car Craft in the late 1950s. Roth conceived Rat Fink as an anti-hero answer to Mickey Mouse: usually portrayed as either green or gray; comically grotesque and depraved-looking with bulging, bloodshot eyes, an oversized mouth with sharp, narrow teeth, and wearing red overalls with the initials “R.F.” on them.

“Thing is, I looked like that for a time. It was between the years of the Eisner takeover, ‘House of Mouse’ and ‘Epic Mickey’. Oh, and a raging bender at Disney World. Man, those New Years parties at Adventure Land are the stuff of mascot legend!”

Now, a character like Rat Fink is among the last characters that you’d expect to see on kid-vid TV. It would be like if someone decided to make a kids’ cartoon show about Troma’s The Toxic Avenger…..

..Oh, wait, that happened. Anyway, Rat Fink also made a brief foray into kiddie time with a set of hot rod toys called Rat Fink and Rad Rods. One ad was made for the toy line. Here it is…

 

OK, what was with that out-of-nowhere pot shot at the California Raisins, who are fixtures of TV at the time of this spot? What could possibly be the correlation between Rat Fink and the California Raisins? Was Roth just not a Raisins fan? We asked ol’ Ratso himself, and this is what he gave us:

“Those wrinkled rejects know what they did.”

Thanks, that clears everything up.

Next up, the latest on the ongoing street wars between East Coast and West Coast cereal mascots. Snap, Crackle and Pop were caught on tape jacking up Lucky the Leprechaun and making off with his Red Balloons. Trix Rabbit promises retaliation. Film at 11.

Ad Nausea: Slimer Toothpaste

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Cartoon characters schilling consumer products is nothing new in the industry, and The Real Ghostbusters, the 1986 to 1991 Saturday morning cartoon series based on the 1994 hit movie was no exception. When going through the archives, I came across this commercial for a product called Slimer Toothpaste. It even boasts an appearance by the green ghost himself, but only Slimer. Come now, you weren’t expecting any of the Ghostbusters themselves to appear in this, did you? They’d want money, especially Peter. Apparently, it was toothpaste that came in 2 flavors: grape and bubble gum. I never saw this stuff being sold anywhere, but it’s not the strangest idea I’ve ever heard. It still sounds better than OJ orange flavored cereal or Cap’n Crunch’s Punch Crunch. That stuff was straight up nasty! Anyway, here’s the commercial:


Check out Slimer’s facial expression when he and the kids are about to brush. Dude looks lobotomized. He was probably so blitzed out on Ecto Cooler that he doesn’t even remember shooting that ad. Anyway, is it just me, or is the mom in this ad kind of hot?

OK…It must just be me, then. Moving on. Given the time frame of this commercial. It’s possible that this ad served as a precursor to the season of the Real Ghostbusters Saturday morning cartoon when the shows’ producers decided to have Slimer star in his own solo segments and even put the character’s name over the title.
Anyone remember this?

Yeah, that’s pretty much my thoughts on that season also.

Ad Nausea: The Madness of King Burger

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Happy New Year! For the first Twinsanity blog entry of 2014, we examine the somewhat spotty career of fast food mascot the Burger King. What a fairly short but strange trip it’s been…..

Jimmy Kimmel Show Green Room At The Super Bowl - Day 4

DETROIT – FEBRUARY 03: Burger King mascot, The King poses in the green room during the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Show at Super Bowl XL February 3, 2006 at the Gem Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)

We all remember the 1970’s. The clothes, the music, the gregariously over-the-top and occasionally entertaining Kung Fu movies, but did you that back in the 70’s, McDonald’s had a rival in the bizarre kid-vid commercial arms race? Yes, before the Burger King Kids Club, there was…The King.
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Speaking of which, have you ever wondered what became of the Kids Club? You might want to check the King’s basement.
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 In the 70’s, the Marvelous Magical Burger King reigned on weekday afternoons and Saturday morning commercials along with his very own court of puppety oddballs: the Duke of Doubt, a foppish skeptic who didn’t believe in magic and as a result was made to look like a fool every time; Sir Shake-A-Lot, a quaking knight whose passion for shakes has left him with permanent internal freezer burn; the Wizard of Fries, who was a robot (this was during the era of Star Wars, you must remember) whose shtick was taking everything anyone said too literally; and the Burger Thing, a giant burger head on a picture frame who guffawed bad jokes and terrible puns. (I swear I’m not making this up). Get a gander at what it was like in the court of the King:

All was hunky-dory for a while, but ultimately, the ads just couldn’t cut the mustard, and eventually the King’s court was disbanded. As for whatever happened to the King’s co-stars, well…….

Ronald McDonald

“Whaddaya think’s in the Special Sauce? It’s amazing what those Gobblins will do for leftover fry bits from the grill. Who’s the king now, beeyotch?”
 
Undeterred, the Powers That Be at BK were determined to keep the King in the limelight. They vowed to make him better than he was. Better. Stronger. Funner. Their experimentation took them to a very dark place, the jungles of Columbia to be exact. They tapped into the forbidden arts of Dark Burger Magic, resulting in a new, creepier King; the dosage of Magic injected into him also resulted in the King’s head growing to thrice its’ normal size. It was time to get back to work.
 

For some unfathomable reason, people found these new ads to be off-putting (Can’t imagine why), and eventually, Burger King retired the monarch in 2011. These days, the King does the occasional magic show in Las Vegas (fans loved it when he pantsed David Copperfield on stage), but mostly he just likes to lurk. Anywhere. At anytime. So you just might bump into him one day.

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Sleep tight.