FOXSYLVANIA

Some of you may remember those creepy but cool, coin-operated fortune-telling booths from years ago that featured a glass booth enclosing most often a stereotypic gypsy, witch, mystic, or psychic seer. You simply dropped a quarter into the booth’s coin slot, and the costumed character’s crystal ball lit up, he or she made a few robotic movements, and the booth spit out a slip of paper with your supposed fortune on it, usually something general enough that it would apply to almost anyone.

Well, in this Liberty Mutual commercial, we are shown such a fortune-telling booth in an unusual outdoor location overlooking the Statue of Liberty, undoubtedly symbolic of Liberty Mutual. Such booths were usually housed indoors in arcades. When a lady drops a coin into this fortune teller, the robotic seer, Zoltar, intones that great fortune will find the woman when she allows Liberty Mutual to customize her insurance, permitting her to pay for only what she needs. Grateful for this info, the woman asks Zoltar how she could ever thank him. Eerily, the mechanical seer swivels his head towards her, and mentions that maybe she could “Free Zoltar.”  Well, there’s a convenient button for this purpose on the front of the booth which the woman depresses.  Instantly the walls of the booth drop, revealing our seer clad in colorful shorts and seated atop a unicycle!  He cries “Thanks lady!” and pedals away, a bag held in each hand, and calls for a taxi…

I love happy endings!  Perhaps someday someone will free the fortune-telling Elvis that I’ve seen awaiting business out of a booth…

This entry was posted on July 24, 2019 at 7:17 am and is filed under absurdities, advertising, Brilliant but twisted, strange, television. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Liberty Mutual's Zoltar