Archive for the ‘absurdities’ category
February 21, 2016
Some things nature never intended, and even the mad Dr. Moreau created by H.G. Wells would have shied away from. The PuppyMonkeyBaby created by Mountain Dew and first airing on Super Bowl 50 is one such thing…
…a CGI mishmash creation, the bizarre/disturbing/hilarious creature melds the head of a pug dog with the body and tail of a monkey and the lower extremities of a human infant. In the commercial, it enters with the advertised product, dances into the presence of three guys watching television, licks the face of one of them, and dances off again, all the while repeating its own name. This is to promote Mountain Dew’s Jumpstart, a mix of the drink, juice, and caffeine.
People tend to either love or hate PuppyMonkeyBaby, which may cross the line between cute and horrifying. Perhaps it could be worked into an episode of the X-Files or Mountain Monsters (they probably couldn’t catch it). In the current American presidential election year, the strange and the outrageous have become rather commonplace,however…
Categories: absurdities, anomalies, anthropomorphic, bizarre, fantasy, furry commercials, television
Tags: Mountain Dew ads, PuppyMonkeyBaby
Comments: 2 Comments
January 3, 2016
Everyone knows that there are times when guys just need to be around the company of other guys so that they don’t have to worry about pleasing the does all of the time. Then instead of talking about “relationships” and “feelings,” we can just hang out, overeat, watch “guy” movies, and I dunno, maybe play some table tennis…
…and so it is that a recent Farmers Insurance commercial takes us to a genuine stag pool party, namely one attended by stags. They’re having a wild time of it, too, with loud music and commotion heard while the pool lights are off. When the floodlights come on, however, all of the stags are frozen in place, the old “deer in the headlights” thing. The lights off/lights on sequence repeats several times, but each time the lights come on, there are subtle changes in the scenario, primary among which is that there are more and more stags actually in the pool!
The Farmers Insurance spokesman (J.K. Simmons) explains in their Hall of Claims that since they’ve seen about everything, they can insure just about anything…including, apparently, an out-of-bounds party for some not-so-timid woodlands creatures. Party on, boys!
Categories: absurdities, animals, anthropomorphic, furry, furry commercials, television
Tags: Farmers Insurance, stag pool party
Comments: 3 Comments
November 23, 2015
By almost anyone’s standard, Peter Pan was rather a strange little dude. His was a case of arrested development in that he was perpetually a fresh-faced boy who never aged beyond later childhood. He hung out with a fairy called “Tinkerbelle,” was leader of a group of “lost boys,” and even boasted powers of flight. As if that didn’t appear to violate laws of man and nature, Peter Pan’s mortal enemy was a pirate captain whose one hand had been lost to a crocodile and replaced with a hook.
You can imagine that the appearance of such a sprite at a reunion of the Class of 1965 would be likely to prove interesting, and a study in contrasts. So it does in a recent Geico commercial where the forever young Peter Pan tells his classmates that they don’t look a day over 70, and hovers above the gathering, providing entertainment by singing the Sinatra standard, “You Make Me Feel So Young.”
What would make the commercial complete would be if the iconic Progressive insurance agent “Flo” appeared in the role of “Wendy,” the young mother-surrogate to Peter and the “Lost Boys.” That would make the surreal commercial become even stranger fast as she tried to nag Peter to return to “Neverland,” perhaps appearing as “Tinkerbelle” as well…
Categories: absurdities, anomalies, television
Tags: Geico commercial, Peter Pan
Comments: 8 Comments
September 27, 2015
In rural parts of Pennsylvania, hitting a deer on the road is a very real possibility at this time of year. They’re in rut, you see, and the herds are stirred up as the big guys try to get lucky. Poor Charlie and his wife have just had such an encounter, and they need to find a good body shop fast! We are shown their car ramped up on the rear of the deer-driven vehicle, an antlered buck behind the wheel.
“”You just came out of nowhere!,” contests the woman driving to the buck. The deer makes agitated noises and flails around. “Calm down!,” urges the woman. “No one shot your mother,” she presents in a Bambi reference. The deer vocalizes and thrashes around some more, apparently saying something uncomplimentary about the human driver and raising the ire of her husband, who is ready to take on the buck and is becoming verbally abusive himself.
Fortunately, a Yelp representative is there to recommend a five star body shop, and it’s suggested that the deer and humans all go in there together. They are then shown standing in front of said establishment, although the buck remains mouthy and the human male combative. – – Why can’t we all just get along?!
Categories: absurdities, animals, anthropomorphic, furry, furry commercials, television
Tags: deer car accidents, driving deer, Yelp "Deer in Headlights"
Comments: 4 Comments
September 7, 2015
They bay at the moon, and attack your campsite in a pack, like wolves…the creepy, four-limbed, human sized hot dogs in a recent Tums commercial, that is! Brandishing a burning stick in one hand and his Tums package like a cross before a vampire, our intrepid camper is able to drive the marauding processed meats off. Such is life in the Twilight Zone of the food chain…(shudders)
Be afraid, be very afraid…Tums has lately alarmed us with tales of assaultive meat foods that have included chicken wings, a nightmarish headless barbecued chicken, sky-diving meatballs, and what appeared to be a very angry corned beef sandwich. It’s enough to make me want to add additional countermeasures to my existing zombie defense network…
Categories: absurdities, anthropomorphic, furry commercials, strange, television
Tags: animated foods, commercials
Comments: 2 Comments
September 3, 2015
Golf tends not to be especially thrilling as a spectator sport, but it could be enlivened considerably by making the water hazards truly hazardous, say by putting a Kraken into the water! Golfer Bill in a recent Geico commercial is having a truly bad round when an enormous tentacle whips out of the water and ensnares him, the golfer flailing helplessly against its iron grip.
The sportscasters in the face of this spectacle are unflappable, commenting in whispered tones about how the golfer’s five iron may not be enough club to handle this situation; he’s gonna lose a stroke on this one! More of the Kraken then becomes visible for inspection, and it is truly a beast of Lovecraftian proportions; now this is a sporting event! Still nonplussed, the sportscasters continue to comment in whispered tones; it’s what they do…
I’d pull up a chair and pay to see golf matches like this! With quicksand, scorpions, and rattlesnakes, perhaps we could also lend new meaning to tired old golf course “sand traps.”- – Now that’s entertainment!
Categories: absurdities, anomalies, Brilliant but twisted, cryptozoology, paranormal, strange, television
Tags: commercials, Geico Kraken
Comments: 3 Comments
June 15, 2015
I,
I, for one, find the notion of articulate beings addressing me from within the confines of an egg crate disquieting. As someone who has taken a college-level embryology course, it’s hard enough for me to eat an egg, and I certainly don’t want to converse with one, much less some kind of medieval tiny humanoid thing clad in armor emerging from the crate. This is clearly abnormal and wrong on so many different levels…
Introduced in 2012, Sir Can-A-Lot is on a crusade to “rescue the world from routine meals.” This Is far preferable, I suppose, to joining ISIS, and the diminutive knight is polite if annoyingly enthusiastic about the SPAM product that he endorses as “glorious SPAM!” And I thought that I needed a life!
Now in my dark little mind, I would like to see this scene rewritten to resemble a memorable one in the Gremlins films where a housewife becomes a kitchen samurai when confronted by invading gremlins, using household appliances against the invaders to deadly effect .– Let’s have the lady of the house grab the little knight, throw him in the microwave, and see if he sparks! Consider also throwing him in the sink garbage disposal to see how protective that tiny suit of armor really is! With a kitchen array of food processors, blenders, and cutting knives the possibilities for home defense are both varied and entertaining.
My mind is a strange and frightening place to be, really…
Categories: absurdities, anthropomorphic, strange, television
Tags: Sir Can-A-Lot, Spam
Comments: 4 Comments
June 5, 2015
In a recent Dairy Pure milk commercial, an enthusiastic teacher is drilling her bovine charges on the “Five Point Promise” of the product. Each “student” is dressed distinctly, with such accessories as eyeglasses and hair.
Apparently, chewing one’s cud is allowed in class…they’re cows, for crying out loud, what else could they do?!
When the teacher asks her students to enumerate what they know about the milk, one blond-haired cow responds, “It comes from udders,” and the rest of the cow-kids titter in repressed laughter. Kids are the same everywhere…udders, heh, she said udders!
What I want to know is, how did this lucky teacher come to have only four students in class? You can bet that they’re motivated, too…after all, what self-respecting young cow would want to be a milk dud, or an udder failure? (Yes, we have no shame here…)
Categories: absurdities, animals, anthropomorphic, furry, furry commercials, television
Comments: 4 Comments
May 19, 2015
Some things are so bad that they’re almost good…either that, or I’m a glutton for punishment! It is into this category that I cast the hokey Burger King commercial for chicken fries in which a young hen and a box of french fries sit in a comfy living room, where the hen informs her parents on the adjoining couch that she and french fries are pregnant, and going to have chicken fries! As we the viewers probably face-palm, the mother hen goes into a flurry of frenzied wing-flapping while her rooster father admonishes everyone to “Calm down!” From the doorway a sibling of indeterminate sex comments, “Again?” Unwanted chicken pregnancies are a national shame that we all pay the price for. – – Thanks, Obama!
The commercial pushes the envelope of silliness and stupidity, and lacks the creepiness factor of the Burger King monarch himself, who I would love to see in a death match competition with Ronald McDonald, Wendy, and the KFC Colonel…
Categories: absurdities, animal spokepersons, animals, anthropomorphic, feathered friends, stupid, television
Comments: 2 Comments
December 31, 2014
The original Geico commercial with Caleb the Camel at the office is now kind of a classic. Success, unfortunately, tends to breed imitation, and so it comes as no surprise in this new commercial to see humans at the zoo tormenting camels on display with “Guess what day it is” banter. As anyone who has heard the many imitators can vouch, it gets old pretty quickly…
We are then privy to a conversation held between two camels at the zoo who are being badgered by camel wanna-bees, complete with dialogue from the original commercial. Understandably, they are weary of it. “It’s not even Wednesday!,” complains one camel to his companion. “Let it go, Phil,” advises the other. The voice of the announcer then cuts in; “When you’re a camel, this is what you put up with all the time…it’s what you do…”
Camels…more sinned against than sinning. Joe Camel, purveyor of tobacco products in an earlier time, never knew these burdens…and a happy and prosperous New Year to all of our readers!
Categories: absurdities, animal spokepersons, animals, anthropomorphic, Brilliant but twisted, furry, furry commercials, television
Comments: 3 Comments
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