NJM Insurance had earlier in a commercial shown us a tourist tram pulled aside in a backlot to observe a mascot commercial being filmed that involved costumed shark mascots, and now we are shown the same busy backlot where a number of mascot commercials are being filmed, necessitating a kind of traffic control function to stop pedestrians in order to allow mascots to pass…
…and a glorious and diversified mascot parade it is, too! There’s some kind of roller skating flamingo, what appears to be a catfish, my favorite, a fox, and a number of others. Themascot handler shouts corrections and admonishments to the mascots as they pass, such as “missing a fin,” and “get to it, fox!” Normally, we foxes would consider such comments rude, but work is hard to find…
The NJM commercial of course is to proclaim the fact that their company does not have mascots or jingles, but just great insurance…
Rabbits sure can multiply; employ algebra and calculus, not so much. And so when Papa Rabbit enters his home, he finds it jam-packed with his progeny, all moving about and enjoying internet-dependent activities like gaming, streaming, and on-line learning. Papa Rabbit desperately needs to run an internet search on “birth control…”
When Papa Rabbit manages to weave his way around the legion of offspring and trudge upstairs to see his missus, she is knitting tiny infant outfits, a universally-understood sign that she has a “bun (pun intended) in the oven,” three actually…but then, Momma Rabbit flips the top row to show that she has prepared six tiny outfits!
Papa Rabbitis devastated, his eyes big as saucers and his jaw dropping! Guess it’s too late for a vasectomy now. Good thing that Xfinity will lock in his internet price for five years, because he’ll need every bit of money he can muster to maintain his growing brood…
The commercial is rendered in the stop-motion style of Fantastic Mr. Fox, which lends a certain charm.Otherads in the Imagine That series have featured the Frankenstein monster and Jeff Goldblum.Thesong playing is The Green Grass Grows All Around, performed here by Louis Jordan…
In a CGI Progressive Insurance commercial, we are shown animals driving. Human nature is seldom seen at its best when behind the wheel of a car, and the roadways can truly be seen as a jungle of sorts. The question that then emerges is, What kind of animals will you encounter while driving?And inevitably, What kind of animal are YOU when driving?!
We can largely imagine how a sloth might drive, but how about a deer? They freeze in headlights, of course! A lion drives ferociously, roaring and embodying road rage. Hyenas laugh as they zip across lanes. A ram drives true to his name…
And not to be forgotten,Progressive’s own spokesperson Flo voices a llama safely from curbside, reassuring that with Progressive that you won’t be held responsible for other people’s mistakes. In a reference to another llama commercial featuring a llama at a hairstylist, she asks also if people are staring at her because of her hair…
Perhaps the older souls among us can remember the classic “land shark” routine played on the original season of Saturday Night Live…a voice would come to your door, announcing a delivery of perhaps a telegram or candy gram, and when you answered the door, a large rubbery shark head would descend over the tenant and drag them outside, another tragic victim of The Land Shark! Yea, verily, it is written that when the oceans are full, the sharks will hunt on dry land!
Well, just when you thought that it was safe to leave your house or apartment,the land sharks, courtesy of NJM Insurance, are at it again!They appear to have evolved, however, and are much more genteel, having developed legs and even wearing ties and carrying briefcases, probably to lure us into a false sense of security before they strike and glom down on people…
Now a tourist tram train appears to be visiting a Hollywood set, where their on-board host tells the passengers that they’re in luck, an insurance commercial is being filmed! One lady talks to her companion, wondering if they’re shooting an action feature. The video director calls for action,, and we see our genial shark, walking along just like any businessman…then the director calls for a stunt shark, who appears, changes places with shark #1, and gets blasted with water!
Ourtouring lady appears disappointed, commenting that nothing blew up…but perhaps Chief Brody should be put on alert, just in case! Maybe they’ll need a bigger boat…
We’ve heard ofThe Wolf of Wall Street…why not The Land Shark of Hollywood?
I find screaming goats, at the very least, disconcerting. Although such goats are not actually screaming but bleating or calling, their vocalizations are loud, and can sound eerily like a human in extreme duress, say being tortured.– -Why, you might ask, do some goats make these verbalizations? It could be a sign of hunger, distress, or simply an attention-getting device. It sure would get my attention and displeasure, pronto.You could build a low-budget horror movie around these goats!
In a recent Allstate commercial Check First Neighbors, a couple is celebrating their first night in a new house. They hear a muffled shriek in the background. Looking out the window, they find goats clamoring all over their neighbor’s yard! Then the goats become invasive…one even loudly screams at the new occupants from within their house! Why is the goat shrieking?- -Possibly he wants fed, or more grain in his diet; the scream is certainly an attention-getting device. Goat farmers have noted that the goatssometimes will keep up this behavior for half to three-quarters of an hour before giving up…
You see, our new homeowners had neglected to check out the neighbors before buying the property, and you really should do that. Allstate can then save you hundreds on your homeowners insurance…
About the only thing I can think of that might be worse than living next door to a herd of screaming goats would be residing next to a family of howler monkeys…
A mini-dinosaur might make an interesting if cumbersome pet, and of course they’d have to be well-behaved! With a name like Walter, this diminutive T-rex sounds rather domesticated, but he’s still awfully big for human environments, and so can barely fit into things like elevators and taxicabs…
Asthma medications haven’t changed much in fifty years, you see, so the albuterol inhaler is really a dinosaur of sorts. Walter is then a metaphor representing older, outdated “rescue” albuterol-only inhalers for asthmathat primarily treat symptoms of asthma without addressing underlying inflammation. Airsupra is a “dual-action” inhaler that treats both symptoms and underlying inflammation of asthma…
So Walter is awkward and outdated on tandem bikes, being, after all, a dinosaur. We’re unlikely to see him in any of the Jurassic Park movies either, which is a pity because he does appear genial and is cute…
If you’ve noticed, we now see Earl the Cat from the Smalls cat food commercials mostly as a simplistic two-dimensional line drawing these days. Rarely do we see the wonderful Earl as the guy in the fursuit anymore…
This is a shame, because fursuit Earl is far more captivating than line drawing Earl. He was so good and compelling that his presence probably distracted from the cat food product itself.There are other examples where a commercial character was so magnetic that they apparently distracted from the product being advertised, and so were sadly phased out. I just think that we had yet to see the best of fursuit Earl…
ConsiderLactose Cow in the Lactaid commercials, aka “the Milk that Messes With You.” Mess with us she did, but was incredibly comic and memorable in doing so, far outshining the demure blue-and-white Lactaid Cow. I for one deeply miss seeing these commercial stars, and since I am powerless to return them, will leave you with a few memories of the best of The Milk That Messes With You. Characters gone but not forgotten…*sighs*
In this IKEA TV spot, a family is called by “Uncle Ricky” to be reminded that they had offered to host a barbecue next weekend, a fact that they had obviously forgotten. Looking out at their backyard to check the status of their yard, they find that nature has quite taken it over, for there are raccoons, opossums, rabbits, and even a background deer cavorting around!
“What are those rabbits doing,” questions the son. While we are not shown the act, one suspects from their positioning that the rabbits are “doing what comes naturally,” and giving junior a free lesson on reproduction. Mom and Dad look at one another, and converse, “IKEA?- –IKEA!”
So when Uncle Ricky arrives, the family’s backyard has been transformed by the purchase of a large table and chair set from IKEA for a proper barbecue, and even the animals appear happy…
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I rather like the notion of having anthropomorphic internal organs that can function outside of our bodies without killing us by their absence, and come complete with their own sets of organs, such as limbs, eyes, mouths, and apparently brains, as such ambulatory organs can talk. We’ve earlier seen commercials for stand-alone organs such as the bladder (Myrbetriq), who (below) kind of resembles a large red apple with very soulful eyes…
Now wouldn’tit be cool if you also could at will detach various of your internal organs, and take the whole family out for, say, a walk in the park? Or perhaps send them on missions to do your bidding, even to freak out or scare people? There’s got to be a good horror movie in that scenario, with you having a perfect alibi for the police while your organs went out to terrorize the neighborhood!– –This could give a whole new meaning to venting your spleen! Why, with autonomous, detachable organs, you could even bring new meaning to the old song, “I Left My Heart In San Francisco!“I’ll bet that the heart could really belt out the old standards, I tell ‘ya!
(A heart in a piano bar, performing a medley of Tony Bennett songs…)
But I weirdly digress…the heart in this Repatha commercial is a sweet if wounded soul, wearing a bandage on her head to denote having suffered a heart attack. I’m assuming here that the heart has the same gender as its possessor, as it does have rather feminine eyes, eyelashes, and lips…but we’ll leave the matter of secondary sexual characteristics in organs to wiser heads than mine, such wasn’t covered in my biology courses…
Repatha is used to control LDL cholesterol when statins alone don’t do the job, and both the lady and her detached organ don’t want another heart attack. Appropriately enough, the sound track to the commercial is the song, “Listen To Your Heart…”
So a Happy Easter to all, and please leave your organs within your body, or at least keep them on a leash…don’t leave your muscles in Brussels! And if you leave your heart in San Francisco, maybe high on a hill, it will call to you…
Little Caesars has brought back it’s Pretzel Crust pizza touted in this commercial, and it’s all that office anthropomorphic sheep worker Brian can think about…so much so, in fact, that he keeps bleating that “It’s BAAAAACK,” at one point pounding his hooves on his computer keyboard to bring up the BAAAAACK legend on his computer screen…
While bosses would like to have sheepish, compliant workers, I doubt that those hooves of worker Brian would be capable of hitting individual keys on the keyboard.Brian does, however, sport good office attire, so we can perhaps forgive him if he acts a bit sheepish…
FOXSYLVANIA 
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