– – The Enchanted Forest as envisioned by Psyop in a recent commercial is a wondrous place indeed, filled with sprites, smiling trees, and a variety of dancing, costumed anthropomorphic animals. There’s even a fox, a remarkably tall and slender specimen wearing shorts and a top hat! It’s essentially an environmental plug for FedEx clad as a fairy tale, and when those conventions are stripped away, we’re then left withelectric trucks, recycled shipping materials, and lower-emission planes as FedEx’s contribution to the environment.
The spot is 80% live action and 20% CGI at the onset, with an actual forest having been filmed in Washington state on the northern Pacific Coast. The look is magical but not overly cartoonish, with a sing-songy soundtrack composed by a musical collective called Human which would be “perfectly at home in a 1950’s-era animated film,” according to the spot’s Senior Creative Director/Copywriter. The animated characters are all fully CGI, and a wealth of fine detail may be seen in successive viewings of the spot, such as the fox character modestly covering himself when his outfit is taken away…
– – In yet another MiO Energy Drink commercial staged at the legendary Watering Hole bar, we are shown a lemur trying to make time with the giraffe girl previously seen in another commercial of the series. With the world’s worst timing, the lemur’s efforts are ruined by the unwelcome intrusion of the hapless, unlucky-in-love crocodile character,who ruins the set-up by commenting that he thought he smelled the lemur in there, and asking the primate if he’s still living with his parents…
…”You just totally croc-blocked me!,” complains the irate lemur. “Oh!,” responds the clueless crocodile, who upon close inspection may be seen to be wearing a Lacoste shirt! I live for stuff like that…sad, isn’t it?
– – I, for one, prefer not to see naked mole rats, especially when they’re in an obvious state of intoxication. Strange sights are known to appear with some regularity at the Watering Hole, however, a bar or pub frequented by anthropomorphic animals in a series of MiO Energy Drink commercials.
In this brief segment, previously-seen Rhino and Zebra characters are discussing how convenient the small water additives are to carry anywhere when the mole rat appears, naked but with certain mole rat, err, parts tastefully pixillated out. The mole rat slides up onto the bar, wearing a checked hat and little red sneakers, and proceeds to shake his booty. Where does the mole rat carry his MiO, asks the Zebra…the Rhino prefers not to think about it.- -One can hardly blame him! Other characters from previous episodes such as the Cheetah are seen in the background…
– – Bears are sociable, party animals who enjoy indulging in a good Dairy Queen Blizzard…or so we might think from a DQ commercial which opens with a kid’s softball team called (- -what else?) the Bears who are in celebratory mode at a Dairy Queen following an apparent team victory. They hold aloft a trophy in testimonial to this, and moments later we are shown a trio of bears who are likewise indulging in the same treat…
…these bears, however, effortlessly hold aloft a uniformed officer who had apparently been sent to seek them out!
– – It must be the Couch Potato family! Dad’s vegged out watching the tube, Mom’s pecking away at a laptop, Junior’s playing a handheld video game, and Sis appears to be textingwhen the doorbell rings repeatedly…finally, the door is pushed down and off its hinges by a group of marauding animals that appear to includea bear, a raccoon, a porcupine, and a wild turkey! The humans are herded into a van apparently driven by a wolf, taken to a pristine forest, and released…and then it’s family quality time! The family goes wading in a stream, examines a salamander, and grows bigger by walking through the trees…they are unplugged!
It’s a short video created by Turbine for the US Forest Service!
– – We’ve met the MiO Cheeta before and likewise the Rhino, but in this commercial for MiO Energy Drinks we go back to the Watering Hole and re-visit the Rhino again, this time finding him so tired that he’s apparently hired a small monkey to perch on his shoulder and slap him in the face to keep him awake! We see the monkey do this repeatedly, at one point using the Rhino’s convenient horn to swing to the opposite side of his face. But the Rhino needn’t suffer this abuse…a Zebra is there, one with incredible eyes. He pours a MiO Energy Drink additive into the Rhino’s drink, which perks the big guy up right away! The Rhino then fires the monkey, which nets him the biggest slap of all!
It’s not the best one in the series in my opinion, but it’s always great to go to the Watering Hole!
– – The off-beat comedy Wilfred is returning to the FX network for another season starting June 28th. The protagonist of the show is a depressed former lawyer, Ryan Newman, who has unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself; following that effort, his neighbor’s dog, Wilfred, now appears to him as a foul-mouthed Australian in an obvious dog suit! The dog, while selfish and worldly, serves as a helpful guide and mentor to the often clueless human.
This isn’t a show for kids, with drug use portrayed and the humor frequently raunchy. That having been said, however, the show has surreal and existential overtones, and mixes shock and hilarity with the absurd. We were asked during the previous season to “embrace the mystery” of Wilfred’s existence, and it was unclear as to whether the dog-person actually existed, was a projected manifestation of Ryan’s animal impulses, or if the human was simply insane and Wilfred a hallucination or a medication effect. Some answers may be revealed in the upcoming season, one promo for which is a spoof of the classic spaghetti sequence from Lady and the Tramp!
— It’s not easy being a demigod; everyone expects great things out of you! Pity poor Perseus; as if whipping the Kraken wasn’t enough in 2010’s Clash of the Titans, now he has to beat a whole host of other assorted monsters in Wrath of the Titans. There will be a slew of them to boot in this special effects extravaganza, everything from a thirty-foot high Cyclops to a Minotaur to my personal fave, a Chimera…I just like things with multiple heads and incongruous parts that spew fire, that’s the way I roll! Mighty Kronos himself enters the fray, just dripping with lava…what more could a boy want? Yes, I know, robots, zombies, mummies, aliens, and werewolves are extremely cool too, but you can’t have them all in the same movie and preserve artistic integrity.- -Besides, I’d die of too much happiness!
While most of the beasties are computer generated, the Minotaur is played by an actor in a latex suit who underwent four hours of makeup for each day on the set! You’ll also see Perseus’ noble winged steed Pegasus, and the demonic Makhai, who attack like whirling dervishes.
This isn’t Shakespeare, but it’s good guy fun…and what’s wrong with that? Wrath of the Titans opens March 30th…and it’s a cornucopia of creatures!!!– -Woo-hoo!
– – The action continues at the Watering Hole, and in this airing it’s time for the girls to come front and center…two long-necked beauties, specifically an ostrich (–perhaps swan?) and a giraffe! The animation is amazing, but reactions to the commercial itself appear to be divided along the lines of, “It’s creepy and disturbing,” versus “They’re hot!” So choose your side, I guess…but I like this universe!
Females everywhere regardless of species apparently have commonalities if this commercial is to be believed, and these two ladies engage in the bar pastimes of shooting down guys who hit on them, and making “catty” comments about other females…in this case, a rhino girl who had her nose done, and a camel chick with humps that “do not exist in nature!“
Whether you love this commercial series or hate it, you can entertain yourself deciding which female celebrities the four presented characters resemble! I’ve heard Taylor Swift, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Snookie mentioned as possibilities…
– – It’s not well known that Batman creator Bob Kane also created a comic parody called Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. Originally run from 1960 to 1962, the series almost anticipated the campy extremes of the later-appearing live action Batman TV series. The ‘toons averaged five minutes in length, and 130 were produced, intended for use as airtime filler to accommodate a movie or another feature which didn’t quite fill a time slot.
Parallels to the Batman series were numerous, with “Courageous Cat” and “Minute Mouse” anthropomorphic animal superheroes who lived in the “Cat Cave,” were summoned by a “Cat Signal,” and drove a sleekly-feline “Cat Mobile” which could convert to a plane or boat. The villains were likewise furry, with a frog a recurring archenemy.
The theme music for the show was fashioned after the memorable theme for Peter Gunn! All in all, Courageous Cat was campy fun decently done…
– – The Enchanted Forest as envisioned by Psyop in a recent commercial is a wondrous place indeed, filled with sprites, smiling trees, and a variety of dancing, costumed anthropomorphic animals. There’s even a fox, a remarkably tall and slender specimen wearing shorts and a top hat! It’s essentially an environmental plug for FedEx clad as a fairy tale, and when those conventions are stripped away, we’re then left with electric trucks, recycled shipping materials, and lower-emission planes as FedEx’s contribution to the environment. 
– – In yet another MiO Energy Drink commercial staged at the legendary Watering Hole bar, we are shown a lemur trying to make time with the giraffe girl previously seen in another commercial of the series. With the world’s worst timing, the lemur’s efforts are ruined by the unwelcome intrusion of the hapless, unlucky-in-love crocodile character, 
– – I, for one, prefer not to see naked mole rats, especially when they’re in an obvious state of intoxication. Strange sights are known to appear with some regularity at the Watering Hole, however, a bar or pub frequented by anthropomorphic animals in a series of MiO Energy Drink commercials. 
– – Bears are sociable, party animals who enjoy indulging in a good Dairy Queen Blizzard…or so we might think from a DQ commercial which opens with a kid’s softball team called 
– – It must be the Couch Potato family! Dad’s vegged out watching the tube, Mom’s pecking away at a laptop, Junior’s playing a handheld video game, and Sis appears to be texting
– – We’ve met the MiO Cheeta before and likewise the Rhino, but in this commercial for MiO Energy Drinks we go back to the Watering Hole and re-visit the Rhino again, this time finding him so tired that he’s apparently hired a small monkey to perch on his shoulder and slap him in the face to keep him awake! We see the monkey do this repeatedly, at one point using the Rhino’s convenient horn to swing to the opposite side of his face. But the Rhino needn’t suffer this abuse…a Zebra is there, one with incredible eyes
– – The off-beat comedy Wilfred is returning to the FX network for another season starting June 28th. The protagonist of the show is a depressed former lawyer, Ryan Newman, who has unsuccessfully attempted 
— It’s not easy being a demigod; everyone expects great things out of you! Pity poor Perseus; as if whipping the Kraken wasn’t enough in 2010’s Clash of the Titans, now he has to beat a whole host of other assorted monsters in Wrath of the Titans. There will be a slew of them to boot in this special effects extravaganza, everything from a thirty-foot high Cyclops to a Minotaur to my personal fave, a Chimera…I just like things with multiple heads and incongruous parts that spew fire, that’s the way I roll! Mighty Kronos himself enters the fray, just dripping with lava…what more could a boy want? Yes, I know, robots, zombies, mummies, aliens, and werewolves are extremely cool too, but you can’t have them all in the same movie and preserve artistic integrity.- -Besides, I’d die of too much happiness!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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