– – I love considering the tale of Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf’s perspective, and now it would appear that in addition to cagey little girls and woodsmen with axes, the wolf also has to contend with red Volvos as well! This commercial begins with a bright red Volvo S-60 R-Design driving down the road in a dark, scary forest! The red Volvo’s standing in for Little Red Riding Hood, ‘ya see, and it’s moving right along to a version of “Little Red Riding Hood,” originally by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs…wasn’t that a great song?!- –Everybody sing!!!
– -Now I feel much better! Anyhow, the car slams on its brakes because there in the road is a real wolf, unkindly called the Big Bad Wolf in the story. The magnificent lupine begins growling and barking at the Volvo, which in turn revs its engine to “growl” back at the wolf. Obviously not Courage Wolf, the wolf in this commercial backs away scared. The father driving the Volvo then asks his young daughter riding in the back seat (clad in a red hooded cape, natch!) what a wolf says, she responds by howling, and they continue driving down the road!
<Sigh>…wolves never get a fair rap…if he had called for reinforcements, they could have taken that Volvo!- – And what are the Pharaohs doing these days, anyhow?!- –*Howl!*
– – 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!
– – I, for one, don’t like to discover foreign materials when I open an egg carton, and so I find it vaguely disquieting to ponder the notion of discovering a small armored knight occupying an egg compartment when one such container is opened in a Spam commercial.- -Does his rather surreal presence represent a new stage in chicken evolution?- -Do the other uncracked eggs also contain tiny armor-clad warriors, representing some kind of miniscule medieval army? –And if so, do they intend to take over and occupy my kitchen, perhaps as a prelude to an assault on my neighborhood? One must worry about such things in this age of terrorism.–Should I seizethis anachronistic warrior, and test his mettle by attempting to squeeze him to death? Or do I hurl him down the sink garbage disposal, and hit the “on” switch? Perhaps I should cast him into the microwave, and see if he sparks! The legendary kitchen battle of the housewife against the title characters in the movie Gremlins comes to mind…
Actually, the character is Sir Can-A-Lot, and he has been created as a mascot for Spam in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Hormel product. He is here to “…rescue the world from routine meals,” and help rid you not from tiny dragons, but mealtime boredom. Just don’t look to see him competing in Full Metal Jousting anytime soon…
– – 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!
– – He’s played a raccoon, and now the Allstate “Mayhem” guy is going to the dogs, playing an utterly ineffective guard dog! The commercial spot begins with the Mayhem guy sprawled canine-like on the floor but wearing no costume whatsoever. “I’m your dog, holding down the fort while you’re out catching a movie,” he explains, pausing to gnaw on a hefty bone. “Lucky for me your friends showed up with this awesome bone.- -Hey! You guys are great!,” he declares with a mouthful to the surreal white-faced flashlight-wielding robbers ransacking the house.
Mayhem in canine guise steps outside with the departing thieves to remind us that if we got our home insurance where we purchased our cut-rate car insurance, it might not replace all this…but alas, the canine is apparently wearing one of those “invisible perimeter fence” collars, and he receives twin zapping jolts of electricity which knock him to the ground at that point! We see Mayhem sit up and shake his head to clear it as the thieves drive off…great stuff!
– – 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…
– – I, for one, enjoy a good creative anachronism, and the Capital One vikings seem oddly at home in this election year, even if they do have seemingly-British rather than Danish, Scandinavian, or by default Germanic accents. We’ve seen these highly-visible Visigoths at places like New Orleans, Vegas, New York, and Washington, D.C….here, apparently checking out some dinosaur exhibits at the Smithsonian. They even formulate a public policy agenda of “No new axes!” Now that’s a slogan we could live…or die by!
Appearing at times with goats, a donkey, or hairy children, perhaps these vikings are the shape of future retro…
– – A rhinoceros, a cheetah, and a gazelle walk into a bar…it sounds like a hokey joke, but it’s the theme for a Kraft MiO liquid water enhancer commercial! Blending the line between live action and animation,the spot makes over wild animals into twenty-something dudes, inhabiting a bar appropriately called, The Watering Hole. The Rhino is a solid, muscular guy with glasses wearing a tight T-shirt labeled (–What else?) “Animal.” The Cheetah is a sleek speedster in a leather jacket who bewails the fact that MiO energy drinks are “completely crushing my game” by making everyone “…more energized, more alert” after mixing MiO into their water. As a result, the Cheetah is no longer the fastest beast around!
“Remember when I used to be it?,” continues the Cheetah. “I was the man. If you needed to track a gazelle down for dinner, you came to me.” At that point a jeans-jacket wearing Gazelle literally laughs in the Cheetah’s face!
It’s a great furry bar scene, a place where I’d certainly be at home! Watch for a future spot to include a giraffe…
– – Riding on the coattails of the popularity of Geico’s Maxwell the pig, Cici’s Pizza has unleashed near look-alike pigs seen speeding around in a blue van…and the kicker is, these pigs are advertising not insurance, but (-gasp!) a Hog Fest promotion, which means a pizza with bacon, sausage, ham, and pepperoni!- –Oh the horror, thehorror!
Things may get ugly in the Pig Wars from this point on, but you may count on Foxsylvania to give you an unflinching look at the atrocities and keep you fully informed, for you deserve nothing less!
– – Turn to the Bark Side…you know it is your destiny!
A teaser for a Volkswagen Super Bowl ad, the new commercial features a number of assorted dogs barking to Darth Vader’s distinctive “Imperial March” theme from Star Wars. The dogs play different Star Wars characters; there’s even an Ewok and a Wookie dog, and at the end a greyhound or whippet clad as an AT-AT parades across the stage! Is it Paw Wars?–Or are these not the dogs that you’re looking for?
Apparently none of this teaser will appear in the actual upcoming Super Bowl commercial, which is to herald the arrival of the redesigned VW Beetle…
– – I love considering the tale of Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf’s perspective, and now it would appear that in addition to cagey little girls and woodsmen with axes, the wolf also has to contend with red Volvos as well! This commercial begins with a bright red Volvo S-60 R-Design driving down the road in a dark, scary forest! The red Volvo’s standing in for Little Red Riding Hood, ‘ya see, and it’s moving right along to a version of “Little Red Riding Hood,” originally by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs…wasn’t that a great song?!- –Everybody sing!!! 
– – 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
– – I, for one, don’t like to discover foreign materials when I open an egg carton, and so I find it vaguely disquieting to ponder the notion of discovering a small armored knight occupying an egg compartment when one such container is opened in a Spam commercial.- -Does his rather surreal presence 
– – 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 
– – He’s played a raccoon, and now the Allstate 
– – I, for one, enjoy a good creative anachronism, and the Capital One vikings seem oddly at home in this election year, even if they do have seemingly-British rather than Danish, Scandinavian, or by default Germanic accents. We’ve seen these highly-visible Visigoths at places like New Orleans
– – A rhinoceros, a cheetah, and a gazelle walk into a bar…it sounds like a hokey joke, but it’s the theme for a Kraft MiO liquid water enhancer commercial
– – Riding on the coattails of the popularity of Geico’s Maxwell the pig, Cici’s Pizza has unleashed near look-alike pigs seen speeding around in a blue van…and the kicker is, these pigs are advertising not insurance, but (-gasp!) a Hog Fest promotion, which means a pizza with bacon, sausage, ham, and pepperoni!- –Oh the horror, the horror!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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