The Great Wolf Lodge commercials can be somewhat disconcerting. They are enormous wolves, you see, of a size that makes even dire wolves look wimpy. Fortunately they are friendly, and you ride them like oversized horses to the Great Wolves Lodge resorts…
A mother leaves work to find a Great Wolf waiting for her, and so rides him to pick up her son at school, even though the son would be barely a morsel for the wolf should he turn predacious. But not to worry! These wolves are just the iconic mascots for the family indoor water parks, which started in Wisconsin in 1997, and now have 19 locations…
Nothing brings the pack together like a trip to one of their indoor water resorts, so the commercial’s tagline is to “strengthen the pack!” We may all be grateful that these fantasy wolves are both imaginary and quite docile… 🦊
We seem to be posting a lot about wolves lately, but hey, Halloween is coming, and we gotta run with the pack, so to speak. So much has been written about Little Red Riding Hoodthat it’s practically a cottage industry, which may be appropriate since Grandma kinda lived in a cottage, don’t ‘ya know?
Well, Little Red here might be little, but she’s kinda hawt as well, and she sure ain’t no fool…no Big Bad Wolf is gonna pull one over on her. Going through those creepy old woods to Grandma’s house, this Little Red (Mikayla Roberts) fears no evil. So when she reaches Grandma’s house, she whips out her cell phone and places an Amazon order, which miraculously arrives almost instantaneously in time for deployment.
The Big Bad Wolf arrives, too…a magnificent, snarling version in white. But when Red deploys the dog toy that she has purchased, Wolfie becomes a good boy, jumping and playing with the toy in total delight! We’ve seen a similar transformation in such films as The Bad Guys, when Mr. Wolf just can’t help wagging his tail when called a good boy. There’s no such thing as a bad boy, really, right?
The actress playing Grandma isn’t exactly an elderly, bedridden-cripple either, but looks to be a pretty hip and vital lady. Well-played update on an old timeless classic, Amazon!
In a Sandofi commercial for Fluzone, the disease is personified as a ravenous wolf stalking people in various settings with ill intent. The notion of “the wolf at the door” is historically a longstanding one often used to represent all kinds of hardships and deprivation, from war to famine to disease.
The attempted predations of the realistic and sizeable wolf depicted here are repeatedlyfrustrated in this commercial by the simple fact that his intended victims have been immunized. Eventually he becomes a wolf on the run, rendered impotent by the simple fact that the people he surveys and passes have been protected…
And so we finally see our wolf retreating to the extent that he’s looking out the rear window of a bus. I don’t know what fare he was charged, but think that being immunized is a good idea lest you be visited and victimized by the flu wolf…
I’ve never had an emu work on my vehicle, but I could argue that some gorillas have. We’ve all been at the mercy of garages and mechanics. Even the venerable Plymouth Duster chariot used by the dynamic duo of Doug and the LiMu Emu occasionally needs work, and in the Liberty Mutual “Tools” commercial, we are taken inside a garage housing a BatCave’s worth of assorted vehicles, all the brand’s trademark “banana yellow” color. I mean, there’s a motorcycle, some kind of utility vehicle, and even Skidoo-type things…
Doug is hard at work beneath the chassis of his Duster, but is he up to the job? – – Nope, and neither is the Emu, who hilariously brings his human partner the wrong tool specified for each step of the job. When asked for a socket wrench, the Emu brings a hammer. When a blowtorch is requested, LiMu deposits a stuffed animal into Doug’s hand…
At the end of his efforts, Doug somehow manages to extract what appears to be a distributor from the bottom of the vehicle! “LiMu,call a mechanic” are Doug’s closing words. Clearly one is needed to prevent this Duster from entering the dustbin…
The LiMu Emu and Doug are best buddies who dress identically, and have a long-standing history, the details of which we someday may learn…or perhaps it’s best not to ask!
We’ve seen the fairy tale-inspired commercials of Nature’s Own breads before, and they’re great, spinning off from the Goldilocks saga with the Three Bears, and the Three Little Pigs tale, enjoying a french toast breakfast with the Big Bad Wolf. Well, now we have a version of Little Red Riding Hood, and it’s equally good and memorable…
The wolf that traipses to the cottage door here is large, muscular, and formidable in appearance. Granny inside is clearly no match for him. Entering the dwelling, the wolf licks his chops…is he anticipating an easy meal of Granny?
But no…it’s an easy meal with Granny! When Little Red makes her way to the house wearing her signaturegarb, the wolf is seated peacefully at the tablewith Granny, the perfect gentleman! Why kill Granny when she’s the perfect sandwich-maker, after all? Little Red enters the door and beholds the unexpected scene, her eyes wide. “What big eyes you have!,” comments the wolf to Red, in a perfect role-reversal.
See, isn’t this nice? Granny, Little Red, and the Wolf all seated amicably at the table. Why make war when you can make a sandwich? Perhaps Putin could heed this counsel…
I haven’t seen animal choreography this featured since Michael Jackson’s Halloween animated special (below). Catch that gem if you possibly can, especially the animal dance sequence performed to Jackson’s Dangerous. But I digress…
In Progressive Insurance’s commercial Timber, we are introduced to landscaper Lucky Larry, whose job is going so well that he sings to us about it emerging from his truck:
“Oh, the sun keeps shining and the grass is green, I’m way ahead of schedule with my trusty team!” 🎶
“There’s Heather on the hedges,” (complete with hedgehogs snipping) “and Kenny on the koi,” (one of which leaps up to kiss said worker), and we’re ready for an idyllic Disney-esque song and dance number on stairs with anthropomorphic raccoons, bunnies, and squirrels when the mood is shattered by the new guy worker accidentally dropping a tree on the work truck! 🙀
Fortunately, Progressive Insurance can have your small business covered for such calamities, even if Lucky Larry isn’t true to his name… ☘️
So let the dance continue, even if there aren’t foxes included in this number. I’ve gotta get me a better agent, that’s all… 🦊
Alpacas are cute and appealing, and as we learn from a recent CarMax commercial, apparently quite clever! We see an alpaca on a farm watching the owner return in his pickup truck, his faithful dog hanging out of the side window. Digging this scene, the alpaca apparently feels that he would like to ride shotgun, too…
So to a minimal instrumental theme that sounds vaguely western-ish, we are shown the crafty alpaca making his way to a shed towards evening where behind closed doors, where he is apparently able to go on line, surf the web, and apparently order a vehicle with sunroof, all without the benefit of digits!
The next morning, the vehicle is delivered to the astonished farmer, neatly tied up with a bow! In the closing scene, we see the new wheels out on the road, the alpaca getting a commanding view with his long neck and head extended out of the sunroof! This alpaca (whose name is Randy) is like the closing theme tells us, “Bad to the bone!”
Many of us have seen Kia’s “Robo Dog” commercial that premiered during the Super Bowl. The dog itself is incredibly cute and appealing, unless you stare for too long into it’s camera eyes, which look like they could draw you in. We’ve likely too seen robotic dogs actually developed, although most of these are more uncanny and borderline creepy than cute, lacking such embellishments as a distinct head. These dogs look like they’ve been engineered by Skynet to hunt out the human resistance…
The successor to the Kia Soul hamsters, Robo Dog represents the EV6 line, and we first see him sitting forlornly in an electronics store. Seeing an EV6, the robotic dog escapes the store and goes in pursuit of the vehicle and it’s driver, navigating remarkably well until it leaps off a building and runs out of battery charge…
Rather than shattering into pieces on the hard surface beneath, Robo Dog inexplicably survives the plunge, and is recharged back to life by the Kia owner, who adopts the ersatz canine we then see happily in the car…happy ending!
Bonnie Tyler’s memorable “Total Eclipse of the Heart” provides the sound track for the commercial, which reminds us to Live Fully Charged. I’m still glad to be a biological unit, thank you…🦊
We’re quite used to seeing dogs in commercials, but cats not so much unless they‘re hawking cat food or kitty litter. Walter the Cat changes all of that, appearing in a commercial for Chevy Silverado where he does everything a dog typically does, and more…
In the commercial, Walter is shown corralling cattle, chasing a mailman, riding a snowmobile, retrieving a stick thrown into water, leading a dog sled team, and even extricating a downed skier like a St. Bernard!
It’s all in a day’s workfor the frisky feline, who rides shotgun in his master’s truck and shares a tent as well as any canine best friend. It is the Year of theTiger, after all…Rawrr! 🦊
If you’re going to have a teddy bear past the age of 10 or so, you’ll want to have one that’s built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime…
…and so are these teddy bears in theIKEA commercial, “Every Home Should Be A Haven.” These are buff bears, and ever so useful! They stand outside a home like protective Mafia muscle, wearing sunglasses and functioning like gatekeepers or bouncers!Think you’ll enter uninvited? I don’t think so… 🙀
These teddies are in shape! They lift weights, easily uplift a sofa, and even screen calls inside, crushing a cell phone in one mighty paw when an undesired call comes through. Although powerful, thenot-so-soft plushies are good with kids, putting up with makeup parties and tucking the young-uns into bed, all to the rap strains of Final Form by Sampa the Great…
The only thing I don’t like about this commercial is that in the full version, a bear growls, and scares away a fox foraging through garbage outside. We only want milk and cookies, for cripes sake!– – Bear brutality! Oh well, who am I to argue with such ursine muscle? These bruins could take out Yogi without breaking a sweat… 🦊
FOXSYLVANIA 
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