– – It’s short, sweet, and effective: Geico’s Buck commercial. Asking whether switching to Geico can save us 15% or more on auto insurance, our announcer poses whether the buck stops here…then out on cue advances a magnificent buck, who stops precisely on the plain, unadorned stage; the buck turns his fully-racked head towards us, and the announcer, who expected nothing less, shrugs slightly. There’s not a lot of special effects artistry here as in some of its others, but with its play on the familiar expression, Geico again makes it work…
Archive for the ‘television’ category
Geico’s Stopping Buck…
May 12, 2011Advance Auto Parts Speed Training…
May 6, 2011
– – Failure is not an option for those participating in Advance Auto Parts Speed Training, at least not if you value your backside! Imagine sprinting briskly across the African plain while hoisting a muffler to your shoulder…no picnic that, but it gets worse when you’re wearing a meat suit of raw steaks around your waist, and being pursued by a pack of at least five lions very interested in a luncheon! That ought to get the employees to beat feet! The performance of the guy first depicted is apparently at least adequate; he lives to draw salary another day, and earns a “not bad” comment from his boss waiting to pick him up in a jeep. We are not shown the fate of the girl who follows next, a garland of meat around her neck…hope she ran track and field!
In a related commercial, we are shown battery installations practiced while free-falling from a plane; it’s almost as brutal as the performance reviews I used to undergo. One suspects that Advance has a really interesting retirement plan…
New Aflac Duck…
April 30, 2011
– – Say it ain’t so…the Aflac duck’s been canned! Or at least the voice of comedian Gilbert Gottfried is following jokes he made on Twitter about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Aflac, incidentally, gets 75% of its revenue from Japan, so Gilbert was history.
The new voice of the Aflac duck is Daniel McKeague, an advertising sales manager from Minnesota. He reportedly will be getting a sum in the low six figures for a one year contract, one which is likely to be renewed…
…maybe I could sing opera for a J.G. Wentworth commercial!
Obscure Cartoon Foxes…
April 28, 2011
– – A character called Sly Fox appeared in a Warner Bros. cartoon produced in 1957 called Fox Terror. Also appearing in this ‘toon and featured in it was Foghorn Leghorn, who thanks to Geico has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately. Now Sly Fox was after some chickens for dinner, and sought to bypass the barnyard security system of Barnyard Dog by having Foghorn Leghorn distract and annoy the dog (–Foghorn annoying?–Now that’s a stretch!). Anyhow, the fox never does get the chickens due to the interventions of a hyper little black rooster, and at the end Foghorn and the dog get wise to the fox, and run him out of the yard. He’s shot, which fortunately is seldom fatal in the ‘toon world; the fox does dynamite both Foghorn and the dog, which has no long-term affects, either.
I love the way that Sly Fox is drawn, and you can see hints in the treatment of the figure of Wile E. Coyote. Voiced by the great Mel Blanc, the fox wears several disguises and at times even sounds somewhat like Bugs Bunny. One good lookin’ fox this, Sly regrettably only appeared in a single cartoon but should have been featured in his own show… 
The Urban Woodsman from Honda’s “To Each Their Own”
April 26, 2011
– – Well, actually it’s called “Date With a Woodsman,” and it concerns a bearded lumberjack picking up his date in his new Honda Civic hybrid. As the girl is walking up to the car, he has to tell his pet fox to ride in the back seat so that the girl can ride in the front passenger seat! We then follow the couple as they shop in a general store for hiking boots and outdoor gear before going to a river or lake. Later, we see the fox poking his head out of the car window, apparently enjoying the ride. Last of all, the fox is seen reposing on a rock in the background of the woods (shown) while his master(?) is making a rather impressive wood sculpture for his date.
While the woodsman appears a bit on the err, rugged side (birds nest in his beard, for cripes sake!), anyone who has a fox for a companion is keeping good company…now I wanna see the fox driving the Civic!
(…tip o’ the pen to carycomic for alerting me to this commercial!)
Foghorn Leghorn Does Geico!
April 6, 2011
– – Foghorn Leghorn is not the best known Looney Tunes character, but deserves a bit more attention. He’s about to get it in one of the on-going Geico commercials, where it is posed whether Foghorn Leghorn would make a really bad book narrator…
The answer is, extremely! Foghorn is an anthropomorphic rooster with a Central Virginia accent and a “good ol’ boy” speaking style who is full of bluster, hot air, and himself. He starred in 28 cartoons in the Golden Age of American animation, first appearing in 1946. We are shown the rooster narrating A Tale of Two Cities in his own inimitable way, offering much irritating commentary along the way. So irritating is Foghorn that Henry the Hawk, also present in the recording booth for the session, just can’t take it anymore, and picks up a bat to explain the situation to the extremely verbose rooster…it’s classic stuff!
Most of us know someone who is at least somewhat like Foghorn Leghorn, and have been tempted to deal with them in a similar fashion…just resist, because assault and battery is illegal!
One of Us?
April 4, 2011
– – Imagine a surreal TV series about a guy, the girl next door, and her mixed breed dog, Wilfred. The twist is that the dog is played by a comic in a rather mediocre fursuit, complete with a drawn-on black nose! That’s right, there may be a furry cult classic in the making here!
…Wilfred will be aired on FX, and is based on a successful award-winning Australian series. Not all foreign shows translate well to American television, although there have been notable exceptions such as Being Human. The premise of this show is exciting as we who are furry generally have to content ourselves on television with anthropomorphic animal ‘toon characters such as Brian in Family Guy, or occasionally catch glimpses of fursuited actors such as Bill Murray’s dog character Frisbee all too briefly portrayed in the movie, Scrooged. Such tantalizing tastes only leave us hungry for more, and here in Wilfred we have the promise of a major, on-going furry character!
Family Guy alum David Zuckerman is adapting the quirky comedy for FX, and will write and exec produce. Jason Gann, who co-created and starred in the Australian series, plays the title character.- -Coming your way in June!
The Bridgestone Beaver
April 2, 2011
– – What goes around, comes around…or so we are shown in the karmic Bridgestone beaver saga, generally regarded as probably the best of this year’s Superbowl commercials. We are shown an industrious beaver hard at work in a wooded area, dutifully carrying a branch across a road with a bridge spanning a river visible in the background.–Oh no!–A car is then shown zipping down the road towards the beaver, who throws his paws up in anticipation of becoming roadkill. The guy driving, however, calls upon the excellent handling characteristics of his Bridgestone tires, and is able at the last second to swerve around the threatened beaver, avoiding a messy tragedy.
For the beaver, life is one dam thing after another…and we cut to six months in the future, when the same motorist is shown traveling down the same road during a storm. This time, a tree across the road halts the driver’s progress. It’s a good thing, too, because the bridge the motorist must cross has been swept away by a raging torrent of water! The beaver and the motorist spot one another, and exchange salutes…it’s a great moment!
A parable for our time…now that’s car-ma!
At One With Beer and Nature?
March 30, 2011 
– – The Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World is notable here because of his apparent natural abilities with animals, who also seem to appreciate his legendary charisma. We pause to salute this man because he goes out of his way to protect animals such as husky dogs, bears, and as illustrated, foxes. As evidence of his ability to get along with and even control nature we cite the fact that whenever he swims, dolphins follow him. He has a live owl that is shown in one commercial landing on his arm. A recent commercial shows this beer-drinking wonder shooing a mountain lion out of his kitchen!
The actor who plays “The Most Interesting Man” is in real life Jonathan Goldsmith, who is committed to Saber Tigers, an organization designed to save big and endangered cats. That makes Goldsmith one cool cat himself…
Ram-bo and Gum Gimmicks…
March 21, 2011
– – Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in the Aliens series forever set the bar high for me on what a strong, take-charge woman should be, someone who can hold her own with space marines and even prevail against a ferocious mother alien in mortal combat. None too shabby either is a young female we are treated to in the latest Stride Spark gum commercial who when charged by a ram, wrestles the sucker to the ground, and uses the power of oomph to intimidate and deter him from additional aggression.
Now we’ve seen ram-tactics successfully employed before by shadowy gum agents, those frightening secret operatives determined to retrieve the long-lasting gum from users in order to compel them to buy more gum; commercialism ain’t pretty. In an earlier spot for Stride, a ram is successfully deployed to strike a poor male chewer crossing a street, causing the gum to fly out of his mouth where it can be retrieved. These same secret operatives are not above using wrestlers or even German ethnic dancers to achieve their objectives. Probably in the future, the History Channel will link them to Freemasonry or some dark alien agenda.
I fear the gum agents and their unspeakable objectives, and like the truth, I know that they are out there…
FOXSYLVANIA 
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