Tag Archives: commercials

Seasonal Fare

Christmas Season: Nasty, Brutish, and Short

I’ve decided not to do Holiday Horrors this year, as I feel I may have mined that territory too thoroughly to do a post every day from now until December 25. (I will have another holiday feature, though; more on that soon.) However, I couldn’t let the Yuletide pass without commenting on one horror I’ve noticed in the recent spate of Christmas commercials. To wit: Competitive asshole shoppers.

I have this self imposed rule that I try not to swear in my posts, at least not in the first paragraph, because it’s a lazy way to get laughs or attention. However, there really is no other word to use in this case. The people in these commercials are straight-up assholes. They are horrible human beings, and seeing them in holiday ads depresses me almost beyond reckoning.

I think we can all agree that times are tough, and don’t look to be getting any less tough any time soon. One would think this would inspire us all to appreciate what we have and not be obsessed with the accumulation of material goods and, in general, try and not be jerks to one another.

Maybe I’m just a cockeyed optimist, but I do think most people recognize this and genuinely try to conduct their lives in a non-hideous way (maniac pepper sprayers notwithstanding). You wouldn’t know that from watching TV this Christmas season, however, because it is filled with wall-to-wall sociopaths.

The most baffling, in terms of the source, are the ads for Wal-Mart. In keeping with their traditional Middle American roots/image, Wal-Mart ads tend to be aggressively small-c conservative. The first hint of a change in the weather came a few weeks before Thanksgiving, when commercials began to air that featured goofy, distracted shoppers being informed of things like layaway and price guarantees by helpful employees. The shoppers were invariably played to brassy, over-the-top comedic effect (like the mom miming her kids saying “awesome!”). Not exactly the Old Spice spots, but by Wal-Mart standards, a tad out of character.

Then, post-Thanksgiving, we got something on the next level. It’s a commercial that features a shopper handing her Christmas list to a Wal-Mart employee. She asks him to read it to her. He informs the shopper that he can’t do that everything is crossed out. “That’s because I’m done,” she says, then makes a triumphant noise more or less in the employee’s face.

Why is this woman taunting this employee about how much stuff she got for Christmas? This man makes minimum wage (since pretty much everyone who works at Wal-Mart does), so presumably he does not have anywhere near the same amount of shopping power, which makes the shopper’s act just cruel. Also, this man threw no obstacles in the path of her shopping experience. If anything, his capacity as an employee helped her. The theme of the ad makes no sense unless there’s missing backstory about his nefarious plot to impede her shopping experience and steal Christmas or something.

This weird, needless competitiveness reminds me of a little kid who challenges you to a race then immediately takes off and declares victory once he’s crossed the imaginary finish line. Perhaps in the cutthroat world of brick-and-mortar retail, where every store is fighting for survival against online shopping, everything is a competition. Whether you know it or not, you are competing against everyone, even that poor slob who’s making $6 an hour and just wants to see if you need some help getting that huge tub of popcorn into your car.

To see this idea taken to its truly psychotic conclusion, however, you must see the Best Buy ads in which people talk smack to Santa. There are a few variations on this theme, but what happens in all of them is this: A family has purchased so many things at Best Buy that when Kris Kringle arrives, he sees the space beneath the Christmas tree is completely filled with presents. Then, he finds himself face to face with a mom who basically shit-talks him about getting there late or having a lame haul. Then Mom stalks out of room like she just laid down some mind-blowing rhyme and dropped a live mic on the stage. Boo-ya, you right jolly old elf.

Let’s put aside the fact that this brings up the thorny issue of who really brings presents to your house; personally, I’m of the opinion that if you’re gonna tell your kids some fairy tale story, it’s not everyone else’s job to enable that fantasy. If nothing else, Santa Claus is a symbol of altruistic gift giving, a figure who exemplifies the trope that ’tis better to give than to receive.

In Best Buy’s world, however, it is best of all to give more than someone else can, then rub it in the face of that someone, even if that someone is a paragon of selflessness and childlike wonder. This commercial says doing your holiday shopping at Best Buy will fill you with so much godlike hubris that you will flip the bird to Joy Itself.

I wonder if this is a product of Reality Show Culture, where literally every mundane profession or hobby now has its own competition-based tournament show. So how long before shopping is also considered competition, a game in which foes are vanquished? (It already is, in a way, on Extreme Couponers.)

Or maybe it’s a reflection of the neo-Ayn-Rand-ian POV you see displayed at any of the Republican presidential debates, which essentially boils down to: I got mine, I don’t care if anyone else gets theirs, and fuck anyone who stands in my way. I fear this is a subconscious preparation for the kill-or-be-killed economic reality we may wind up in, that we all secretly fear we will soon be fighting over crusts of bread and shoe leather.

Or maybe it’s just a sign that he people in charge of Wal-Mart and Best Buy are hideous animals who believe in the most base aspects of human nature. I’ll pick this last option, so I can continue to sleep at night.

Pointless Nostalgia Video, Videocracy

Internet Gauntlet Answered: Heinz Homestyle Gravy

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Almost a year ago, I threw down an Internet Gauntlet demanding to see the original version of a Heinz Homestyle Gravy commercial from the mid-80s. As you may recall–look, I know you don’t, but just say you do–there were several instances of this ad on the web, but not the original, long-form, unexpurgated version that I remember my grandfather loving so much.

How do I know? Because I could tell there were a few subtle differences between the original and the harshly edited variation that later polluted the airwaves. Either they reshot the thing or they used a different take. In the later version, the old man mugs a bit more, and addresses his sad lament (“oh no…”) directly to the camera. But in the majestic original, he keeps laughing to himself even as he realizes he just pissed off his old battle axe of a wife and will probably get a rolling pin on the dome for his insolence.

I couldn’t have been older than 10 when these ads first aired, and yet I remember being mad when they switched them up. Why? Because I recognized the comedic superiority of the first version, and because I was a really weird kid. I thought we’ve been through this already, jeez.

And yet, when I asked for the original version from you, the internet, I received not one response. Not one! You should all hang your heads in shame, you cowards.

And you should now raise your heads to witness this!

That’s right, some brave American patriot has posted the original Heinz Homestyle Gravy commercial! Tell me the delivery employed in this ad does not make it a million times better than that cheap hack job remake. You can’t tell me that, because it is not true and you are not a liar. Also, I now realize that the old man went on to play Louis CK’s agent in an episode of Louie. You know, the one where he was forced into playing a cop in a Matthew Broderick movie. Amazing how these things come back around.

I think I’m gonna go lie down for a while.

Pointless Nostalgia Video

Pointless Nostalgia Friday Presents: Polly-O String Cheese

Who can say what forces shape us? We are often the prisoners of our times. One’s future could be shaped by simply being at the right place at the right time—or the wrong place at the wrong time. Have you ever thought about what might have influenced your life if you were born during a different age? The Renaissance? The Civil War? The Great Depression? Who can say what heights you may have climbed, or to what depths you may have sunk?

Me, I haven’t thought about this conundrum much, because I was born during the Age of Advertising, and thus have a miniscule attention span. I’ve said this many, many times here at Scratchbomb, but I have been immensely influenced by commercials. I feel like they’ve rattled in my brain my entire life. Anyone who says they are not influenced in any way by ads is deluded or lying.

When you’re a kid, you find many things funny that you don’t as an adult. Specifically, other people. Adults won’t just laugh in random people’s faces, but kids will. They can laugh for hours about somebody they see in the street with a weird haircut or dumb hat on. And if the same person also says something weird, in a weird voice, forget it.

I was reminded of this cruel fact of kid-hood when Joe Randazzo of the Onion tweeted a link to this commercial for Polly-O string cheese (the most needless and unasked for food innovation of all time until pancakes and sausage on a stick). This ad ran for roughly 8 billion years during my childhood, but despite its ubiquity, me and my brothers always found it funny. Always.

Why? Because of the wizened old man who says NUTHIN? The way he said this, combined with his wrinkly face—he looks like a slightly melted candle, or a shar pei—was comedy gold to us.

If you’re seeing this for the first time, or were not as struck by it as I was as a kid, I don’t expect you to think it’s funny. I wouldn’t either, if I hadn’t spent my entire childhood laughing at it.

Watching this ad an adult, I am struck by a few things.

  • Check out the odd posters hanging from the wall, that almost give it a Sedelmaier feel. I particularly like the one that bizarrely reads NO SCREAMING.
  • The guy behind the counter who yells at the old wrinkly man calls him “Shimmy”. Obviously, he was trying to say “Jimmy” and failed. But Polly-O wasn’t gonna shell out for more than one take or overdubbing in post. So there it sits, “Shimmy”. My brothers and I found this quite hysterical. HIS NAME IS SHIMMY! WHOSE NAME IS SHIMMY?!
  • Is cheese really the best part of the pizza, as this ad insists? That’s a matter of opinion, of course. But I think I’d rather have a whole slice of pizza than any one individual part of it. I like pizza, but I never get the craving to drink a cup of a tomato sauce on its own. In fact, cheese is probably the worst part of the pizza, nutritionally speaking.
  • I now realize that all Polly-O string cheese really did was make it acceptable for you to chomp down on a huge chunk of fattening mozzarella at lunchtime. It’s like having individually wrapped pudding cups filled with foie gras.
  • At the end of the ad, the kids taste the string cheese and give it glowing praise in foreign languages. But only the first kid says something in Italian (“Bellissimo!”). The last two say French expressions. (“Magnifique!” and “C’est si bon!”) C’mon, Polly-O, you’re making mozzarella and you don’t know the difference between Italian and French? Your handlebar-mustachioed ancestors are spinning in their graves.