Hope this hasn't been started elsewhere.

What commercials, past or present, do you think of fondly, or change channels to escape?

I liked the old John Moschitta commercials for Federal Express, and the Playstation 2 commercials from a few months ago were quite good. And one of my guilty pleasures is singing along with the Arby's biscuit.

"YES I CAN, WITH A ROAST BEEF SANDWICH..."

Those I hate include most of the 1-800-SAFE-AUTO commercials, the rapping Sprite ads, and the ads for Louisville's Churchill Downs (1998's "Go, baby, go" series was particularly atrocious).

Then there are laughably bad ones I try to get on tape, like the old Lifecall commercial ("I've fallen and I..."/"I'm having chest pains!") and Oklahoma City's late-night ads for Mathis Brothers and Oklahoma Discount Furniture.

Thoughts?

Any car advert is usually rubbish

"Where's the beef?" was my favorite burger ad. I tried to get my parakeet to say it, but he never did.

There's a Claritan ad with Mike Piazza that I like, and a phone service ad with Mike Piazza and Terry Bradshaw, and just basically any ad with Mike! (It's a little crush I have, can you tell?)

That comercial from a year or two ago with the guy burping the alphabet. That was disgusting.

Any comercials for tech schools. All of them say "95% placement rate!" and "we have incredible up to date eqiptment!" which is a lie everytime.

Any Sprint ad. Not only is it a lie (their service sucks) but they are annoying as hell with their attempt to impersonate X-files from a few years ago to the way sprintman (as I like to call the dufus in the black trench) burst into the insane asylum. If any one belongs in an asylum it is the sprint management.

Yes, but the Sprint ads with sweet sexy Sela Ward are just devine, aren't they?

What's annoying is car dealership infomercials.
(at least here in SoCal) Thay always go on rambling about credit, finances
yada yada yda, yet they don't talk about
the cars or the technology much if at all.
This goes on for 30 minutes to an hour too.

Oh, the millions of variants of workout machines
also gets old.

And why do they call infomercials INFOmercials?
Much of the time, all they do is boast about the
product on and on for 30 minutes to 1 hour. They
can do that in 30 seconds.

admittedly, I liked the old Macintosh infomercials f
from 5 years ago,

"how much ram does that computer have?"

"eight"

"wow, you are a power user!"

(not exact quote).

A truly weird commercial is the Reebok ad with the big guy in a sumo loincloth dancing around to "The Bird." It's just weird!

As my sister and I have been discussing recently, any commercial with monkeys will be good. If they are chimps, even better. Better yet if they are in human cloths. BEST if they are in a situation in which a chimp would never find itself, say, at the opera as a recent commercial depicted.

Apologies to Hardee's. They're the ones doing the biscuit commercials, not Arby's. I have no idea what I was thinking.

And was it Domino's that had the commercial a few years back that asked, "Who wants more toppings on their pizza? More cheese? More toppings?..."

That one had a Trek reference AND chimps.

Ok, another ad that really gets my goat is currently running a lot in NE Ohio (I don't know about other places in the US). It's an ad for propane and what a great thing it is for heating, cooking, etc. It has this lady coming to a house to house sit for a week and enjoying all this wonderful propane. So, what does she do? She changes the locks on the doors! The last image of the commercial is her, in the bathtub surrounded by candles, soaking happily as her ex-friends try to figure out why their keys won't work in the front door.

I would love to see, as a wrap-up to the ad, the police breaking down the door and arresting the chick in the tub.

What a STUUUUUPID commercial.

Was one of her friends Hank Hill?

Ha! Could be, could be...

I love the new seven-up commercials. I think the best so far is the parody of the Pepsi challenge.

Paraphraising "Studies prove 7-up tastes much better than rancid milk." :o) That just kills me every time. . .

Saw a new one (several times!) this weekend -- the one with the singing bellybuttons, an ad for low-slung jeans. Creepy, gross, weird.

Another new one I liked that I didn't get the first time. Nike -- Tag. It may start a new fad.

I love the new seven-up commercials. I think the best so far is the parody of the Pepsi challenge
I just love the way they don't pull their punches with that one and take it as far as it will go. I mean, by the end of the spot you're thinking that the guy who got "dishwater" was the lucky one. "Bile"???!!! Unbelievable.

That is my favorite 7-Up commercial, but I like the one with the dog, too.

Now I'm trying to decide, which is better:
The "Got milk" commercials of the past few years, or the "Milk, it does a body good" commercials of the 80's?

I like the 7-Up one where he is in the middle of the freeway. Semi-truck 1 7-up machine 0. Although I gotta admit the dishwater guy was the lucky one in that test. Kinda makes you wonder what some of the comparisons they rejected where, or not.

This is a radio commercial, but I'm gonna post it here anyways.

PacBell is advertising "Privacy Manager", which lets you CallerID calls from out of area (or something like that). In one of their ads, they have a guy who's stuck out in the middle of nowhere with 4 flats (because of a freak accident involving a load of spilled steak knives). He's trying to call his dear old mother, who won't pick up the phone, because she thinks he's a telemarketer ("darn sneaky salesmen"). So he's stranded and comments "must... find... shelter..."

WHY DOESN'T THE IDIOT CALL 911?????

Probably the most annoying commericials are the ones that advertise eyewitness news in Baltimore. There is a series of ones where the news team is at a community picnic in Baltimore. (I am sure they go to comminity picnics, they probably all live in Annapolis or Bel Air) and the people keep praising them. One goes as far as to compare Baltimore to corn. A whole bunch of little communities which make something great. And then someone asks what are the little end pieces and the person replies that they symbolize eyewitness news. Talk about a gag reflex.
Someone needs to tell these people that Baltimore is not the only city in Maryland.

I've been trying to decide whether the new "Rawhide" Taco Bell commercial belongs is one of the "best" or "worst." I think it belongs in both categories.

(And yes, I did tape it.)

Sprite also has a great commercial with a family singing obnoxiously on a long car trip. Anybody know where I can find the lyrics?

And on the negative side, I really can't stand the commercials for a certain Kentucky insurance company ("All-around coverage, all around Kentucky").

The two UPNs I get are local channels for New York and Boston, so I get commercials tailored just for the people who live there (I live in Arizona...)

Anyway, there's one obnoxious commercial for an expo at some well-known building in Boston, I guess, which rattles off the prices for items. Most of the prices are good, actually, but it's the format of the commercials that drives me crazy. It overloads you with information ("look at this! No wait! Look at this, since it's better! Oh, wait, look at THIS!"), and the announcer's voice is just so annoying!

The Coors Light commercials ("It's cold...but it ain't Coors Light") are annoying, too. I HATE those.

"Rawhide" Taco Bell commercial
umm, is that the one where they sing new lyrics to the theme of Bonanaza?

BTW the Taco Bell lyrics are an improvement. The Bonanaza theme actually starts off, "I'm not afraid of any pretty maid, Bonanza!" and goes downhill from there. I actually saw a clip of Lorne Greene & the rest singing it once.

Sorry, I'm from Ohio and we don't get many Westerns up here.

But thanks for the clarification.

You mean the Bonanza song has lyrics??

I suppose it's conceivable; the situation may be similar to the original Star Trek (composed as an instrumental but the Big Guy thought he'd write lyrics to it).

I have no evidence (and don't know one Western theme from another as previously demonstrated), but that's my speculation.

Yes, it does have lyrics. However since the clip I saw actually showed the Cartwrights on horseback singing & because of comment Michael Landon made on the Tonight Show once, I believe the scene was actually in the pilot presented to the network, but I don't know if the scene was in any broadcast episode.

Trivia Time: Bonanaza was originally ordered for 36 episodes because it was filmed in color & it was thought to be a good way to show people in department stores the quality of the new color TVs. (IIRC NBC ran Bonanaza & NBC was owned by RCA.)

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3611/lyrics.htm

I just got a cold shiver thinking about Lorne, London and the rest of the gang SINGING a theme song together. Yech!
Definately like those new Mike's Hard Lemonade commercials. They sell the product but also poke fun at all those annoying beer commercials. Good stuff.

That's it! Now I gotta say something! Until now, I hadn't thought the Sprint commercials were THAT bad, but the "bring home Charo" one is just wrong.

Anyone care to defend Charo?

I really hate this Judge Judy commercial that's been airing A LOT. It contains phrases something like 'Justice has a new home' & 'the voice of reason for the nation.' (I'm surprised they didn't show her walking across the water.)

First off, Justice is a concept that can't really be legislated. Either Justice is done or it's not. (Personally I think the Justice Department should be sued under the Truth in Advertising laws. Just because it's a law doesn't mean it's just.)

Secondly, if Judge Judy IS the voice of reason, then I'm moving to the moon. The first time I saw her awful show I couldn't believe that such an intolerant person had ever been a judge. I would hate to be in a courtroom with some jerk like that sitting in judgement.

And if the dialogue wasn't bad enough they have this cheesy Batman-style theme running. What's next? A gavel silhouette projected onto the clouds? A cape & cowl? The Judymobile? (Her sidekick will be Punch, the Boy Bailiff.)

I love the recent Verison commercial, which shows a kid
trying to download a video to court a girl, The
download proceeds slowly. He comes back later
with a black eye, and he looks at the download
bar, which is stuck somewhere berween 20% and 30%. It junps
back a number, and the camera breifly switches to a shot
of the kid staring at it. The next scene shows
the monitor smashing through a second story
window.

There were plenty of time when I felt like doing this
to my computer

I write:

*****trying to download a video to court a girl, The
download proceeds slowly. He comes back later
with a black eye, and he looks at the******

I ment "that shows how to court a girl".

Nit on the commercial. At one point, the percentage goes *DOWN* (I think it's from 28% to 27%, but I'm not sure).

Second nit on that commercial. He starts the download, and it jumps to 2% immediately. Then (presumably several hours later) it's still downloading.

Third nit. The file he's downloading is [something].video. ".video" is not a standard extension. It looks like the kid is using a Windows PC, so I will work from that. Most video files are either MPEG, AVI, or QuickTime, which have as file extensions .MPG (or .MPEG), .AVI, and .MOV respectively.

Nit 4: Why did he try to pick up the girl, if he hadn't got the instructional video yet?

But you're right, it's a hysterical commercial.

Furniture commercials in the Detroit area.
AMAZING! Do not pay for 2 full years! Astonishing! Free Credit! Stupendous! We pay your sales tax! As if this is all unique and unheard of and nobody else ever thought of doing it!
To make it even worse, they have a former Detroit area news anchor sitting quietly and saying in a low-key, calm voice, the same pitch, but acting as if all this was so astonishingly hard to believe.
"Folks, you gotta believe me. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. Four percent. That's right. You heard me. It's all true. That's right. Four percent financing. And free next day delivery..." And so on.
I read in a local paper that of course he doesn't need the money, he just did it for fun. FUN?? HE THINKS THAT'S FUN?? Ugh. Ick. Erk.

I saw this late night infomercial with porn king Ron Jeremy, posing as a talk show host, hawking some sex potion or aid. I thought I was dreaming.
There is also some infomercial with film actresses Minnie Driver and Penelope Ann Miller hawking some diet system. Has film work dried up that much that they have to appear in an infomercial?
I will watch QVC hostesses Lisa Robertson and Kim Parrish anytime, I don't care what they are hawking. They are two of the loveliest women on the air today.

I'll beat anyone's advertised price or your mattress is FREEEEEEEE!

(You're killing me, Larry!)

Anybody remember Crazy Eddie? ("His Prices Are INNSSAAAANNNNEEEE!!!") The commercials for his electronics chain flooded the NYC airwaves in the mid-'70's through the late-'80's. The chain went bust in the late '80's, but the commercials began airing again recently, although I think that it is solely an on-line venture now.

I preferred Fred Rated.

The Frito Bandito commercials have been declared to be non-PC

Yeah, about 25 years ago.

"Ay-yi-yi-yi
I am the Frito Bandito.
I love Frito Corn Chips;
I love them, I do.
I want Frito Corn Chips.
I take them from you."

Alf is back, hawking the same 10-10 dial-around that Mike Piazza and Terry Bradshaw are hawking.

Mike Piazza-sigh!

As for really annoying adverts, I have three words: zoom zoom zoom!

"Can you hear me now?"

"Good."

Sven (and others), you might enjoy the following from Toronto Star columnist William Burrill

(You can skip down through the Canuck-intensive beer stuff if you need to. )

A-men to that, Brother.

Sven, you're calling kerriem "brother?"
(Just kidding, by the way )

Oh, and kerriem, that was hilarious!

Not a problem.

If you clik on his byline you can actually access a good-sized archive of Burrill's columns. Well worth the read.

Oh, and BTW, while we're on the subject of commercials we'd like to put the bad hurt on, can I nominate this latest round of 'rhyming' Cover Girl ads? (You know: Cover Girl Tonya/That lashful girl/Said, 'There's no way I'm going to cut and then curl!!' Or something.)

Y'know, I really didn't care much about supermodels' makeup dilemmas to begin with...and setting them to asinine poetry isn't helping much at all.

While I didn't think too much of them at first the Blockbuster commercials with the rabbit & the guinea pig (?) are cute & enjoyable. "Aaah! Ninja mice!" ;-)

Is that James Woods & Jim Belushi doing the voices?

I think so KAM. And they are kinda cute. Especially the most recent one, with it's play on old TV 'rabbit ears.'

Don't think I've seen that one yet.

They also cute the first one where the Guinea Pig says "You cant entertainment?, lets see their movies do this!" and he shakes his um rear, and the rabbit says "I dont want to see anything to do that", they cut the rabits line.

No discussion of great commercials can be complete without discussing some of the most memorable TV ads in history: for Guinness. Some are just plain surreal (mostly the earlier ones with Rutger Hauer) while others are actually very funny (such as the fairly recent snail race ad) and even poignant (the Irish hurling [a sort-of Gaelic hockey] player ad is a recent favourite).

I don't know if many of these are shown in America or not.

The hurling ad is particularly great - the look on the guy's face is fantastic.

I don't think much of the volcano one, though.

No, I don't think these are shown in North America (more's the pity - they sound hilarious!)

Dunno about the States, but the latest ads for Guinness here up North just feature a closeup of a pint and a cute factoid or two about the product/company.

There is also some infomercial with film actresses Minnie Driver and Penelope Ann Miller hawking some diet system. Has film work dried up that much that they have to appear in an infomercial?

As I understand it, the lure isn't so much the work as it is the fact that the producers of these blots on civilisation offer stars ridiculous sums of money to appear in them.

Still...Minnie Driver? Gahhh - it wasn't that long ago that she was the Hottest New Thing on all the magazine covers, was it? :^O

A few years ago there was a news article showing John Major drinking Guinness. I had much innocent fun imagining him doing the funny 'Guinness dance' from the commercials of the time. (You know, the dance that was allegedly plagiarised.)

I agree about the surreal Rutger Hauer ads. Very nice.

My personal favourite Guinness ads were from the mid-90s, just after the Rutger Hauer period. The often-mimicked advert featuring that crazy man jumping up and down and doing funny poses as his pint is being half-poured, to the music of Perez Prado, still does it for me. That, and the one with the cloudy pint of Guinness and the camera zooming into the pint seemingly for ever, revealing an entire universe, planets, civilisations, and fininshing with another pint glass on a table (and a brief flicker of Hauer) - all to the music of Louis Armstrong (though it was originally a heavy rock soundtrack).

But they're all fantastic.

Has film work dried up that much that they have to appear in an infomercial?

Ask Chuck Norris.

Has anyone seen the cell-phone commercial with the guy having language problems in Chinatown?

Has anyone seen the new advert for Rennies? The one at the dinner party when the party host makes an important announcement:

"I think... I've got indigestion!"

I liked two Sprint commercials over the past few months. One of them, from Summer, 2002, had the Worm Guys from the Men In Black flicks, along with the ubiquitous Mulder clone. The latest one has the Mulder clone on a farm, where the farmer is complaining that he ordered 200 oxen, but got 200 dachsunds.
KAM - Judge Judy Sheindlin was a New York Family Court judge for a long time. I understand that she had the same courtroom demeanor then as she does now.

Adam, thanks. I couldn't figure out what the farmer really wanted in the dachsund commercial...

STAMPEDE!!!

Along the same lines (and yeah, this goes in PM...)

We told them to "Ship the documents to the Feds," but they heard "Rip the documents to shreds". The Enron scandal was clearly a case of bad cellular.

LOL!

See if Lay had had Cingular wireless Enron wouldnt have imploded. ;-)

How about "Most Improved Commercials"? The NFL's spots for United Way used to be these incredibly sappy things using athletes and their families. But the newer spots are just hilarious! I really like the one with Tony Gonzalez and the people throwing all the food at him. Or the Peyton Manning pottery one.

An interesting commercial of recent months, in the UK anyway, was I think an ad for Tennent's Lager. It showcased the apparently famous "McAndrews" Scottish-themed bar in Bangkok, Thailand - complete with wok-fried Mars bar to go with the "agis, neeps and ta-tay", karaoke playing Big Country songs, and the obligatory lady-boys wearing tartan miniskirts.

I look forward to the Super Bowl partly for the commercials. The game may be boring but the commercials provide water cooler conversation for minutes (or hours if the boss brings it up.)

Then you may be disappointed.

One of the strangest commercials I ever saw was for a video enabled mobile phone. Two girls are getting dressed for a party. They put on identical outfits. One girl calls the other and beams over a picture of herself. The other girl sees that they're both wearing the same outfit and tears her shirt off in frustration. Cute enough but they ruined the whole thing by what comes next: a reaction shot from three boys with the same phone watching and laughing! That's a great selling point for a phone- now all your perverted friends can spy on you while you're getting changed!

The most offensive commerical I ever saw was one in which a guy on a bike gets killed in a tunnel. But had he stopped to eat his tasty chocolate bar, the big truck would have roared right past him while he smiled and enjoyed his food. It was particularly offensive because they started showing this commercial around the same time Princess Diana died, in a tunnel. Maybe they were trying to say that if she had stopped to eat a chocolate bar she wouldn't have been killed. Dumb commercial.

My favourite at the moment is the IBM advert with the 'Universal Business Adapter'. It connects anything to everything. Unless you're in Europe, in which case you need an adaptor...

My vote for worst current advert is the 'Hello Moto' phone advert. Shown TWICE during each break in the Bond films. This one's had me yelling at the TV and turning off the film in disgust.