Fast Food Week: Eat like snake

Mgumphwa… Try as I might, I couldn’t get the commercial I wanted to end this week on. So instead I’m just going to save it for another time and post a weird Burger King commercial in its stead.

Fast Food Week: We love the moon

I’ve been playing/reading/living Hellboy today, so it seemed appropriate I do this ad for today. You’ll see why in a bit.

Now, clowns can be scary, but for my personal experience only one McDonald’s mascot has instilled enough fright in my 3-year-old self that I had to be removed from a Miami location when he walked in. No, not the Grimace, I speak of… Mac Tonight.

With the wisdom of years behind me, I can’t say I’m scared of the crescent-headed crooner anymore. In fact, I find him rather charismatic and he’s probably one of my favorite fast food icons out there. It’s kind of an odd sell, you generally don’t get the costumed characters to market to more grown-up promotions (unless it IS the kids you want coming in to your restaurant in the middle of the night). In the above spot specifically, I also must applaud their choice of music. If you’re going to parody something in your ads, pick the timeless stuff. Bobby Darin can stand the test of time, he was awesome in the 60s, the 80s and even now in the Whatevers. A well-done spectacle of an ad that I’m always (not-so-)secretly hoping will make a comeback.

Oh, what does it have to do with Hellboy? During all (or at least most, I think all) of the run of Mac Tonight TV spots, the man in the suit was Doug Jones, who provided the body and for the most part voice of Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies, animated movies and video game. Plus a great deal of other wonderful characters. So Mac is not only one of my favorite mascots, he’s one of my favorite actors too.

Foreign Fast Food Fhursday: Sexy clowns

Missed a couple nights due to unforseen events and general aggravation causing lack of time and desire to update this site. Will put up the posts I would have done Tuesday and Wednesday as well as tonight’s normal entry.

These aren’t new to me, but I stumbled across them when I was researching for this week and decided to post them. Some McDonald’s ads from Japan, that I’m reasonably sure wouldn’t fly over here:

In the parlance of McDonald’s itself, I’d hit it. The, er, sandwich, of course. And one for the ladies:

I really think the Japanese have it right. As Thoreau said, “simplify, simplify”. Which, in these modern times, means sexy people holding things with tight dance beats playing.

Fast Food Week: You’re fat

Missed a couple nights due to unforseen events and general aggravation causing lack of time and desire to update this site. Will put up the posts I would have done Tuesday and Wednesday as well as tonight’s normal entry.

Now I’d like to cover a few set of ads I absolutely cannot stand. For the past… damn, nearly a decade, Subway has been almost exclusively pushing how healthy their sandwiches are. I’m not here to dispute that claim, probably is true to a certain extent (though likely not as true as they’d like you to believe). However, how they’ve pushed this fact has ranged from annoying to insulting. Initially, they brought in Jared Fogle who was a decent ad at first, but not after 6, 7 years. At some point, they began to veer away from Jared and switched over to their Eat Fresh campaign. They began filling their ads with thinly veiled references to other fast food chains and how unhealthy they are.

Do you really want to trust a restaurant with that many disclaimers along the bottom of their commercials? For 10 years, their ads have focused on how poor their competition’s food is for you. In effect, that’s been a decade of playing on poor body image and having to guilt customers into their stores. (And personally, that’s the only reason I can see people going there. I used to eat there out of convenience but even then I could tell the sandwiches taste more like plastic than anything else.). There is one caveat to all this: the “$5 dollar foot long” ads, which seems to be an ad campaign built around the most annoying jingle I’ve ever heard in a long history of TV-watching. It was probably tailor-made to be something that sticks in your head, regardless of whether or not you want it there. It is annoying, obnoxious and I’m unsure how this appeals to anyone. The one good thing I will say about it is they made a huge fuss about their low prices before the economy completely dropped out from under itself, so unlike the massive amount of places marketing themselves on other people’s misfortune, they just genuinely lowered the price I think. And the sandwich shops I do go to have lowered their price in response, so kudos for that. But if those commercials are the price I had to pay for it, then I’m not entirely sure it was worth it.

Fast Food Week: The little redhaired girl

Missed a couple nights due to unforseen events and general aggravation causing lack of time and desire to update this site. Will put up the posts I would have done Tuesday and Wednesday as well as tonight’s normal entry.

One mascot that’s been fairly understated all these years has been Wendy’s… er, Wendy. For the most part, Wendy’s ad campaigns have ignored their namesake, focusing instead on crazy old ladies, and loveable old men. In recent years, the ads have been weird men in Wendy wigs, which I’d rather not stop and reflect on, and ads with animated Wendy and shots of food while a female voice describes how awesome it is.

So far in only one commercial has the animated girl actually spoken using the voice, but the inference is that they are one and the same. The voice is provided by Luci Christian, whose body of work is primarily voice acting in English dubs of animé series. Now, admittedly, these ads are generally inconsequential and fairly far from entertaining. However, there is one in particular that I feel I should mention. An ad for a new line of ceaser salads had, at the end, Wendy receeding back into some giant lettuce, at which point for a split second her eyes roll back in her head and she becomes the demon we all know lurks in our periphery, waiting for the moment to strike. Still unsure if this was on purpose or on chance but it certainly scared the hell out of me. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one to notice this and some kind gent on YouTube has done me the service of already making a video especially pointing this moment out:

Everything’s better with a little System of a Down.

Fast Food week: Heavy in saturated fat is the head that wears the crown.

As last night I covered some history of Ronald McDonald (okay, I really covered the history of Willard Scott, he’s the better of the two anyways), tonight I’ll be covering the other side of the mascot coin: The Burger King himself. The King’s been around since the 1960s-70s, originally appearing in television ads as an animated mascot for the kids’ meals programmings.

Cute enough. Certainly less terrifying than a clown in all regards. But his days of being a non-threatening corporate icon were limited. Things started going downhill but not quite all that bad soon after. Into the 80s, a live-action Magical Burger King was introduced, as seen in this ad.

Say what you will, Ronald McDonald, for a clown, never did much clowning. As a Magical King, at least he does magic. Actually I think a better chunk of that commercial is devoted to the antics of the King than selling the product or even focusing on what seemed to be the central point of the ad (Sir Shakes and his shakes, I think it was). And he wasn’t really all that bad, a little creepy I guess but still somewhat endearing for a mascot of his type. Maybe not someone you’d want to hang out, but not offensive to any particular sense. The King’s ad faded for the Kid’s Club gang in the early 90’s, and then kind of faded into a generic ad limbo for near a decade. This void needed to be filled, and it paved the way for…

… that. I won’t lie, this is one of my favorite ad campaigns ever. I can, however, see why this would frighten, disturb and horrify some people. A plastic face, frozen in eternal smile, that is the kind of thing horror movies are built on. Traditionally, not wholesome family dining. I am admittedly unsure how this is a good idea. However, if they’re going to keep sticking him in ads, media tie-ins and (my favorite of all) video games, I won’t complain. I like a good old-fashioned scare as much as the next person.

Fast Food Week: Birth of a fast food nation

Going to do a theme this week, focusing on the ads for fast food restaurants. I have enough material to cover just ‘ for the week, I think, but since I can’t stand the food there I’d feel bad not mentioning some of the others. But they are how I’m starting out. Here’s the first commercial to feature perennial scary-ass clown and childhood obesity mascot Ronald McDonald:

That’s touted as the original McDonald’s commercial, which I can’t confirm but I kind of doubt. It is, though, definitely the first Ronald ad. Not really that entertaining but much better than the standard issue crap and just plain hypocritical propaganda they’re pushing these days. Even the costume was so much better. But it’s who’s in the costume that really makes the difference here. That being none other than Willard Scott. If you’re a fan of comedy at all, you should be following Joel McHale and the Soup every week and if you are, then you’re familiar with all the advancements he’s made in batshit insane video clips.

But the best thing I’ve found in working on this post, is that Willard Scott, one of the men known for creating Ronald McDonald… has done a Burger King ad:

And with that ill portent, I’ll be back tomorrow with some retrospective on the Yin to Ronald’s Yang.

Foreign Fhursday: The universal dilemma

I imagine everyone’s seen this one, it’s been making the rounds for a few years. Doesn’t make it any less funny, though.

As far as I can tell this was shown throughout Europe, and gained popularity in America through internet dispersement (like this!). It appeals to all areas, because this is so universal. A bit dark, but wouldn’t be funny without that edge to it. And I’m sure we’ve all felt like that at some point.

Touched by a rainbow

As I mentioned back in the Cheetos post, absurdism in commercials has been on the rise as of late. Specifically I mentioned Skittles. I somewhat remember Skittles commercials when I was a kid. I’m not 100%, I may have just been stupid and unobservant but I don’t think they were anywhere near as out there as they’ve gotten to be lately. At the very least, it provides me with one of my favorite commercials in recent times:

This being the full version. I remember something about this being banned or pulled a while but I’m having trouble confirming this. Regardless, I remember seeing it a while ago before they started airing it. Depending on where it airs, I’ve seen several cuts of it. A lot of networks seem to air one without the whole monologue about the baby boy or the man on the bus at all, just cutting directly to the phone-and-desk. Adult Swim I’m sure airs at least the baby boy and dressing himself lines. My friend mentioned seeing the full ad somewhere but he wasn’t sure which market, I personally have never seen that one aired on TV. I have to assume it was cut up so badly because, let’s face it, despite the humorous elements that’s easily one of the darkest commercials I’ve seen. Bordering on depressing, even, if it wasn’t for the humor. Comedy relief isn’t a new tool by any stretch, but its certainly necessary here. You can’t sell Skittles if your viewers are too depressed over this man’s plight, no one wants tears in their rainbow. However, the comedy in this comes inherently from the fact that this man’s plight IS a Skittles commercial. The greatest tragedy of this man’s life just happens to taste like delicious fruit-flavored candy. LOL indeed. There are some plot holes but a) its a commercial, c’mon and b) absurdism itself has a slight natural immunity to these things so I’m not going to bother touching on such things.

Establishing that this thing is primarily using humor to sell the product, I guess the question is, who exactly is this marketing to? Or, the real question I guess I’m asking is, when did the candy demographic change? Last I checked, this shit was appealing to little kids bugging their parents in the impulse section while they’re trying to check out and LEAVE ME ALONE I’M TRYING TO COUNT CHANGE. But this would go over any kid’s head. It seems now they’re pushing to that 18-24 market which is why Adult Swim gets as close to the full ad as I’ve ever seen.

While on the subject of Skittles, I’d be doing myself and any readers a disservice, though, to not mention my all-time favorite Skittles ad. I know a lot of people who hated it, didn’t care or just “didn’t get it”, but to me there was nothing to get, it didn’t have a message (beyond “buy Skittles”), it simply was:

If there’s anything to take from that one, its a fool and his bunny are soon parted. Holy crap that was terrible. But I’m not even going to apologize for it. You have to live with reading that. The important thing with this ad, though, is that its beautiful. Cinematic, even; I often called it “the Shawshank Redemption of candy ads”. Its ads like this that got me to start this blog in the first place. The effort with all these ads is not pushing the product, or even making a commercial good; its making a commercial memorable. There aren’t too many new customers to grab out there, especially if you’re marketing to the older crowd. Either you want some damn Skittles or you don’t or you could go either way already. They just want to make sure when you’re browsing the candy rack, your eyes stop on that red bag and you think about the plight of these men and you chuckle a little and hopefully that sways your purchase.

Now I can go on about the entire ____ the Rainbow campaign for a while longer but I think I’ve written the word Skittles far too much for one day and I’ll call it quits here.

A request, and a big f**kin’ truck.

I think next week I’m going to look specifically at fast food ads. If anyone has any in particular they think I should feature, send them my way in the comments. On a related note, if anyone knows where I can find a copy of the McDonalds “I’d hit that” ad, that would be awesome. As for tonight, its been a long weekend on here and I think I’m just going to take the night off. In the meantime, enjoy this local spot I found randomly surfing:

I want that truck.