Caveat Emptor or This post brought to you by...
It's Superbowl Sunday. I hate football, and am not going to watch the game (Go Steelers!), but I'm reminded that this is the time of the year when the best commercials debut. I mean, really, isn't this when the Budweiser frogs came to light? And the Taco Bell lions? Let's take a peek, then, at some of my fave commercials, the kind that make me "shh!" folks because I want to see and hear them uninterrupted. (These may or may not have debuted during the football frenzy, but they're still fab.)
Taco Bell
Taco Bell rules. I mean, when I was younger, I was not a huge fan of Mexican food (yes, yes, it's Mexican), and I still enjoy tacos sans lettuce, but I gotta give Taco Bell its props when it comes to advertising. They have almost always come up with snappy ad campaigns, whether it's the little chihuahua proclaiming, "Yo quiero Taco Bell!" or the Taco Bell lions (a la Ricardo Montalban), or even the original song about Taco Bell. Check out these memorable spots:
From 2007:
From 1997:
McDonald's also scored big with me for their "Mac Tonight" commercials in the mid-80s. Granted, I am not a Big Mac person--I'll take a double cheese, plain, that way you know it's made fresh--but any ad that riffs off a Bobby Darin song and has a likely blind moon pianist gets my vote. The following is a compilation of a bunch of Mac Tonight ads. (I didn't watch them all, but the 2nd and 3rd ones are particularly enjoyable.) Those huge burgers are making me hungry for Mickey D's! (Ok, I just watched them all. Apparently the last one is a special ad for Singapore Mickey D's..they're open 24 hours, awesome!!)
You know, it seems to me that the most creative, fun ads are for beer, drinks, and food. Eat, drink, be merry and all that. Which brings me to my next faves for Dos Equis beer.
I don't drink beer, but I am a sucker for a hilarious ad with great voiceover. "The Most Interesting Man in the World" series gets a thumbs-up from me. I particularly enjoy what the guy says by way of promoting the beer. Now that's an endorsement.
And there are even more to be found, too, not to mention a nifty website.
That's my shortlist, mostly because I'm still sick and need to lie down. :(
In the meantime, do you have any fave ads? Let's hear about 'em!
Back by popular demand!
(One request = popular demand in my book, k?)
VW Jetta's ad "Synchronicity" - supercoolio, right?
Taco Bell
Taco Bell rules. I mean, when I was younger, I was not a huge fan of Mexican food (yes, yes, it's Mexican), and I still enjoy tacos sans lettuce, but I gotta give Taco Bell its props when it comes to advertising. They have almost always come up with snappy ad campaigns, whether it's the little chihuahua proclaiming, "Yo quiero Taco Bell!" or the Taco Bell lions (a la Ricardo Montalban), or even the original song about Taco Bell. Check out these memorable spots:
From 2007:
From 1997:
McDonald's also scored big with me for their "Mac Tonight" commercials in the mid-80s. Granted, I am not a Big Mac person--I'll take a double cheese, plain, that way you know it's made fresh--but any ad that riffs off a Bobby Darin song and has a likely blind moon pianist gets my vote. The following is a compilation of a bunch of Mac Tonight ads. (I didn't watch them all, but the 2nd and 3rd ones are particularly enjoyable.) Those huge burgers are making me hungry for Mickey D's! (Ok, I just watched them all. Apparently the last one is a special ad for Singapore Mickey D's..they're open 24 hours, awesome!!)
You know, it seems to me that the most creative, fun ads are for beer, drinks, and food. Eat, drink, be merry and all that. Which brings me to my next faves for Dos Equis beer.
I don't drink beer, but I am a sucker for a hilarious ad with great voiceover. "The Most Interesting Man in the World" series gets a thumbs-up from me. I particularly enjoy what the guy says by way of promoting the beer. Now that's an endorsement.
And there are even more to be found, too, not to mention a nifty website.
That's my shortlist, mostly because I'm still sick and need to lie down. :(
In the meantime, do you have any fave ads? Let's hear about 'em!
Back by popular demand!
(One request = popular demand in my book, k?)
VW Jetta's ad "Synchronicity" - supercoolio, right?
posted by H. at 1:06 PM
6 Comments:
Seriously. Screw the Superbowl game. With the economy in the shitter, this is not the time to consume mass quantities of beer and chips watching a game the score and winner of which most Americans will not remember two years from now.
But the ads....yeah, I love 'em. Thank the stars for the internet and digital recording. 8)
Hoytser: Wow. Thumbs down on mass quantities of beer and chips? Really? That's a very ... difficult ... concept for me. :-)
Flapjam: Hey what was that commercial you posted back in the day featuring a guy & his girl driving into the city & all this synchronistic stuff starts happening? That was pretty great. Was it for Volkswagen? Do you remember that one?
Hoytster - ya know, I can't even remember who won Oscars the next year, so what chance would the stupidbowl even have w/someone like me? Heh heh.
Who - I shore do remember that ad, it was for the Jetta Volkswagen and it's called Synchronicity. I forget which post it is on...let me check and I will post the link again. I thought about sticking that one on this post again but thought it might be overkill. Guess not?
Didn't the woman from that VW commercial later play "Nina" in the first few seasons of 24?
Good eye, CR! She did! I actually almost put that in the post, but thought, well...nah. :)
Anyhoo, that's Sarah Clarke. (She's married to Xander Berkeley, who you might remember as 24's George Mason.)
Thanks for the Jetta reprise, Flapjam. It is supercoolio. They cram a lot into a 60-second commercial, including a good sense of the couple’s relationship based on just one line of dialogue. When the curtain of puddle water comes down on the windshield to end the synchronicity show, the guy says, “now that was interesting,” completely confident that his pal would know exactly what he means, and of course she does. I also dig the way the commercial builds from the simple coincidence of the windshield wipers keeping time by adding more and more creative coincidences until there finally are just too many for it all to be just a coincidence.
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