2 Brief Ad Commentaries: Reebok and Kia Optima

I saw a new ad tonight about a new Reebok sneaker with some wavy shape on the sole, and the guy wearing the shoes said something about how he’s waiting for me to come play basketball so he can destroy me. He said: “So make your play and I’ll watch you fall.” I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound very encouraging to me. I don’t want to go to the trouble of going out to buy an expensive new pair of sneakers just so some arrogant, overpaid athlete can grind me into the dirt and gloat about it. I can just wear my old shoes if he’s going to do that. I think a better angle might be for him to try to fool me into thinking that if I buy the sneakers, I might have a chance at beating him, and he’s anxiously waiting to see if he can still bring it against someone wearing magic shoes that make everyone into a star performer. Then he could destroy me, and I would have been tricked into buying the shoes too.

On Conan last night they played that Super Bowl ad again for the 2011 Kia Optima. (Don’t car companies always use the next calendar year for the current car? So is this last year’s car? It is 2011 right now.) This is the one where some guy is driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, minding his own business, when a green beam of light comes down on the car, and a flying saucer abducts the guy and the car, and then we see an alien astronaut taking the car for a joy ride on the moon or wherever, and then the car gets sucked into a wormhole and comes shooting out over a Mayan temple in Mexico. Well, we see that the alien guy driving the car beams himself out before the car goes through the wormhole, but we never get to see what happens to the original guy who is initially driving, you know, his car down the PCH. So, what happens to him? Well, you’ve got to ask yourself: what usually happens to alien abductees? That’s right, he gets the anal probe, and some exploratory surgery. And you will too, when you buy the new 2011 Kia Optima! Unfortunately, insurance will not cover you for a new car when it gets abducted by aliens or pilfered by Quetzalcoatl or whatever, since this sort of thing happens all the time to the Kia Optima. (You’d think that Mesoamerican deities would be more interested in collectible super cars like Ferraris and such, and that aliens would prefer something roomier, like, say, a Hummer stretch limousine, after being cooped up in some cramped disc for however many light years, but whatever. I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.)