I see they’re starting to get playful with the anti-gas ads, finally. They were overly serious for a while. I liked the simple idea for their competitor Beano’s ad where they said: “Take Beano and there will be no gas”, but it certainly lacked the comic element inherent with these products, and the condition they relieve. So it’s nice to see them playing around with it a little now. (Boy, if their primary market were elementary school children, their sales would be through the roof with this ad!)
A few years ago, I had a proposed ad for Gas-X where it said: “Gas-X: It’s Kryptonite for Fartman!” And then they have a guy dressed-up as the (fictitious) super-villain “Fartman”, and the pill of Gas-X repels him like a cross would Dracula, and makes him weak like Kryptonite would do to Superman. There was a bit Howard Stern did years ago where he “flew” into some awards show as “Fartman” (on a cable, of course), and I wondered if he would have to play the role in the ad. That would certainly kill the spot, since Stern is way too expensive of a talent for such an ad. (But who knows: Maybe he would have done it just for the fun of it, or just to keep that character alive!)
Anyway, in this spot, this guy is at a job interview (pure fantasy these days, as there are no jobs, so it’s a nice escape from everyday for most of us!), and he’s constantly hearing references to flatulence in everything everyone is saying, kind of like a schizophrenic might. So they’re making light of mental illness! How outrageous! Actually, I’m kidding. But this is very similar to a bit in a comedy movie where some guy had to pee really badly, and everything made him think of it even more, like seeing running water, etc., and it was pretty funny. So this does basically the same thing, but they do it with language, rather than with images. And it’s pretty funny too.
I especially like the part where she says he’s “flatulent in three languages”! I’m flatulent in three languages too, and it’s about time we started getting recognized for such things!
Here’s the ad:
