Wow, this is a fun idea that has a lot of potential for future ads. Some regular guy is on a ranch in the West when he gets heartburn, and some cowboy/gunfighter shows up on a horse and quick-draws a package of Alka Seltzer, saying “It kills heartburn fast!” So we’ve got a quick-draw gun-fighting cowboy guy as the pitchman for Alka Seltzer: what a great idea!
Well, if they’re going to go this route, to personify the fast-acting properties of their product with a fast-drawing heartburn fighter, then how about personifying the heartburn as cattle-rustling villains? They could show these cattle-rustlers grab some helpless guy, rip open his shirt, heat up some cattle brand (shaped like a chili dog or a slice of pizza, or something like that), and brand him in the chest with it to indicate heartburn; and then this quick-draw Alka Seltzer hero gunfighter can ride up, quick-draw the Alka Seltzer, and shoot tablets at the guy’s burn, healing it instantly! Then the bad guys get scared away by this powerful force for good, and they ride off with their tails between their legs, and their horses’ tails between their legs, too. (They could really show the villains’ horses with their tails between their legs too, just for fun, and pointed out by an announcer, so we all get it.)
So there are a lot of directions they could go with this campaign, now that they’ve started down this road of the quick-draw cowboy gunfighter hero Alka Seltzer guy. They could also have some quick-draw gunfighter villain all clad in black in a future ad, like Jack Palance in Shane, or Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. So in this spot, they could have the bad guy walking around at an outdoor carnival, shooting chili dogs into people’s mouths and stuff, and causing their chests to glow orange and red with heartburn, and he’s laughing maniacally the whole time he’s doing it. But then our hero arrives on his noble steed, and he cures everyone’s heartburn, leading to the final confrontation between the gunfighters: so the Alka Seltzer guy draws faster, and the Alka Seltzer disarms the bad guy’s heartburn-causing food-shooting gun, emasculating him in front of everyone, and he runs away, defeated and demoralized! And Alka Seltzer saves the day again! Hooray!
Anyway, they can do so much with this idea, and it’s really a fun direction to take. I’m just surprised it’s so tame to start out, but maybe that’s so they can get sillier and crazier later on in similar ways to what I’ve laid out above. It would be fun to see them do that sort of thing. The whole heartburn subject, and a product that fights it, really opens itself to such a comedic approach, as you can clearly see in many Alka Seltzer ads over the years, like the spicy meatball ad everyone uses to joke about stereotypes of Italians in comedy shows like The Daily Show. So the more fun you can get, the better, I think. And this recent quick-draw heartburn fighter is a good way to go about it.
I can’t believe I can’t find this ad on YouTube, but here’s their “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” commercial:
And here’s that Alka Seltzer “spicy meatball” ad from 1969:
