Jackie Chan shows up, pilfers people’s juice, replaces it with V8 juice, and threatens to kill them with his bare hands using his deadly Kung Fu skills if they don’t drink it enthusiastically and claim to like it in this silly ad campaign for V8 juice. (<That’s a bit of a misrepresentation, actually. He seems to mean well here, but the fact remains that he is robbing people’s preferred beverages and intimidating them into drinking what he wants them to drink.) I think I understand the implied idea that drinking V8 will give you health and dexterity as demonstrated by Jackie Chan, or the implied idea that perhaps drinking V8 juice is what makes Jackie Chan able to perform such amazing acrobatic feats, sort of like a (non-violent) juice version of Popeye and spinach (even though it was actually years of practice); but what this whole idea of having a martial arts expert spring upon you and force a different kind of consumable into your hands after snatching what you wanted out of your hands makes me think of is something else entirely: It seems like the flashy Hollywood-ized version of what the government is trying to do to everyone by banning certain “unhealthy” foods, and replacing them with yucky-tasting but allegedly “healthy”, um, “food”.
And I think we all know how that’s been turning out: Kids who have been forced to eat yucky health food at school have been tossing it in the trash because they hate it, and they’ve been smuggling in junk food like Cheetos, greasy fast food cheeseburgers, Hostess Cupcakes, etc., and eating that instead; which means that they’re eating even worse food than they were before the government intervened with their misguided attempt to force kids to do what the government wants. (Yeah, kids just love doing what the oppressive government tells them to! But at least the government is wasting millions of dollars on this idiocy when they’re already in a critical debt crisis!) And while I’m sure that’s not the intent here, and it is a cute campaign, I can’t help but have this government meddling crap come to mind when I see these commercials. Except that when the government intrudes into people’s lives, forcing them to eat or drink something else, the result is not the same as in this ad, where the person tries the V8 and says: “Yum!” In real life, when people are forced to eat healthier food, they say: "Yuck!" and refuse to eat it. (Just read the LA Times article below if you don’t believe me.)
Here’s this acrobatic ad campaign:
And here’s the silly story about the government’s failed attempt to force school children to eat their yucky hippie crap:
