Um, I'm not sure that marketing Arby's Market Fresh pecan chicken salad sandwiches with the promise that sentient disembodied hands or other dissected body parts will spontaneously appear and try to grab you is the best way to go here, but maybe they know something I don't. Perhaps they did a market research poll, and they found that when asked to associate chicken salad sandwiches with what experience they want most, the vast majority of people said they wanted to get chased around by disembodied body parts. It's odd, but maybe just by chance, they happened upon all of the biggest fans of movies like The Beast with Five Fingers, The Hand, Doctor Terror's House of Horrors, Evil Dead II, and other disembodied-hand horror movies. Or maybe they only polled the Addams Family "Thing" Fan Club by accident. Hey: it could happen! Stuff like this probably happens all the time, and that's why focus groups and polls so often ruin the movies and ads they critique. You never know.
But you know, maybe this commercial is simply being honest. Well, about the fact that Arby's chicken salad sandwiches are made exclusively by disembodied hands, anyway. (That part about the hand that made the sandwich spontaneously appearing inside the guy's Arby's bag when he says he'd like to shake that hand is a little bit exaggerated and unlikely, and consequently seems somewhat unrealistic and unbelievable, frankly. And this spoils the whole mood of realism they sought so hard to create using that cinema verite style they're employing here, don't you think?) They've probably found out that there is no minimum wage laws for disembodied hands and feet and such, so they're using them to save money on labor costs, I'll bet. Plus, since these body parts cannot speak, they can hardly complain of how they are taken advantage of. (I suppose they could write a letter of complaint, but who bothers to read stuff like that from severed hands anyway?) And additionally, it is probably the case that these hands are given independent life through the use of black magic and voodoo or the like, and as such, they are probably simply following the commands of whatever powerful magician or shaman is directing their actions anyway, and so they do not have a will of their own per-se. And when you think about it, that's just common sense.
What would have been cool is if he had seen the hand, and decided to eat it. Then Arby's could use this as an ad for a zombie-themed fast food meal, like that "Zombie Meal" I proposed before for McDonald's to tie-in with zombie horror movies like Dawn of the Dead or Zombieland. They could make the hands out of the same molded stuff like the McDonald's McRib, and call it a "hand-burger". And with lots of ketchup and red barbecue sauce, it would look just like blood! (Yum, yum!) Or maybe they could just start selling real severed hands (!). That would at least get them a lot of promotional attention, if mostly perhaps from the FBI and such.
Now, I have to admit: this ad gets your attention with the hand in the bag and all. It's just that I'm not so sure this severed hand thing is right for an ad about food. It makes you sit up and take notice (at least for the first time you see it), but for all the wrong reasons, as it makes you think about severed hands, and then perhaps what it might be like to eat one, or to be attacked by one. And since they're selling a chicken salad sandwich, I'd think maybe they'd want us to think more about that. And this whole disembodied hand motif really has nothing to do with the product: they're saying the sandwich is made by hand, and the guy wants to shake the hand (one hand?) that made the sandwich, but do they really want us to think their sandwiches are made by severed hands? That's what it looks like here, people! And I'm sorry to have to say this, but the idea of severed hands is not all that appetizing.
Here's the handy spot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6p8gY7StLc
And here's that earlier post about the McDonald's "Zombie Meal":
http://unconditionedresponse.blogspot.com/2011/03/more-movie-tie-ins-that-should-have.html
