In this commercial for Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, we see a bake
sale in support of a church (This is already illegal in some states:
Massachusetts has deemed baked goods to be threatening our children and
destroying America to such an extent that they have been banned for any and all
fundraising sales there. {It’s funny when a yummy snack treat is considered
child abuse, isn’t it? I’d say making them illegal is child abuse, but that’s
just me being reasonable.} I guess now they’ll have to sell narcotics to raise
money for schools and churches from now on, since they’re so much less
dangerous than cookies and cupcakes.), where an old lady is congratulated and
thanked for her lemon squares, the sales of which alone are purportedly sufficient to restore the church’s roof. And when asked what makes her treats so sinfully delicious,
she replies: “Frank’s Red Hot Sauce: I put that (bleep) on everything!” (Ha ha! Hot sauce on lemon squares? Oh, the hilarity! She must be demented. But this ad, demonstrating as it does the popularity of these lemon squares, threatens us all by forcing everyone to put hot sauce in lemon squares from now on. Think of the children! All those tiny burned mouths! Oh, the humanity! Oh, well: it serves them right for all that back-talk.)
Now, mercifully our virgin ears are not assaulted by such
vile filth as what old ladies spew forth from their potty-mouths, but given the
context, and the mouth movements we observe with our x-ray vision, it would appear that Granny makes
a reference to excrement that is, as the dictionary might have put it, “usually
considered vulgar”. (That is to say: “$#!†”.) And as we all know, prim and
proper old ladies uttering vulgarities is the height of clever comedy, as well
as exhibiting guerilla-tactical persuasiveness of the highest order and
ninja-master level. So once it is suggested that the old lady spouts
obscenities, we’re as good as guaranteed to be Frank’s Red Hot Sauce consumers
for life, even if we don’t realize it yet! (Maybe they’re employing some
subliminal command during the bleep sound effect masking Granny Foul Mouth’s
unacceptable utterance? Could that “bleep” actually be an acronym, perhaps for:
“Buy Lots of Each and Every Product”?)
Oh, but this is only part of the humor! For not only does
our elderly heroine pronounce obscenities, but she does so to a priest (!), and
in front of a church (!!). Oh, for shame! This commercial is not only a threat
to our nation’s relaxed moral values, it attacks the church as well! Well, I
never! Next she’ll probably try to seduce young children! (Oh, but that would
be going too far, for this is the church’s role in the community!* And for
trying to horn-in on their child-molestation racket, they denounce her as a
heretic and burn her at the stake! {Mercifully, Granny has developed a tolerance for burning heat, thanks to Frank’s Red Hot Sauce: every heretic’s best friend!} And that foul mouth is all they need as
evidence: after all, we’ve all seen The Exorcist, right? Possession by the devil always makes nice people say dirty
words! So that proves it right there!)
But while this amusing and groundbreaking comedic approach
lends itself wonderfully well to manipulating us into purchasing their product, I
worry that they may have unwittingly revealed some trade secret here. Because
the old lady says: “I put that ($#!†) on everything!” And that seems to reveal
the contents of the sauce’s secret recipe, doesn’t it? I mean, she basically comes right out and refers to
it as excrement, and while they did bleep the word out, they didn’t try to
alter the content of what she says, so that appears to me to be a tacit
admission on their part that their hot sauce is indeed excrement, or at least
contains mostly excretory-style ingredients. And since it’s such a spicy hot
sauce, we’re not likely to notice the taste so much as the spiciness of it. So
perhaps the Grandma in the ad is simply trying to warn us all that this sauce
contains feces! Wow, and I would have thought the FDA would be requiring a
warning label or something to that effect on the bottle. But I guess they’re
probably too busy partying it up in Vegas on your tax dollars to do their jobs
either.
Here’s the swear-spewing spot:
* That’s just a joke in bad taste! I’m sure no church would ever do anything like that! Right?
BTW: I noticed that Frank’s Red Hot Sauce has actually gone
so far as to trademark the phrase: “I put that (bleep) on everything!™” So if
you ever say that again about anything, you’re going to get dragged to court
for trademark infringement and get your pants sued off until you cough up lots
of cash. I honestly think doing things like this is the height of arrogance. A
company really thinks it can simply hire a lawyer, pay some fee, and then own a
colloquialism? This is patently ridiculous, and I think it should be illegal.
I’m serious. Other companies should not steal their competitor’s ad slogans,
particularly when it’s around the same time, but to say that some company owns
a word or phrase forever and ever? That’s just plain insulting! And I hate it
that companies are having the nerve to do such things now. It’s just plain
asinine! Nobody should be allowed to own a word or a phrase, especially an
idiomatic expression. That’s just outright intellectual theft! So say this is
your slogan for the time being: fine, whatever. But to legally register an
expression others coined and used for years before the ad agency applied it to
your product? Go forth and procreate with yourself! (It’s something else if you
coined the phrase yourself, like: “Think outside the bun”, etc. But to quite
simply appropriate a pre-existing colloquial expression for your own commercial
purposes? Don’t be ridiculous! And especially when it’s something with
profanity in it that’s then bleeped out: do you really think you need to protect that with a trademark to
prevent others from stealing it as their slogan as well? My eyes roll disparagingly
with disbelief!)
