There was a TV special about the best Super Bowl ads of all
time (according to CBS, anyway) the other night, and I watched it to see what
they would rate as the best. I believe I have written about every last one of
the ads they showed except for this one: the 2005 Super Bowl ad for Emerald
Nuts.
This fun and silly spot starts with a father and his young
daughter on the couch watching TV. He’s eating Emerald Nuts, and his daughter
asks if she can have some. Well, he tells her that if she eats Emerald Nuts,
unicorns will disappear. Then a unicorn shows up to bust him for his lie. (No
wonder there are no more unicorns: angry fathers must have hunted them to
extinction for snitching on them.) Then Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny show
up to snitch on him too. So fathers can’t have anything of their own anymore, I guess. They pay the bills
and work their fingers to the bone, drive their kids around all the time, and
buy and build all their kids’ toys, and still they can’t even have one
little thing for themselves, huh? Oh, the
pathos!
So this ad is pretty funny and cute, and everybody seems to
love it. The only thing is, doesn’t it kind of seem like the Emerald Nuts make
everyone into selfish, greedy, lying jerks? I’ll bet when there aren’t any
Emerald Nuts around, this man is a wonderful father. Oh, but get a container of those addictive Emerald Nuts in his
hands, and he’s an unprincipled, devious, miserly id machine of a swindler! And
I’ll bet his daughter will never stop needing psychotherapy for the betrayal of
trust caused by these nuts of the devil! Why, they’re worse than alcoholism,
apparently! So maybe we ought not to buy any, just for the sake of the
children. (But hey: at least he can still drive her around without getting
DUIs. I mean, I guess these corrupting nuts don’t impair driving to hazardous
and reckless levels, putting children everywhere’s lives at risk. But you never
know, so please: keep those nuts away from parents at all costs, or else children
will be neglected and abused and betrayed!)
Here’s the fibbing father fracas:
