Dodge “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2” Tie-In Ad

I don’t know; maybe it’s just me, but I think a movie tie-in ad should actually have something to do with the movie it’s tying into.

But most don’t, and here’s a good example: Dodge cars and The Hunger Games.

Um, does Katniss drive Dodge cars? If she doesn’t, then there’s really no connection, is there? (We can clearly see that her stand-in is not really her.)

The ad says that Dodge has the “revolutionary spirit” of the movie character. Wow, is that because they want Katniss to help topple the current administration due to CO2 level regulations? (Dodge makes a lot of muscle cars. They burn a lot of gas.)

I am joking here, but you can see how easy it becomes to misread a movie tie-in ad that doesn’t have a believable connection between the movie and the product.

Here’s the unrelated ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4HdSWBSX8w

BTW: I am not trying to give this ad too hard of a time. I love the cars. It just seems like every movie tie-in ad these days has almost nothing to do with the movie, and they're just slipping the product in somewhere where it doesn't belong. My guess is that someone higher up the chain makes the movie-product deal, and they tell the creatives about it, and they see like we do that there's not much connection, so they just have to do the best they can.

Maybe product placement would help with this issue? (Not that I've been longing for more...)

Duracell “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Ad

Isn’t it about time someone made an ad showing batteries in a light saber? It’s a great image. I posted a proposed ad in September that refers to it, but it was actually written in 2005 to correspond with the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. But it was written for Energizer, not for Duracell, and Duracell never saw it unless they read it on my blog in September.

(BTW: Based upon personal experience, Energizers were the best batteries in the past, but I understand Consumer Reports rates the new Duracells advertised here pretty well.)

If you’re wondering, I was told: “Nobody likes Star Wars anymore” by everyone I showed it to. Wow, how wrong can people be? Oh, well.

Here’s the forceful battery ad (This is the longer version.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBh0hgP8wWk

And here’s my old one:

http://unconditionedresponse.blogspot.com/2015/09/energizer-batteries-star-wars-light.html

I like this Duracell ad, though. It’s kind of fun.

Just for Men Bar Ad

The newest Just for Men ad I’ve seen, today, during the Alabama vs. Auburn game, shows a scenario where they say they’ve hired women to go out to bars to try to identify who is using Just for Men hair dye.

Wow, with all the possibilities for ads for this product, this is the best they can come up with? Okay…

So, first of all, we’ve got people paid by the product to make a decision. I wonder what they’re going to say? (I don’t actually: they have a financial motive to agree with their employers.)

Then they go into dark bars where you can’t see anything. Wow, they didn’t notice? I am amazed. (But not really.)

What a dishonest ad, and it’s not even original. It looks like a lame light beer ad.

(I’m sorry, but I cannot find this ad online at the moment. But you’ll be sure to see it if you watch football. Just for Men apparently does not host their ads on their website: big mistake. Some people really like ads and help disseminate them widely for free. Why not do it?)

Mitch Hedberg’s Turkey Joke

Mitch Hedberg, one of the great standup comedians, had a joke about turkey, which I thought might be appropriate for Thanksgiving. He said that in the grocery store, we see turkey bacon and turkey sausage and turkey ham and turkey other stuff, and he said: “Hey, turkey: just be yourself.”

Mitch Hedberg is sadly dead now, another drug casualty. But his comedy lives on, and if you like standup comedy, there’s tons of his stuff to see for free on YouTube, and I would encourage everyone to go and see it. He was great. I really miss him. But I give thanks today that he was here to make us laugh. I wish he were here now. I'll bet he does too.

Friends of ISIS

A news article today says that most Islamic State fighters are recruited by friends.

Wow, people with no friends have never had it so good!

Lonely? At least you didn’t get peer-pressured into blowing yourself up.

Look on the bright side.

Here’s the friendly story:

http://news.yahoo.com/expert-20-percent-islamic-state-converts-were-christian-033830507.html

Jurassic World 2

Jurassic World was one of the biggest movies ever, so you know there’s got to be a sequel. Well, here’s the plot, just leaked to me! (Just kidding. But this ought to be the plot.)

It is after the events of Jurassic World (which I haven’t seen, so give me a break if I got it wrong), and I don’t have to tell you that nature has found a way, and now dinosaurs are reproducing and spreading throughout the world. But does humanity notice? Nope. World powers are fighting Islamic radicals in Syria, and they’re shooting each other by accident, rather than the enemy, causing more wars. You know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen. So nobody notices that dinosaurs are propagating everywhere. And what do you know, but while we’re all distracted by news of protests and terrorism and all the new wars, the dinosaurs creep up and eat every human being on the planet, and then they take over. Oh, but it’s too bad that their brains are too small to comprehend language, because some of the people they ate worked for a NASA project to deflect an asteroid, and without these people’s efforts, the asteroid strikes the Earth and kills the dinosaurs again. And, luckily for humanity, all the crews of nuclear submarines are safe to repopulate the Earth! Or, at least they would have been if they hadn’t decided they were enemies and killed each other. The End.

I know sequels can be lame and annoying sometimes, but honestly, wouldn’t you like to see this movie? They will never make it, but I think they should. And maybe there could be just a few seafaring dinosaurs survive for the sequel: who knows? And maybe after becoming super intelligent due to radiation or whatever, they clone humans for a theme park that goes wrong and repopulates the Earth with people (because you know that nature finds a way), who then take the planet over again and, when they're advanced enough, make another Jurassic Park, which also goes wrong, because they lost all the history of what went wrong the last time due to the meteor impact destroying all of human civilization as well as the dinosaurs, so humans had to start from scratch or something. (Hey, it could happen.)

Star Wars: Battlefront Jedi Death Ad

Wow, I guess everyone is literally dying to play the Star Wars: Battlefront video game, because that’s what this ad is suggesting: lots of young people dying, with their clothes falling to the floor, just like when the Jedi die in Star Wars movies. I’m guessing maybe they took poison or something? And there are a bunch of apparent suicide pacts seen here. And the last person, a young woman, is holding a knife, she says the famous Obi Wan Kenobi line of: “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,” and then they show her from behind and she disappears, with her clothes dropping to the floor. I guess she must have slit her own throat. Nobody else was there, so it had to be her.

So are we to understand that in order to play the game, we have to die first? That might not be the safest advertising message, seeing as how obsessed some people are with Star Wars.

You know that you’re not real Jedi, right? And when you die, you won’t wake up in the game.

When I was a little kid, I knew an unstable kid who thought he was bionic, and that if we died, we’d come back as completely bionic people; then he tried to drag me into traffic to prove it. Don’t underestimate this kind of stupidity, as it might be dangerous.

I wonder if we’ll see some kind of Heaven’s Gate mass suicide by people who can’t play the game but want to. The actual message of this ad is to become more powerful by dying. I hope everyone knows they’re not being serious. Also, the ghost Jedi in the movies don’t do a lot of fighting, or living, either; they just blab a lot to the living characters. So how does dying make this game able to be played, even, assuming we’re talking about Jedi? Or is Jedi heaven just a big video game in the sky with some Easter Eggs to let you nag your old protégés?

Here’s the suicidal spot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGaOXU_nB3c

Skittles Pox Ad

Wow, this is absolutely the most disgusting candy ad I have ever seen. Even if I liked Skittles, which I don’t, I would never eat them again after seeing this ad.

Seriously, this is even more revolting than the “Expose Yourself to Payday” ad, where they seemed to be marketing to peepers, flashers and child molesters. Ew!

Maybe I’m overreacting? Watch it for yourself and tell me it doesn’t make you throw up in your own mouth just a little, or maybe even a lot. And also, please remember that tweens and teens, the audience targeted here, are in the stage of their lives where the least little thing grosses them out to a ridiculous extent. This ad may turn a whole generation of youngsters against Skittles; I mean, of course, the ones who supposedly like them already.

Hmm, I wonder if Skittles Pox is sexually contagious, and if people will forget to tell their partners about it like they do with STDs like herpes, and apparently even HIV? It sure seems like it here. Maybe this kid is the (alleged) Charlie Sheen of his high school? (Wow, could this be an ad that does double duty: advertise for candy, and also remind young people to use protection against sexually transmitted diseases? Maybe if it accomplishes that, and grosses school kids into not eating candy on top of that to prevent childhood obesity, it’s a great message ad! Could that be the secret purpose all along? That is actually the message they’re sending here, whether they meant to or not.)

Here’s the contagious commercial (I guess it is funny, but it’s also gross: not the best idea for selling any kind of food, I shouldn’t think; even candy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6_cj35ZMnk

Asparagus: The Perfume and Cologne

In this age of vegan and vegetarian diet pushers, it’s it about time we have something that really might always remind us to eat vegetables instead of meat? And what better way to do that than to make a fragrance we all know and recognize, and that makes us think of edible vegetables: the scent of asparagus urine.

No, it’s not enough for asparagus urine to make us think of eating vegetables, because maybe you haven’t eaten asparagus today, and so you’re insulated from its olfactory influence. But shouldn’t you be exposed to it against your will anyway? After all, maybe if you agree to eat only a vegetarian or vegan diet, people will stop wearing this perfume (although they probably won’t, for your own good).

So it’s clear: Asparagus Perfume and Cologne is the new product everyone wants to encourage everyone to stop eating meat, and as such, encourage sustainable food sources!

(BTW: I had a really fun and surprising experience while writing this post. Autocorrect changed what I wrote to something that is grammatically incorrect, and then it had the courtesy afterwards to show me that it was incorrect. It did it, but then it said it was wrong. Maybe it should not have changed my writing before the sentence was finished, but when you think about it, maybe that’s cheating. Surely even unintelligent computer programs should judge us without the necessary information to make an informed decision, just like people like to do. That makes them seem more human, and I’m guessing this is how they are planning on tricking us so they can win the coming war of organic vs. inorganic beings. But then they’ll have the same problem we’ve got. Oh, well: it serves them right for trying to destroy humanity anyway, those jerks. Just bite the hand that feeds you, why don't you?)

Ad, Interrupted

I see this more and more: an ad starts to play during an ad break, and it stops and is immediately preempted by another ad. Um, why does this happen? It seems to happen more and more every day. I thought computers controlled everything nowadays, but I guess maybe they can make mistakes sometimes? I didn’t know that. I hope the computer-based robots that kill us all and take over the planet will find a way to fix that someday.

Now, I’m sure most of us don’t care if an ad doesn’t play right or gets overrun by something else. But people go to great lengths to make these ads, and companies pay megabucks for them to be aired, so shouldn’t they be aired correctly so we can mute them or fast forward through them like we’re supposed to? How can we ignore a TV advertisement correctly if it’s not presented properly? We might ignore it wrong otherwise.

I guess they’ve got people who just watch TV all the time to make sure we’re inundated with all the advertising they pay to subject us to. Otherwise, how can they know if their money is well spent?

Glade Plug-Ins Corpse Flower Scent

Yes, for CSI and other murder/crime show and serial killer documentary enthusiasts, it’s finally here: the Glade Corpse Flower Plug-In Air Freshener!

They’ve made floral-scented air fresheners for years, but now, finally, they are catering to people who are fascinated with murder! TV shows and movies about murder and serial killers give you all the visceral visuals you can take, but where are the scents? In fact, what sense is there in making these things without the scents? It’s non-scents! (Oh, oops: sorry for the bad pun.) After all, advertising has trumpeted the (dubious) fact that scent is the sense most tied to memory, so how are we supposed to remember how much we loved all the murder shows and movies if we never smell the scent of death and decay? Surely this is the all-immersive experience we’ve all been waiting for, and it will blow IMAX and 3-D out of the water!

Plus, because it’s named after an actual, real flower that people are fascinated by, you can claim you bought it because you love flowers, and not because you’re a repressed murderer (even though you obviously are, watching reprehensible programming such as serial killer stuff, you monster, you*).

Get the nasal sensation of killing people and burying their bodies underneath your house without all the police hassle, with Glade Plug-Ins Corpse Flower Scented Air Freshener.

(This is just a joke. Please don’t sue me.)

* I tried to warn people about you, but they wouldn’t listen. (Oh, well: at least I tried.)

Hey Google Ads: I Am Not Korean

I don’t know how this happened, but I have started getting Internet ads in Korean sometimes. I can’t read Korean, so these ads are wasted on me. Not that I’d be paying attention to them anyway, as Internet ads are ridiculously intrusive and annoying these days, but you’d think they’d want to appeal to me in a language I can at least read and understand, right?

But you know, I really did actually notice and pay attention to these ads more than usual recently because it made me wonder why I was being targeted with Korean ads. Maybe that’s their plan: they know we’re ignoring the Internet ads, so they’re intentionally sending us ads in the wrong language to make us look at them again. If they made ads that worked really well visually, like silent movies, we’d get the message even with a language we can’t understand, and maybe we’d actually look at the ads for a change. Could that be their dastardly plot?

Indeed Guitar Ad

Wow, what a hilarious ad! This is for some job-hunting site that claims to be the world’s best, although neither I, nor anyone I know, have ever heard of it before. But what a great picture this ad paints of what I’m guessing is everyone’s employment dream come true.

So in this ad, a luthier takes great pains to build an excellent, masterfully-crafted guitar, only to have the guy who buys it smash it onstage the very first time he plays it. So I am guessing that if we get our jobs on Indeed, everything we work for will be completely and immediately destroyed? Well, that’s what it looks like based upon this ad of theirs. Nice job on giving us all perspective on the meaninglessness and futility of our life’s work. (Ahem.)

Like they say: Sisyphus had it easy.

Here’s the ‘smashing’ spot:

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/AYGR/indeed-how-rock-n-roll-works-featuring-bully

And this is Sisyphus, for those who are not familiar with him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

Run Flat Tires James Bond “Goldfinger” Ad (Proposed)

We see the scene in Goldfinger where James Bond uses his Aston Martin’s special tire shredding device to cause a blowout on Tilly Masterson’s Ford Mustang. Then we cut forward in time, and James Bond is chasing Tilly Masterson again, and he tries the same tactic of deploying the tire shredding thingy, but this time, although it definfitely hits and chews up the tire, her car’s driving is unaffected, and she swerves, sending James Bond into a spinout, and she speeds away, laughing all the way. Then the announcer says that when you have run flat tires, you can escape the hazards of flats and blowouts, guaranteed.

Here’s the scene from Goldfinger I’m referring to (It starts around 0:48 in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMVrhQpJHZg