I can’t help but wonder if the ads for the two above-mentioned products were created by the same agency. They both use the same strategy and are both pretty hilarious, showing how the product works under the most extreme of circumstances: boiled in water, frozen in a block of ice, driven over by a truck, blasted with a blowtorch, etc. It really makes me laugh to see how extreme they get.
The main difference I saw was that the ad for the Rocky Mountain Tumbler cut the video in between chipping it out of the block of ice and showing it still had hot liquid in it: a cheat, I’d say. I mean, maybe it really does work, but to really prove it, we’d have to see it actually taken out of the block of ice and pour hot liquid out of it without an edit point. But they could just use CGI to fake it anyway if they wanted to, I guess. But they really should make an effort not to cut the video in their proof scenarios. But it was only with that block of ice scenario and the hot car all day scenario that I saw a video cut, so maybe it’s harder to chip one out of a block of ice than I had previously thought, and it’s not really possible to show all day in real time with an ad, unless you did time-lapse photography, and someone could still replace the tumbler before the last frame anyway, so… (I wonder how many of them they broke trying to chip it out of the ice?)
Also: While that torch scenario was fun, I think they didn’t keep the torch on it for long enough to alter the temperature inside much with something full of liquid. But it is impressive that it doesn’t melt or anything. I wonder how it would perform with a flame thrower shooting at it?
The Bell & Howell TacLight ad only seems to leave out how the “super-bright strobe” would be great for raves and stoner parties, or just for giving people migraines or triggering epileptic seazures. I wonder why they didn’t mention these utilitarian possibilities?
Here’s the Bell & Howell TacLight Ad I’m referring to:
And here’s the Rocky Mountain Tumbler Ad (I saw a different version with a different block of ice segment than the one in this extended commercial; but even in this one, we don’t know for sure that the one taken out of the block of ice here is the same one that was frozen into it to begin with):
