SuperBowl Commercials ‘09

Another year, another round of commercials.  This year I was quite interested in the game itself, having watched a good bit more NFL than usual and actually following the Steelers through their season (at least for the games that actually got aired here).  But of course for a lot of folks it’s all about the commercials.  This year I decided to go pretty hardcore.  Since I have a little more time on my hands now I figured I could afford to put in the extra effort (translation: find a way to kill some time).

You can watch these at Hulu.com, I briefly considered linking each one individually but that’d take more time than even I have.  I find it rather funny (in that annoying sort of way) that when you view them you get the experience of “this commercial is brought to you by this other commercial” heh.

And so now the list, and here’s a color coded rating scale:

Blacklist – Fail – Poor -  Neutral – Passable - Good

Bud Light – Tossing around ideas to save money -  Not funny; this one hit particularly close to home as The Man was rejecting ideas to cut down on frivolous spending (even if it was supposed to be in jest, it was just too damn soon).

Angels & Demons – Some movie, and I have no idea what it’s about thanks to the uninformative trailer.  DaVinci Code II perhaps?

Audi - Multiple car thefts – One of the main reasons I don’t like commercials where you can’t tell what product it’s for until the end (if at all) is that usually it loses all meaning.  At the end I was forced to wonder “hmm, was he stealing only Audi’s the entire time?”  The pictures of the older cars also reminded me of when they were notorious for bad quality.  They do however get minor bonus points for the very brief glimpse of the hot chick on rollerskates.

Pepsi – Forever Young – WTF, that was some horrible music (the hip hop part at least made it marginally better).  Again, no idea what it was for till the end; I was hoping maybe it was a personal promo for Vince Young.

Doritos – Crystal Ball – meh, lame

Bud Light – Conan ad in Sweden – Slightly funny, good music.  They got a circumstantial bonus point for getting the bad music from earlier out of my head.

Year One – I guess this is a movie, but I’m not even sure if that’s the name of it.  Another trailer with not enough info.

Toyota Venza – My interpretation of the sales pitch: “This vehicle is only for people who are heavily into their African roots who are also into Battlestar Galactica”

Brigestone – Mr Potato Head – Very annoying for a while, but at the end it’s clear that was essential for the set up, therefore it gets a rating of funny.

Fast And Furious – Another movie in the series I guess.  This trailer had a much better real car to rice car ratio, but I’m still extremely skeptical.  Unless I see numerous reviews that state the movie is entirely devoid of all fart cans and rear spoilers on front wheel drive cars then hell no.

Castrol Edge – Grease Monkeys – This one was pretty wierd, but in a way I guess that was the point particularly since they used that very word.  However I think the bad acting kinda killed it for me.  Plus the whole grease monkey / code monkey thing hit on a (again due to the timing) sensitive subject.

Land of the Lost – Might be a good movie but my logical mind just cannot let go of the following: While the phrase “did we go back in time?” is uttered there are broken down supertanker ships and what appears to be what’s left of the Golden Gate bridge in the background.  So unless they started in the year 3000 or something then uh wtf?  My guess is that the editing team spliced together random parts to create this, at least that’s what I hope. The one saving grace: “Matt Lauer can eat it!”

Doritos – Crunch – Shockwaves blowing clothes off of hot chicks, hell yeah!

Go Daddy – Shower – Exactly what is to be expected from them, and I’m not complaining. An implied nude Danica Patrick and the “German woman from the dean’s office” in a shower together, cool.  Although the “see ‘unrated’ version online” ruse was completely transparent; yet another marketer trying to make you think “unrated” means anything more than precisely that.

Pepsi Max – Diet Cola For Men – This was the “I’m good” one.  One of the guys kinda looked like a previous manager of mine, so given the timing that spooked me a bit. Upon rewatching, this wasn’t as bad as I was thinking it was the first time around.

Pedigree - Adoption Drive – Nothing too fancy with the exotic pets in domestic places theme, but I gotta admit I laughed when the frisbee hit the water buffalo.

Bud – Fetch – eh

Bud - Dating Pony – Now that American Idol is recently back on the air I could’ve done without yet another “ain’t no mountain high enough” although I do get that the song did fit rather well with the story, as blah as it may have been.  I do also feel like I must subtract points for the “Indian” guy at the end, temporal effect and all.

Star Trek – Very first thing I noticed, the Bad Robot logo.  Pretty much everything I watch these days has that company involved with it so I was already thinking “whatever is about to be shown surely will be badass” and indeed it was.  Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m no hardcore trekkie by any means, but the trailer itself was quite good.  Even better than the first one where it had the fly-by of the engines or whatever.  This one was exciting, although I’m pretty sure I saw Harold (as in Harold and Kumar) flash by on the screen, man that’s going to wierd me out, I don’t think I’m gunna be able to “suspend [character] disbelief” for that one.

G – I guess this was for Gatorade, had a bunch of “hardcore” athletes talking about dedication and stuff, meh.

Cars.com – Confidence – Nothing but problems with this.  #1 Who the hell is ever nervous about buying a car, and more importantly #2 why does a guy who’s had all those jobs drive such a shitty car???

Hyundai – Angry Bosses – Ok, they got me with the YELLING IN GERMAN!  This one is linked

E-Trade – Babies again – Marginally funny

UP – Some Disney movie, don’t care

Bud Light – Drinkability Drawings – So the guy is drawing ski jumps and stuff in mid-air with his finger yet he fails to outline a curvaceous woman?  They even got to the point of drawing bandages and saying “chicks dig this” and still nothing.

H&R Block – Grim Reaper – This had so much potential but alas wasn’t great.

Teleflora – Insulting Flowers – At least they did go with the “Well I’d like to see y…” line.

Monster – Director of Fandemonuim – meh

United - lame as usual

NBC – Jay Leno in Car – A license plate with “Fall” and a sticker with “9 Central” I guess this was some sorta ad trying to already promote Jay moving on to his new deal?  I also wonder if they somehow magically had different time-zone stickers?

Cheetos – Pigeons – Concept could have been funny, but what does a bitchy person have to do with snack food?

3D Commercials – Monsters, Sobe, Chuck – Don’t really have a review of these because the whole time I was trying to figure out why my various glasses I happen to have weren’t working.  I even tried both combinations of red on the left and on the right, still nothing really happening.  Were special (new) glasses required for this?

Toyota Tundra – Fire Spiral Ramp – They almost lost points for being very similar to the already existing ones about driving dangerously through various heavy machinery, but this one was different so whatever.

Priceline – Security Van – Tolerable, the gratuitous Shatner delivery impression was funny.

Overstock – NOT IN HD. Ladies and Gentlemen we have our first official boycott!!!

Universal – Kid Hero – meh

NBC - LMAO – An interesting concept I guess, could’ve been better.  Going for the cliched ghetto booty was a little scary.  Ironically what I found “funny” was that I don’t watch any of those shows.

Mandatory Local Block – Since all of these were not in HD I’ll just assume there was something wrong with the feed and/or they didn’t care so I’ll just skip this break, some were even repeats!

Coke – “The Sims” Characters – W.T.F. ??? I clearly saw a character at the very beginning with the green diamond above them and fully expected a Sims commercial, then all sorts of wierd non-Sims characters started showing up and I was like, ok maybe it’s some new WoW type game… nope, Coke, wtf?

Brigestone – Jump Around – Good song!  The vehicle on blocks at the end really threw me off for a second though, I was like “uh, are they trying to say the moon/mars/whatever is like the ghetto?” then I finally figured out they were trying to say “peeps will steal these tires because they’re so good/fun/whatever no matter where you are”

Denny’s – Serious Breakfast – FREE “GRAND SLAM” ON TUESDAY 6am-2pm.  Given the recent turn of events I ain’t gunna be passing up too many free meals.  I wonder if I can hit one location for breakfast and another for lunch.

Monster – Moose Through Wall – awesome (strong temporal bonus)

Bud - Great Grandfather Horse Immigrant – meh, but a talking horse named Jake and not Ed?

Witch Mountain – This might actually be pretty/really good.  But I am rather bothered by the “btw the UFO convention is in town” comment over the radio as the Stormtroopers from Star Wars are climbing in the back of the cab, that’s just whack.

Transformers 2 – Megan Fox, enough said.

Career Builder – “12 Days of Xmas” – I’ve been debating whether or not to start using this site, now the decision is extremely easy.  Way to use your marketing dept / ad agency to lose business, duh.

Coke - Picnic – Ok, the “butterfly bottle” thing was a bit cool, I’ll give em that, but the rest was a little odd.  Plus I’m still wondering if an unopened bottle of Coke would float or not.  Oh, on re-watch it looks like it was on a big lilly pad, bah.

FrostedFlakes.com – Rebuilding Parks – um, ok

NFL – Snow Cone – um, ok.  The oboe player in the grocery store one set the bar pretty high, sorry.

Mighty Fine Burgers (local?) – Not HD

CarMax (local???) – This one was in HD, so I’m actually hoping it wasn’t local since that would completely mess up the theory.  Totally knew it was a dude, saw that one coming.

Jack in the Box (local?) – Not HD

HEB (local) – Not HD

Celebrity Apprentice – Not HD, definitely not local

Hyundai – Assurance – My thought after seeing this “damn, you know the economy must be bad if they’re starting to offer ‘bring it back within a year’ deals”  Wonder if that can be applied retroactively???

Coke Zero – Troy Polamalu – Music was lame, had those lame “we’re gunna sue coke/ourselves” guys from last year, meh

Cash4Gold – Hmm, I’m still thinking they got actors that looked very similar instead of the actual Ed McMahon and MC Hammer.  Otherwise it would’ve been like omg I can’t believe they got two guys that are famous for going bankrupt to do this commercial; it would’ve been a crazy hurting for money paradox.

Vizio – Fuck you for insulting me and my technology.  Not only was my equipment not ridiculously expensive it’s also better than whatever wares you’re peddling.  Ooh, a contest for a 55″, yeah lemme enter that so I can trade down.

Taco Bell – Speed Relationship – Wacky.  I might boycott them for this, if they weren’t already for health reasons

GE - Smart Grid – What does all of that have to do with the Wizard of Oz?

HULU – Aliens Run TV Programming – Explains a lot doesn’t it?  It was kinda funny though, and I do appreciate the fact that finally someone in media is starting to embrace the trends towards alternative media sources and non-traditional viewing methods.

GE – Capturing the wind – bah, just can’t get past the physics, plus it was wierd even aside from the bottle thing.

Pepsi - MacGruber – I was really hoping this was going to turn into an SNL skit, as that would’ve been the only way to salvage it, but alas it was not to be.  (Apparently this did actually stem from an SNL skit)  This one really had me teetering on the edge of a boycott; don’t think I’ll quite go there but the next few times I’m asked “is Pepsi ok instead” the answer will be ‘no’.  At least it had the real, original MacGyver in it.

Bud Light Lime – This was freaking loud, damn.  The surround sound surprisingly hadn’t freaked out (not even on the locals where the compression can be rediculous) until this one.  Although I did want to mention that perhaps this commercial provides a good way to illustrate what life is like for me, in a temperature sense.  You see, I am pretty much always hot, or at least I never get cold.  I suppose this is what it might look like visually to be the walking furnace that is me.

Go Daddy – Enhanced – In what might perhaps be a surprising move I’m going to give this one only a “meh”.  Partly because you could easily tell where this was going, and partly because if you’re going to go the gratuitous route you basically sign yourself up for double or nothing and this didn’t fully deliver.  At least the “unrated” (see first Go Daddy above) version online provided a bit more eye candy as opposed to the shower one which was just more story line really.

Jimmy John’s

Well it finally happened, the official boycott is in place. Actually now that I think about it I’m the second person I know to boycott here, although for a completely different reason. Anyway here’s the rather interesting back-story:

My usual lunch crew and I would frequent Jimmy John’s somewhat regularly. We try to save the sandwich places for when we’re in a little bit of a time crunch, so we weren’t there all the time, but definitely often enough to know the owner. Of course the owner and I had an interesting relationship; he knew me as the customer that ordered the sandwich that shouldn’t exist. The thing was, the wheat bread there was so good (and if you’ve read any of this blog you’d be able to safely assume I’d normally select white bread) I would get an Italian sandwich with wheat bread instead. I remember the very first time I ordered it he said “you know, only about 1 in 100 people order that”. Over time that number increased to 500 and then eventually 1000. So he most certainly knew who I was.

The owner would also tend to have some interesting story going on at the time. In the beginning it was just normal stuff, not even necessarily restaurant related. But then the day came when he started making too much money. Based on his pretty darn good location, and pretty darn good food he was the #1 revenue generating JJ’s around. So of course, as The Man is like to do, things started getting complicated. The actual owner of the franchise as a whole wanted to buy-out this particular establishment so he’d have all of the profit for himself. Of course the owner of the restaurant didn’t want to give it up for the exact same reason.

That’s when the games began. All of a sudden this JJ’s was “the worst JJ’s around, particularly when it came to health and quality issues ” and was thus in jeopardy of violating the franchise licensing agreement, how convenient (I actually just checked and since August ‘06 they have received zero demerits from the Health Department inspections). This went on for a little while as The Man and the owner battled out franchising issues; then the trickle of JJ’s paraphernalia disappearances began. As it became more and more apparent that the owner was going to lose that battle one way or another he started preparing for the worst. First it was the crazy signs (your typical random Americana on the walls), then the napkins, etc.

Then the day finally came when tape was placed over any trace of the name Jimmy Johns, the menu was completely renamed (but not redone thankfully) and when the credit card slip printed out we discovered we were now eating at The Sandwich Shop With No Name.

TSSWNN lived on for a few weeks as we heard about the impending legal battle. There was a definite “climate shift” after these few weeks. Not only was any trace of the corporate junk long gone, now ingredients had started to change. We always wondered what might happen to his suppliers. We speculated whether he’d be able to continue on some kind of bulk-purchase program which surely had been going on with all the official JJ’s, if he’d be able to continue with some kind of independent agreement, or if perhaps there’d be pressure from The Man for the distributer to stop supplying this particular establishment. Whatever it was, one day they started “running out of things” and replacing with something else. So the day came when the awesome multi-grain wheat disappeared and was replaced with standard issue wheat. On this day I felt compelled to proclaim to the owner “well, you finally found a way to beat me, I’ll be having white today.”

Shortly after all this, upon our next attempted visit we were greeted by a sign on the door saying they were closed. I can’t remember exactly what the sign said, but I do remember there being some discussion around if they just so happened to be closed that particular day, or if it was a true out-of-business type closed. Perhaps it was just us hoping it was a simple closed for the day, but that had never happened in the past, and of course given the sequence of events so far it was fairly certain it was the more terminal kind.

Some weeks passed, then we heard from a fellow member of the usual lunch crew that he had spotted some kind of Grand Opening banner on the place. He also mentioned that it seemed to be possibly re-corporatized, but was only able to judge by the appearance of the outside from a distance. So we figured in a couple weeks we’d do a recon mission.

It was decided that we would attempt to determine the true new ownership of the revitalized establishment. If the previous owner was there, then perhaps some arrangement was made and things would be relatively back to normal. However if we didn’t see the owner (he was there almost every single time) or anyone we might recognize we would turn around, walk out, and not look back; the boycott would be on.

The fateful recon day comes. With a Schlotzsky’s nearby the plan was to scope out the situation at JJ’s and then have Schlotz as a backup. We arrive in the parking lot and the front-door signage is back in full effect. Approaching the door it was easy to see all of the Americana had returned to the walls in essentially the exact same pattern as before. What we weren’t quite prepared for was the complete onslaught of boisterousness exuded by the completely new staff. As we walked in the door no fewer than 8 youngish and far too enthusiastic employees (I can smell corporate kool-aid a mile away) shouted “hey guys, welcome to Jimmy John’s!!!” We paused for a few seconds, partially due to being stunned by this barrage, to take in the scene, to search for the new owner, to linger long enough that our presence would be noted (since surely the “warm” greeting was a mandated knee-jerk reaction), and finish assessing the situation. With no sign of the owner or any of the previous employees I proclaimed in a voice hopefully loud enough to be heard over the continued yelps of hello yet not enough to disturb the poor souls ensnared by the new evil “That’s it, the boycott is on!”, pulled an about-face and high-tailed it outta there.

And so ends the tale of the local Jimmy John’s. Their Italian (or Ferrari towards the end) sandwich was quite splendid and no one can quite do it the same; but we’re getting some new sandwich shops opening up and they’re starting to pick up the slack.

SuperBowl Commercials

I have some rules when it comes to SuperBowl commercials, especially considering this is essentially supposed to be the superbowl of commercials.  Sadly I’d have to say this year’s showing was rather poor.  It seems as though the quality of commercials has really plummeted over the last few years.  Sure SB commercial time is expensive (as evidenced by the onslaught of CBS commercials taking up all the slots they couldn’t sell) but don’t go blowing your entire budget on securing the time, leaving none for actually producing it.

Thou shalt be boycotted if your commercial:

• Is not in High Definition
  • The SB is one of the first pieces of television programming to go HD, and has always been a showcase for HD technology.  If you’re not going to stick with the program, then I’m not going to stick with yours.
• Has already been seen by me
  • Come on, you’re not even going to try?
• Manages to somehow make me angry
  • Believe it or not, this actually does happen on occasion; it did this year
• Is incredibly stupid

Some of the companies get lucky since I rarely watch conventional commercials at all, and these days I don’t go to the movie theater that often so not nearly as many end up violating that rule.  Although apparently many would have as I’ve heard quite a few theater commercials were aired (Coke being a particular offender).

Blacklist

• Chevy
  • 2 for 2 on managing to affect me in a negative way.  First with the ”did they round up a bunch of American Idol rejects?” horrendous singing one which resulted in insta-boycott.  Then the reinforcement with the “you mean this thing won a contest?” car wash abomination.
• Salesgenie
  • Huh?  Was that for real?  Kept expecting some kinda joke at the end.
• “The Heart”
  • Hell I couldn’t even tell what this one was for.  Although I would be in support of boycotting heart disease(s).
• Schick
  • Pretty sure I’ve seen this one before; or at least one so similar that it’s enough to get it on the list.
• Snapple
  • Definitely have seen this one before.  However during it I kept thinking that it would have been cool if it was some kinda super-extended two parter.  I remember in previous commercials that the dude goes in search of the meaning of the word/abbreviation/term.  Then in the SB version he’d finally get an answer.
• Snickers
  • As if the car wash wasn’t enough.
• Taco Bell
  • Already blacklisted anyway, but aren’t I correct in remembering from all those years of Spanish that only the double-R (marrón) or the first R (rojo) in a word is rolled?  Thus carne would just be carne.

Greylist

• Fedex
  • That moon base one nearly did them in.  I was just unable to “suspend disbelief” for that one and the whole acting like there’s zero gravity on the moon thing bugged me the entire time.  Thus I couldn’t think about anything else so by the time the crazy shuttlecraft thing flew in I was to the point of thinking “there’s no way that thing could make it back through Earth’s atmosphere”.
• Garmin
  • At least I knew what they were going for.  Had I not known what Ultraman was (from the SNES game actually) they’d be a goner for sure.

And props to GoDaddy for (1) gratuitously using hot chicks [was that Trishelle?] and (2) toying with the FCC yet again.

My Fears Have Been Realized

So I was shopping at HEB a couple weeks ago when I noticed roughly 66% of the wine stock had sale tags.  Upon closer inspection I saw that these were actually marked as “closeout”.  My first reaction was “sweet, tons of wine at half price”, then my next reaction was “hmm, this seems a little too random, hopefully this doesn’t mean they’re getting rid of a bunch of stuff”.  This was particularly concerning to me after I noticed many of my favorites were marked with said tag.  Due to the stupid laws around here, it was too late to purchase any “dessert wine” so I planned on picking some up on another trip that I’d be making soon in an attempt to take advantage of this situation.  Especially since my plan was to stack the “buy 6, get 10% off” deal on top of it.

I returned to HEB a couple days later and was presented with a horrific scene.  Some managerial looking type had almost a dozen of his minions running about frantically moving bottles from one place to another in the now 33% smaller wine section.  The rows had changed orientation (thus becoming shorter) and the resulting space in front was unfilled.  I then wandered aimlessly for 15-20 minutes though this now war zone amongst the scrambling minions.  It was a struggle to procure my usual haul, as most of my favs had apparently been snatched up in my personal short delay created by those evil laws (I went about 20hrs later, but there must have been some lucky soccer moms during the day).  What was left of my preferred selections was thrown in a couple of closeout baskets with all of the other stuff that had quite a bit of dust on it and obviously wasn’t purchased often.  I managed to settle for 6 semi-decent bottles and then approached the managerial seeming employee.  Apparently Steve (the ex-wine-guy who was cool and kept in stock a lot of the stuff I like) is out and Bill is in.  Bill and one of his worker bees asked if they could help me find anything and I responded with “I sure hope so”.  I proceeded to rattle off 3 wines I regularly purchase there, all of which were met with “we don’t carry that anymore”.  They happened to have *1* bottle left of another I was looking for, but it of course was closeout as well.

So the one tiny glimmer of hope I’m hanging on to is that Bill will realize his mistake in the drastic reduction of inventory and was essentially 0/4 with someone who obviously knew what they were talking about (I do believe I remember a comment being made about my good taste after announcing my list).  But for now alcohol at HEB is blacklisted.  I’ve heard about a couple liquor stores around here (one being right next to this HEB) that have a good selection, so I’ll be checking them out soon.