Everytime I see that commercial I always think: 'Dude, your mom is HOT!'

I think the woman he's calling is supposed to be his sister, though. She's hot, too.

Because the yankees rule. 8-)

Anyway, who's wife is that in the commercial? I'd have to assume it's Beckett's.

I thought this too! But now I think maybe he's the dad calling the daughter who's away at college. Wait, young parents to be having college age kid. I'm confused! I don't know where I am... I can't breathe!

ITA. I've always thought that his on-screen persona makes him perfect for radio.


And as the dude is suckling, the spongemonkey could be warbling about the moooooon.

Jeter and A-Rod are both famously unmarried. They both make headlines with the "dating gorgeous models" scene (Jeter dated Mariah Carey for a while). So yes, it must be Beckett's wife.


It took me a while to catch on, but this family is the same family that has done other Verizon commercials. Something mildly funny happens to one of them, and the family member who was with them at the time calls the others and makes a godawfully unfunny pun. (Some of the others were the daughter getting stuck in the revolving door, and Dad getting tangled in the lights).

But yeah, I think the guy paints his wife's face, and then tells his daughter about it, and calls her "Mom".

OK, I'll go with that. 'Dude, your wife is HOT!' Still works.

Oh dear god that is funny.

There is a commercial for milk where a man falls down a hill (I think it's for chocolate milk and it's older than Moses, so I know it's been mentioned before.) The sounds of those stones falling down the hill make me think the foley artists earned quite bit of overtime on that one.

Considering it is their product, one they've manufactured for however many tens of years, I would they'd have a general knowledge of it's effects on people. If not, the product is worse than I thought.

And thank you to the posters figuring out the Verizon painting ad. It makes total sense.

I saw the Quiznos ad last night before 24, and I laughed so hard I almost fell off the couch. Which surprised me, because I hated that commercial, sight unseen, from the consensus here. I can't explain it. It's just so goofy and cheesy, I had to laugh. The best part, I think, is all of the huge speech bubbles with all capital letters and tons of exclamation points. Heh! Weird shrieking rodent creatures, I salute you.

Okay, I'm in high school, so I suppose I'm part of the target audience for the Truth ads. I really don't have a problem with them. If you're going to preach to me, you might as well make it visually interesting and/or actually give me something to think about. JMO.

I love "We Like Tha Moon", but I'm not sure the spongemonkies would inspire me to buy toasted sandwiches.

I agree with everyone else: you're misreading that. The guy is married to the woman he hit with the paintbrush. He's talking on the phone to their daughter. (What, your dad doesn't call your mom "Mom" when he's talking about her to you? Mine sure did.)

The problem as I see it is that the daughter looks older than she's supposed to be.

After a few viewings I love the Quizno's ads. Maybe I'm just seeing it as a satire of expensive, overproduced advertising. Or maybe it'll be part of a PSA someday..."This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. This is what happens when you think up a commercial on drugs."

I'd like to think the money Quizno's saved on those ads, they're using to, oh, I don't know, actually toast their "toasted" subs all the way through?

Has anyone seen the commercial for (I think) Purina One? With the Benji dog who is in love with a Poodle. She doesn't notice him until he starts eating the good stuff. Such a cute commercial.

In one of the Progressive Insurance ads, the one with the guy buying the Mona Lisa cake, is the voice over guy Dennis Miller?

Speaking of voice-overs , is that Sarah Jessica Parker in the "hot button" GM commercials?

I saw these wacky Quizno's commercials. Wacky and weird and kind of funny, but ultimately stupid.

Hey, Quizno's? You have a superior product. Seriously, those subs rock and I love them. So why don't you advertise that? You used to. I went to you in the first place because of a commercial where you showed people in vegetable costumes dancing in an oven. And you said that the toasting made the ingredients better. Simple, elegant, and, as it turns out, true.

Rodents with funny mouths? Why, god, why? Just tell us how great your damn subs are.

Is it just me, or is there an increase in the scream level in commercials? I'm not talking about the overall volume, but actual screams.

The awful "seven" screams done by the groups of young women and the frat boys in two different versions of a phone commercial for cheaper call times.

The woman who does an open mouth, scream at the top of her lungs, when she sees her wireless phone bill in the mail box.

There's more, but they make my ears bleed......

Kinda like in that MADtv segment? Eventually, Snuggles was included in a Freddy Kruger verus Jason movie ad.

I mentioned this too, a ways back. There's also Greg-shut-the-fuck-up-Brady screaming at people in elevators, and the WWJaredD sky-diver. Hate.Hate.Hate.

So, saw another smoking ad that says that 1 of 3 kids who tries cigarettes gets hooked. Let's consider all the math permutations of combining that stat with the 1 in 5 kids starts smoking....what percentage of all kids will get hooked?
Sounds like a bad SAT question. My head's gonna explode.

Terry Tate, Office Linebacker is back, and this time, he needs "sensitivity training". Why oh why couldn't they have shown this instead of farting horses and nut-biting dogs?

Whoa. My brain shut down at "permutations."

Is this the one promoting the 30-Day Challenge, or whatever they're calling it? It bothers me; I have a bad feeling the next step is Atkins-approved Kibbles 'n' Bits.

While we're on the subject of voice-overs (sorta), is that Kate Mulgrew in those Ford mini-van ads? ("if you haven't looked at Ford lately, look again) Or am I nuts? I think one of them has a man showing a woman how to flip the seats down with one hand.

I'm ashamed to say I don't quite understand this commercial. So the mutt kicks rocks at the poodle's window, she ignores him. He goes off and eats this "healthy" food for the 30 day challenge. Then he's running down the road, and she's interested.

What gets me though, is he looks fatter after eating the food. Or is that the point-he's no longer a scraggly mutt and is now a robust strong dog? My brain hurts.

I'd be happy to. The problem is we are working with incomplete info. Because the 1 in 5 stat says 1 in 5 kids start smoking at blahblahblah. Does "start smoking" mean they are full-blown smokers or just for a week until the "cool" group abandons them, or what?

We could make a conversative assumption: that the 1 out of the total 5 counts as making up the group of 3 that "tries" smoking. Ok. So, 20% of all kids "try" smoking and 33% of those kids end up smokers. Which, if my math is correct (HA!), means 6.6% of all kids become smokers. According to US census data, that means 4,771,000 (and change) people under 18 become smokers each year. Census data used to support this here.

According to this link, about 42.7 million Americans smoked in 1998, and a little over 430,000 Americans died of smoking related illnesses. If Tornado's assumptions are correct ( and I got the same figures), new smokers start at roughly 100x the numbers of dead smokers. Wow! If that were true, why do I not see all these smokers when I go out for smoke? According to a recent survey, only 5% of smokers quit each year. That would be 2.3 million people, approximately. Twice as many as children who get hooked. Seems to me the 1 in 5 and 1 in 3 figures are not correct.

The Quiznos spongemonkeys are growing on me. I made as ass out of myself at the gym and laughed at them while on the treadmill. I think they'd be less freakish if their eyes didn't morph and they had better teeth. Orthodontia for the spongemonkeys!

Still love the Quizno's commercial. I know I'm in a serious minority here but I think the bizarreness of it all rocks.

Where the hell are you people seeing the leering snuggle bear? Is it only on daytime TV? I keep reading about how freakishly scary it is and I want to see it so bad but I never do!

Back when I was a VERY little kid, I remember thinking that the Snuggle bear commercials were TV shows, and I used to go through the channels hoping to catch "the sunggle bear show" Wow, I guess snuggle bear has been on TV a pretty long time compared to the lives of most ad campaigns.

Good point. The math says there should be 2M more smokers each year than the year prior. The US population is growing at about 1% per year--about 2.9M. Obviously, the math doesn't work out.

I found data at the CDC website (I like CDC data because it's reasonably unbiased and the data to make these reports is collected in all 50 states on an ongoing basis every month. I used to do these interviews for University of WI Survey Lab). In 2001, 24.7% of men 18+ smoked (34.1M based on 00 Census data) and 20.8% of women 18+ (29.
7M). These numbers are likely much higher than the 42.7M phxchic cites due to the increase in US population since 1998.

The reason I point out this data is show no one knows what is being measured here. phxchic's site may consider a smoker to be something different than the CDC. The CDC study states the since 1993, they consider a smoker a person who "reported ever smoking 100 cigarettes in their lifetime and smoking now on every day or some days". So, absolute numbers don't work due to population increases. But percentages are always comparable. In 1990, 28.0% of men and 22.9% of women smoked. The CDC has no data on smokers under 18 in the reports I looked at--although, I do believe they perform similar data research for adolescents. Given these drops I agree that I can't see how the 1 in 5 or the 1 in 3 figures are really accurate.

cleo 256 said:

"Hey, Quizno's? You have a superior product. Seriously, those subs rock and I love them. So why don't you advertise that? You used to. I went to you in the first place because of a commercial where you showed people in vegetable costumes dancing in an oven. And you said that the toasting made the ingredients better. Simple, elegant, and, as it turns out, true"

you're calling people in vegetable costumes dancing in an oven "elegant"? lol! i just thought that describing it that way was funny. i think the shrieking rodents are funny, too.

Gasp! You mean the tobacco companies and anti-tobacco lobbyists are lying to us! I'm shocked, I say....Shocked!

But phxchic and tornado25....I am way impressed with your analytical skills! It would be funnier, though, to sponsor an anti-drug ad showing a bunch of stoners trying to figure out the numbers for a test.

Are you kidding? If I were stoned, I'd forget what I was doing!

Yep. Don't know about pot, but you should try putting 8 or 10 captains in me. Then see if I can multiply fractions!

Hee! That was funny as hell! Are they played on TV or just a web thing?

DP

One of my problems with the 1 in 5 commercial is that I'm pretty sure they said 1 in 5 kids try smoking. To me, that could mean taking one puff and being so disgusted they never pick up a cigarette again. I'd bet the number of kids who continue smoking regularly is lower and therefore not shocking enough for a commercial.

I believe (and haven't yet seen it mentioned, and I not only have been reading the past 15 days, I was here 15 days ago when those posts were posted) that the Snuggle Bear ad that's creeping people out so much is a parody of a perfume ad from the 80's. I definitely remember the same pool and the use of a 40's torch song, only the perfume ad also had random shots of the shadow of a plane streaking across a field. And the song it used was different -- the perfume ad used "I Don't Want To set The World On Fire."

It would be nifty if I could remember which perfume it was, but no.

I just have to chime in on the Painting Mom commercial. I love you guys! I really had no idea that the guy was supposed to be her husband and not her son. Now I can't wait to see the commercial again. That does make more sense though. A painting project for the married couple after their daughter goes away to school. And commercial producers love to show husbands doing stupid things, like swiping their poor, long suffering wives with paint.

I think it's hilarious you guys thought they were mother and son. How old would she have to have been when she had him, then?

They're definitely parodying perfume ads (the print ad looks like it's for Calvin Klein), but that bear's eyes have been dead and soulless for quite some time now.

Oh, dear God, I saw the Quizno's...things...last night during Good Eats. Sweet Jeebus. It didn't help that the music made my ears bleed (Hey! I am not old! And you kids get off my lawn!). But I'm sitting there, lusting over Alton Brown and his gadgets, and then these things appear on my tv? *shudder*

Of course, I swore I'd never set foot in a Quizno's after they ran that ad where the woman fished a half-eaten Quizno's sub out of a garbage can on a city street and started eating it, so they probably don't care that they've once again put me completely off my feed.

For me, if i was stoned I could do the math, but ask me to order a pizza and I will run away screaming (they know, man- they know!)

Topic? Uuuuuh.. I loathe the smug self-satisfaction inherent in the Truth ads. The kids always remind of the way-too-white kids on the cover of Sunday School lesson books.. all Gleem smiles and headbands...

Since last year's Super Bowl, web-only. And for that, I weep. For it is far superior to Ditka talking about his penis.

That's funny; they remind me of the kids in the back of Parade magazine. Smug little dorks, either way.

I know which one it wasn't. I caaan't seeeem to forgeet youuuu, your Wind Song staaaays on my miiiiind

Couldn't resist. It's stuck in my head.

Aaaand in mine, now. Argh.

(Actually, there's a big gated townhome/condo community near me called WindSong, and every time I drive by there I have to sing that damned jingle. Argh.)

Wind Song... reminds me of the latest one for Axe Body Spray, a very creepy one that ends with a tombstone and two worms crawling up out of the dirt and forming a heart (because the Axe effect is never-ending). Yuck.

Billy Fucillo is HHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE! In Albany, NY, anyway. And double-yuck.

The latest song inserted in a commercial for no reason?

And the line in the back
Said everyone attack
And it turned into a bar room blitz.
(pause-and-a-half)
Bar room blitz!

I think these are California-only commercials, but I have been seeing them for years and have to get this off my chest because I hate them so much.

The Stinking Rose, a garlic-themed restaurant, uses vampires in its commercials. Not only that, but they are vampires who are apparently very desperate to eat at The Stinking Rose. So desperate that they pass up the nice juicy humans they could feast on instead. They even bribe the cooks to let them snack in the kitchen. For food that will cause them serious harm!

I don't get it. Their food is so good that you should risk death to eat there? Is that their message? It took me forever to figure out that much, but maybe I'm super-dense or something.

And what's with the vampire cops in that one commercial?

Anyone else seen these? God, they bug me...

Re: The healthy Tropicana orange juice commercial which shows oranges using treadmills and other exercise apparatuses... Anyone else creeped out by the orange diving into a pool of orange juice? Wouldn't that be like a human jumping into a pool of blood? Ew.

Heh. I guess I am. Comparitively, anyway. My point is just that Quizno's needs to fire whoever decided not to focus on the fact that their subs are better than everyone else's.


Speaking with the authority of someone who watched Voyager for seven years and therefore knows her voice quite well, I have to say yes, I think so.


That's probably true. In that case, I'm shocked the number's so low. That means 80% of kids got the message that smoking is bad and they shouldn't even try it. That sounds like the anti-smoking ads are doing their job.

This? Is awesome. (On reflection, yeah, it also sounds like a weird, trendy thing, like a tofu restaurant or an onion restaurant. But I still think a garlic restaurant sounds cool.) Probably. I think it sounds clever, wish I lived in an area where I could see it. Wonder if there's a place to download them.

(Pause for Googling...) Hey!

What is it with this Oil of Olay commercial?? It has a woman hooked up to a lie detector machine and when asked how old she is, she says "28"!! She must have led a hard life to think that anyone would believe that she is 28. Late 30's to mid 40's I can see, but she ain't no 28.
She also looks like a woman I saw in a Hallmark card commercial last night during that Angela Lansbury tv-movie. Wonder if it is the same woman?

This was discussed a few pages back... It's supposed to mean that Oil Of Olay works so well at reversing signs of age that it can even fool a polygraph machine.

Vampires? Going *to* a garlic-themed restaurant?

Someone at the ad agency didn't fully read the info.