Is that the one with all the people griping that they do all the work and the brokers get all the money? Well, goody for them, but I'd bet the vast majority of Merrill and Schwab customers have *no clue* what they are doing, so the brokers are in fact doing work. It's certainly true in my case (though I just ask my brother who works on Wall Street)

If these twits are so good, why aren't *they* working as brokers?

Well, my broker is E.F. Hutton, and E.F. Hutton says...

Are you all listening now? ;-)

Oh, word. I'm actually relieved that they aren't airing that any more, because I am so that girl - right about now, we have to keep baby-gates across every doorway in the house to keep our 15 yr old beagle off the steps; if he tries to take them on his own, he'll fall. So I got misted up even reading that post - I'd be a mess seeing that commercial.

Okay, have to get back to the snarking, or I'll be weepy all night. Yes, I feed my dogs IAMS - because the vet advises that I do so. Not because I love/hate the ads. Which they are likely spending thousands of dollars buying timeslots for. Commercials have one purpose - prompting TWOP discussion. Right, I'm back to normal now.


Yup, there're a couple here in Bucks County, too. I always get my fries there, as I have boycotted McDonalds' on general principle ever since it surfaced that they were lying about the animal products. [/vegetarian rant]


Same reason mum ends up growling at the screen every time a Long John Silver's ad comes on. I swear, the poor woman calls the company to complain every time it happens.


You're not alone. And Dunkin's are decent, but...does anyone else live within range of a Yum-Yum's Bakery? Cheesy name, but oh, sweet Faranth they make good donuts.

I just saw that commercial the other day. Just trying to give y'all fair warning.

There's this local commercial which makes me laugh so much. I know it's totally cruel, but such is me.

This old woman is talking about some sort of family reunion, yelling from the bathroom to the other room. It's mundane talk, and I think it even ends with something stupid like "Sue got really thin, you know?" Then the camera pans to the bed, and we realize that no one is there; her husband died. She gets this shocked look on her face as she puts her hand to her cheek; she realizes that her husband is dead and she's talking to herself. Then the announcer launches in to some spiel about how death is hard on everyone.

I know it's really cruel, but when she realizes that her husband is dead, I seriously laughed myself until I almost pissed. It's just the way the commercial is set up. I must upload it. If I knew how.

MOM! sixesses stole my post! Word! for! word! At least now when my friends give me grief about my overwhelming hatred for these ads, I can explain the source of the pain that I feel every time one comes on. And the best part is, once I tell them, they too shall despise the commercials! Bwah ha ha!


Yes! Oh yes! I could *almost* take the dreaded Oven Mitt from Hell commercials if each could be followed by the singing bunnies! Very cute animation, and I love the desperate tone in Geoffrey's voice when he begs the bunny to "Please, make it stop!" Because that would definitely be me if they played it after every Arby's commercial!

Ah, yes. Thank you for the correction. It makes the commercial that much worse.


I know! "Come to us. Pay us money to do nothing, instead of paying those other guys to handle things you don't even realize they handle."

What I hate is that they made Arby's TEN GALLON HAT like cowboys wear into an oven mitt. They don't even know what their own logo is? Stupid jerks.

[ot]I live near LA, and there are at least 4 DQs in my city. They satisfy my Blizzard fixes, but none of them are "real" DQs. In other words, they generally only serve ice cream. I'm from Tennessee, and all of the DQs there are actual fast food restaurants with more than ice cream on the menu. I've always liked their chicken strips.[/ot]

I see commercials for Sonic ALL the time, but I haven't seen a single one in the 3 years I've lived in SoCal. Sonic food isn't the best, but their drinks are wonderful. I absolutely love their fresh lemon slush. My small town Sonic had "Happy Hour" from 3:00-5:00 with 1/2 price drinks. So, my cheap ass would go to Sonic & get a 30 cent lemon slush. They put the whole lemon in there. Mmmmm. Those commercials are torture. Tell me where a Sonic is, and I'll be there.



I laugh at this commercial every time I see it. That look on her face kills me! The sad part is that I don't feel guilty about my laughter at all.

A while back, DQ's slogan was "Hot Eats, Cool Treats." This mystified me, because I was totally unaware that hot eats were even available at DQ -- I had only ever been there for ice cream. But, sure enough, the next time I went, I realized that they did in fact serve hot eats. They looked completely disgusting, though, so I will stick to the cool treats. And I will now stop using the phrases hot eats and cool treats.

I don't know if it was posted here before or not, but I read an article about DQ trying to go for a "DQ grill" style restaurant now. You can still get ice cream there, tho.

There's one in Tallahassee but I've never been there for the same reason. OK, that and I don't particuarly want to eat greasy food and I really hate their ads with the drive-thru assholes and that "punched in the face" sound.

I'm not sure the Arby's oven mitt is supposed to be a variant on the hat. Didn't it come out when they started bragging about roasting the meat in their own ovens? That would imply needing an oven mitt, and I think it just took off from there.

I live in Atlanta and you can't throw a rock without hitting an Arby's. Or wanting to.

Our Arby's is nasty. They serve your food all yucky and sorts. Ugh.


A bad commercial? Fuse TV. Some old woman talking about what a party she is having with all these old people. Shots of them dancing. More talk. Blah blah. Then.... *cringes* OLD PEOPLE GRINDING! N.A.S.T.Y.!!

I don't even remember what the damn commercial is for, because the image of old people grinding will haunt me forever.

OK, so I sit down in front of my tv this morning with my bowl of cereal and a pot of coffee, and I turn it on. And what am I greeted with? Why, it's the new Milton Bradley special edition of Operation. And good old Sam is no longer the patient, he's been replaced.

You get to operate on Shrek.

Is no one safe from becoming Shrek's bitch?

I hate seeing the same annoying commercial over and over again when it doesn't even apply to me. One of our channels is showing the same Six Flags commercial at every break. It's the one with the person made to look like an old man, luring children to the amusement park with his really "out there" dancing. He kind of looks like Uncle Junior from the Sopranos. Does anyone else find this creepy?

I'd have to drive for two days before I got to a six flags, and believe me, after seeing their commercials, I'll drive for 2 days to get that much farther away.

Apparently not. I was flipping through the weekly circular/advertisement bundle that appears on my doorstep and I saw a coupon for Shrek-themed Cheetos. They're regular Cheetos (orange and cheesy), except they turn your tongue GREEN. I don't even want to know how they do that...

And then there's "Shrek-sized M&Ms". Regular M&Ms, but fatter. (the company claims that it is a "color driven" product, which prevented them from making all of the M&Ms green...but it doesn't explain the whole black & white fiasco, just sayin'...)

There is no way that that can be good for you.



I don't I've ever seen the actual restaurant either, but I think it's gotten to the point where I've seen the commercial so many times that I can swear I've seen it somewhere at some point.

ETA: Nevermind, I'm so bored I went to locate a store and there's one about 5-10 minutes away from where I went to high school. So, most likely, I have seen one...I just didn't really care and am the most unobservant person on the earth, apparently.

I enjoy Shrek but yall are right about the merchandising, it completely out of control. That green mug is all over my diet pepsi now. My 10 year old cousin got Shrek yogurt after he saw the commercial and he threw it up because "Shrek made it look and taste nasty". Heeee. And cheetos that turn your tongue green?! Ew.

That said, the commercials and good reviews are still making me go see the movie this weekend. Bastards!

Howdy, it's been a loooong time since I've visited this thread. (Hooray for summer vacation!) A classmate of mine was telling me that the law firm where she's working this summer is decorated entirely in green. (Apparently the founding partner is obsessed with the color green. Even the notepads are green.) So another summer associate suggested that they just go all out and say that the office is a Shrek tie-in. Hee hee.

I see ads for Checkers all the time, but there are no Checkers to be found in DC.

I, too, am getting sick of the Direct TV commercials with the actors reading those letters. They're just so repetitive, especially since they all use the identical music underneath.

That's a cute song, but it should be kept away from children. A girl in my school just loved singing it, and she wasn't a weird girl who normally bursts into song. Of course, it only works in the easter season.



Nope. The movie better be REALLY good! I know that they're making fun of Hollywood in it. Why, because it puts too much in appearance or commercialism? I don't agree with either (then again, I don't live in LA) but I'm hoping it's the former because the latter would be hypocritical.

You know what's bad about commercials for Fridays on Cartoon Network? They have specials and don't tell us when they come on. For instance, I saw that Amy Lee of Evanescence would sing, and I was totally excited. I tuned in to the cartoons and waited for several hours for a commercial to pop up saying when Amy would sing, but it didn't so I had to wait. Luckily the cartoons weren't bad but it still annoyed me. And I thought it would be a live-concert type of thing but Amy just sang one song lamenting how she couldn't watch Cartoon Network on the road (which was actually pretty good because Amy has a nice voice, but a little jarring because I'm not used to such a cheery song from Evanescence) and nothing else.

We are talking about Cheetos, right?

JuliaGuila, there is (was) a checkers in DC as you get off the BW Parkway -- heading into the city it's on your right hand side, I believe at Florida Ave.

The Six Flags commercial with Imitation Junior hacks me off. Is it wrong I hope he gets hit by the bus?

I'm embarassed to admit that I loooove Quizno's sandwiches. They're really expensive, so I usually only get them around pay day, but they're just......delicious. But I like the spongmonkeys, too (roomie and I randomly burst into "We loooooove these suuuuubs"), so I guess I'm just a little nutty.

I think he's a perv and it would be gratifying to see him hit by a bus. Hee.

I don't know of any Checkers actually in DC, but there are a couple up in Montgomery County too.

Speaking of commercials for places nowhere near the viewing audience, has anyone else seen that mesothilioma commercial? A lawyer named Something Sokolove wants you to contact him if you have this type of cancer because it comes from exposure to asbestos. I read the fine print one time and it says that he's only licensed in NY, NJ, and MA. So basically he's no help to anyone outside those 3 states, but he's wasting money showing it all over the country. AND I HAVE TO SIT THROUGH IT!

Since it's for a class action suit, he doesn't have to be licensed in every state that the victims come from -- just the state it's filed in.

That's nothing to be embarassed about. Quizno's makes damn good sandwiches.

They started running Sonics commercials in my part of SE Penn about a year ago, but I have yet to actually see a restaurant. Not that I mind because the food looks really gross and greasy.

Has anyone else in Pennsylvania seen commericals for Isaac's? I have a vague recollection of seeing them a handful of times, but no one else can confirm that I wasn't imagining it. They're not a very big chain so I was surprised to see them advertising on tv, and it could very well have been a figment of my imagination.

I'm in Philadelphia and we have quite a few. I walked ten miles up Broad St. last summer and it was like Popeyes/McDonalds/Checkers/McDonalds/Dunkin Donuts/McDonalds/Mom and Pop pizza place/McDonalds the whole way up.

Checkers is the f***ing bomb. Best fries. (Arby's is 2nd runner up) Cheapest biggest biggers. Only problem is you can't sit in air conditioning.

McDonalds sucks. It needs to go away. Even as a little kid, I wanted better fries than that.

Still haven't got a Sonic's, but get their commercials. Don't want a Quiznos... Philadelphia has plenty of local steak/hoagie shops.

WORD! When I was off studying for finals, my boyfriend and I had a craving for Quiznos and I won't embarrass myself by telling you how far we drove to get them ;)

I saw Shrek 2 yesterday and it was pretty good. I don't know if it justifies all the merchandising, though.... Cheetos are supposed to turn your fingers orange, not green. That's just wrong.

The worst thing about the movie was the 20 minutes of commercials before it (and at the end, the announcer says "If you missed any (of the commercials), make sure you come early next time." Which made me snort my Pepsi). Anyway, I was sitting and snarking on the commercials with my friend when the horror! that is the FantaWhores came on the screen. I'm still in shock, having never seen them before. My friend said, "I used to like Fanta. I'm not so sure now."

And big Word to the IAMS Casey commercial love. I get misty-eyed and I only have cats!

I like the current commercials for Liberty Mutual Insurance. One shows a shopping cart that goes on this long trip through town and ends up causing a random car to cause a huge accident. Another shows a guy hitting a golf ball and the golf ball bounces off a satellite dish, a car, a couple of other things until it ends up ruining a water heater. They remind me of those old mouse-trap comics.

Try explaining those acidents to your insurance agent.

I'm getting really pissed off by the car commercials based on I, Robot (aka Hollywood's latest bastardization of a classic sci-fi story). I'm not going to see the movie, and now I'm not going to buy these cars because of it.

The most distrubing thing is that at first I thought you said Cheerios, not Cheetos.

God, I do not like the vh1 commercials. First is the "Awesomely Bad" marathon commercials. Did they have to show the kid vomiting and that huge pile of poop? The second is that clip from Flab To Fab. Aside from the fact they forgot it was J-lo style and replaced it with Beyonce, that woman is totally obnoxious. At first I was happy about FtF commercials because they were bragging how there was no plastic surgery, just plain old excercise, but now I hate it. Third are the commercials for Ill-Istrated. I don't hate them but considering they're supposed to show the funniest parts of a show? Every time they come on I think,"It's like Best Week Ever, except not funny," and I haven't even seen the show.

I've eaten at Checkers and it was just nasty. Never have the meatball sub.

Was at the zoo today and they have a pair of pygmy marmosets. So cute! I'm now positive it was marmosets that are used as the basis of the spongmonkeys.

You saw the FantaWhores, too? I still stand by Gustave's statement that Kurt Russell is the Fanta of actors- and that statement totally goes both ways.

The Tie Teacher, anyone? Presumably from the same people who brought the Braidini and Hairdini, this little plastic clover teaches people how to tie ties 5 different ways. They actually say "for people who only wear ties on special occasions." And poor Single Mom trying to teach her son to wear a tie.

Aww, I love Uncle Jun 6 Flags! I would never go to 6 Flags, but still enjoy the wacky dancing. My complaint is that there were 2 or more versions at first and now I'm only seeing the one where he does the running man or whatever that step is called. I prefer the one where he does a side step along the bus.

Oh god...make those hot dog commercials stop. I do not need to hear the word "girthy" that many damn times!

I can't help liking the Fantannas, though I like the radio commercials much better than the television spots. I think they've replaced at least one of the girls, though.

Where I came from, the equivalent is called Rally's, but oh yes, it's really good. Now that I'm in Pensacola, we have Checker's and there really isn't any difference.

Speaking of really good fries, I miss Roy Rogers dearly. After their fries, I feel like their predecessors are Wendy's - taste almost the same, only not as thick.

Yes, it's appeared here in the Cincinnati market (SW Ohio, Northern KY, SE Ind.) I've seen it several times on different channels.

Yeah, the Law Offices of James Sokolove. I think that plays mostly during the daytime, when the housewives can get paranoid about possibly having mesothelioma. I know it plays a lot during my People's Court reruns, and during The Young and The Restless.

You know who else gets a lot of airtime during the soaps? That Roni Deutch bitch. HATE.

That damn song was running through my head the entire time I was trying to take a final. Having, "Fanta! Fanta! Don't you wanna Fanta!?" running through your head for two hours while trying to write an essay about Legalism in the Qin Dynasty is one of the worst forms of toture that I could have ever thought of.

It's been ages since it aired, but does anyone remember the ad for some sort of throat medication, in which various people were hit by golf balls becaus the golfer couldn't shout 'Fore' loudly enough. Then in the end, he yells and everyone hits the deck. Always makes me laugh.

That Oust commercial is back. I still want to smack Carly's mom for telling all of America that her daughter's clothes are stinky and gross.

Have you seen the commercials for Scotch transparent duct tape? Repairs don't have to be ugly anymore! Instead of using that ugly gray duct tape, you can use the new clear tape! Then they show a woman covering the hole in the tail light of her SUV with the new duct tape. Mmmkay.

TheCustomOfLife, you must be in MA? I had to listen to those horrible James Sokolove ads for 15 years. Up where I am now, the mesothelioma ads are brought to us by the Law Offices of Joe Bornstein & Robert Vaughn...sad thing is, in these parts there are a gazillion old former shipyard workers who actually have the damn disease...those old ships and subs were filled with carcinogenic asbestos and crap like that, so a lot of shipbuilders and riggers get it. It's what my Grandfather died from. Joe and Jim must be making some good money thanks to people who worked Bath Iron Works, the Portsmouth Naval Ship Yard and the one down in Quincy, MA up to the '60s or so.

Count me in as someone who didn't know DQ had hot food. We have a ton of DQs in these parts, but many/most are all about the ice cream. I go past an Arby's every day on my way to and from work, and even though it's on a main road with a lot of traffic (and extremely close to a college campus), it's always, always deserted. The parking lot and drive-thru are empty, and even though the lights are on (so I know it's still in business), I've never seen anyone entering, exiting, or sitting inside. Even if I were a fast food fan, I think I'd be scared to eat there. My theory is that it's a tax write-off for someone, 'cause it sure as hell isn't making any money!

We're always suffering through ads for Long John Silver's, Red Lobster and Sonic, even though there aren't any for hundreds of miles around. I love the Spongmonkeys, so I don't mind all the ads for the locally nonexistent Quizno's, but I feel slightly cheated that Jack In The Box apparently buys local ad time only, 'cause I've never seen one of their ads in all my years of cable viewage.

The family went to see Shrek 2 last Friday and I finally got to witness the Fanta girls for myself. The commercial was kinda stupid but me and hubby both looked at each other after and said "Damn, I *really* could go for a Fanta right about now". If the theater knew what was good for them, they should have had a Fanta vendor walking the aisles selling the stuff. I would have bought one (grape, please!)

And to brag on my 4 year old, the other day we were driving somewhere and she spotted a McDonald's. She told me "Ewwwww, a McDonalds. I'm NOT loving it."
I'm so proud! *wipes away tear*

Checkers closed here. I want some cajun fries. Forget about the mystery meat at some of these burger chains.

You'd think some of the lawyers who advertise on TV would get some plastic surgery, speech lessons, liposuction, or learn basic good posture. Some of these commercials are actually funny. "we can get you MONEY".
When I had a court case 4 years ago, lawyers sent me all kinds of soliciting mail. One had a picture, a lady named GiGi G-something. I was totally hypnotized. I asked my lawyer if she was any good. He looked at me like I had peed on his shoes. He was the best-looking guy in any courtroom. He had a whole Sopranos-thing going, so I felt secure with him.

Heh. I saw the Fantanas commercial before Shrek 2 on Friday as well... and all the little kids in the theater were singing along like little brainwashed indoctrinates. Sigh. At least Pittipat's daughter is carrying on the tradition of snark.