Screaming car salesmen with all their "cute" grandkids.

Local lawyers.

Furniture companies with their low-low mattress prices.

If you can't afford to hire actors, maybe you should re-think your marketing strategy.

I hate, hate local commercials. One from my parent's home in rurall IL actually combines two of the examples that fangums mentioned because someone who runs a mattress store has their two daughters or granddaughters shilling for them. It's not horrendously bad, but still.

Oh, boy. One of our local furniture stores, years and years ago, had the obese, greasy-looking owner's scrawny little son on their commercials from before when he could talk properly. He used to end the commercials by announcing "Buy fwom me!" when he was about 2 or 3. Years passed, the kid grew into an obnoxious teenager and gradually disappeared from the commercials. The father didn't, and oddly hasn't changed a lick over the years.

Then, after about five years of Going Out of Business sales of increasing ferocity, they finally closed. The community breathed a sigh of relief. And then? After about a year of blessed silence :little girl from Poltergeist voice: "they're baaaack!" With what appear to be grandchildren now tormenting us to buy their ugly furniture. They won't go away.

Somewhat more bearably, one of our city's lawyers (not one that I'd go to, but that's another story!) has an ad with a talking dog. For some reason that cracks me up. Every time the firm I work for discusses advertising (we don't currently advertise on tv, but the idea comes up occasionally!) I say, "You know what we need? We need an ad with a talking dog!" Except, not.

Unfortunately, I get all the Buffalo stations so I am forced to put up with lawyer commercials around the clock. The worst, by far, is this dumb schmuk whose selling point is that he only charges 30% instead of 40%. Or $250 for a criminal case. His entire commercial consists of him reciting the legal code by heart. He goes on to say, "if any of this applies to you, call me. You don't need the high-proced lawyers because as long as this applies to you, it will be settled out of court."
If you can understand the legal crap he spews for 30 seconds chances are you don't need his cheapo services because you went to law school yourself.

There's a local Chinese restaurant running an ad that makes me want to crawl under my couch. There's shots of the food while bunch of singers sing an "asian sounding" jingle about the food, topped off with a guy yelling out stuff in a bad 1930's asian stereotype accent. "High-ho wasabe! Set you on fiyaw!" It makes me feel like I should apologize to someone...

Anyone from the Greater Cincinnati area will remember "Buddy" from Buddy's Carpet Barn. For over decade Buddy showed up on the radio and on TV (every five damn minutes) reminding us that we "had to get to Buddy's Carpet Barn before Wednesday night!". A few years ago Buddy was diagnosed with throat cancer and I bought my ticket to hell with my first thought "Oh thank God! Now he'll finally have to shut up!"

A fitness equipment supply place buys tons of ad time on my local late night cable. The ads always feature the three owners, two men and a woman. Keep in mind that they keep remaking these ads, even in the present day. Why is that important? Well, because all three of them are always kneeling on their shoes, Dorf-like. And if that reference isn't dated enough, all three of them are dressed like Hans and Franz of mid-80s SNL semi-fame (yes, even the woman), invariably ending with the oh-so-hip "We want to pump you up!", complete with bad accents and hand gestures. I really want to hunt them down and do an intervention.

The Furniture WareHouse commercials in Utah always bugged me. The two guys would end their ads with "It's on Road Redwood! No! Redwood Road!"

Shut it! Just shut it already!

There was an ad in North Jersey for a fur outlet that I guess was going out of business, everything must go and all. The owner was this stereotypical Italian (or Greek? can't remember) old guy, who was most definitely wearing a red fur coat. It had some kind of whickety-whack detailing going on, but I was so distracted by the color that I can't remember it exactly. I can't even imagine how red it would have been in a commercial with high production values. I felt so bad for him. He's selling off his stock and has to wear that coat on TV. Who told him that was a good idea?

There's a local website, winwithcharter.com. There is a series of commercials for it, each one worse than the last. The worst of the bunch has to be the one parodying a reality show. Two key phrases, and I am not making either of these up:

"I won immunity last time. I'm going to transfer my immunity to winwithcharter.com." (Miss Alli would scream.)

"It's always winwithcharter.com. Why can't it be winwithSamantha.com?"

Up here we have a furniture store where the owner is in every commercial. Now at the beginning I absolutely hated the ads. The guy had a thick east indian accent and you could barely understand it. But the ads have grown on me, mainly because the owner has an awesome sense of humour. You have to give props to a guy for dressing up as Spiderman and Batman right down to the tights. Check out some of the ads at the website. They're on the right side. The Bulk one and the Making a Movie one always make me laugh.

Now if only they'd get rid of that awful singing lady, just never fits with the rest of the commercial. Plus, it's annoyingly saccharine.

They must have some sort of law in Washington state that little girls in commercials have to speak with an annoyingly piercing, nasal lisp. Mercifully I have never heard such grating talk in the real world although I'm around kids a lot.
Nor do most little girl actresses in TV shows speak like idiots, although there is some crossover there.
(not local, but for comparision, the Kraft Singles cheese slices and the Welch's grape juice ads)

I don't know if they specially train these grating little freaks or what, but I can't lunge for the mute button quick enough when I hear a warning sign.

I live in New England, and there's this law firm that has ads with little playlets about an evil insurance company's lawyers. Where I am, it's a guy named Salamone, but he's partnered up with someone further south, and elsewhere in the region there's another lawyer's name entirely.

The on-camera announcer in these ads was Robert Vaughn, who can sure say, "You...mean...business!" with a threatening edge, punctuated by a finger jab. There are more recent ones with William Shatner (!) in that role, though without his infamous acting style.

What made me notice these ads, though, was I think the first one with the evil lawyers. This is really more me finding some odd angle than inherent dopiness, but the head lawyer spoke in a gruff voice that I thought was awfully charismatic for a villian. I immitated the voice making fun of it, and now, every time a new one with evil insurance mouthpieces in it comes on, I try to find something to mock.

The most recent ones have just one legal villian in it, and he's played by, believe it or not, the guy who played Joe Isusu! Notably, in one, he "can't get this pen to work", wiggling his thumb purposefully missing the clicky thingy, until he discovers the client (unheard, in camera POV) is with the lawyer the ad's for.

Mibbitmaker, I see those commercials all the friggin' time. And I despise them because they're so frakkin' stupid.

Even worse are the ones for the Connecticut weathercasters (I mean, wow, but these guys are pretty fuckin' ugly). There's this one where the weatherfool is blathering about how unique the weather in CT is and how people only care about the 10-mile stretch of ice and snow. Whatthefuckever.

I lived in northern Alberta for about 7 years, and the one commercial I always remember was for a car dealership with the very catchy jungle "Cars cost less in Wetaskiwin". The annoyingly perky salespeople always changed, but the jingle always stayed the same.

That and "United Furniture Warehouse..BOMP BOMP". I'm not sure if that one is local or not, but I live in Quebec now and haven't heard since.

I lived in Minneapolis for awhile and there was a series of ads for a recreation warehouse-type place (pool tables, hot tubs) featuring a total bimbo. Not surprising, 'cause she was in a hot tub most of the commercial, but she was quite annoying--giant bleached hair, shrill voice, lolling around in her bikini even as she played foosball. But then, right before I moved, she suddenly starting appearing in commercials looking classy--her hair was darker and in better condition, she wore tasteful suits, she acted professional. It was totally the same woman, I'm sure of that. Does anyone else know about these commercials? Or, better yet, know this woman? I'm dying to know what happen. My pet theory: her asshole, controlling husband ran the business, and pimped her out in the commercials for years; finally, fed up, she murdered him, covered it up as an accident, inherited the business, and said, "Allright. It's time to do things my way."

OMG, Rep's Fitness Supply. "Reason number two! The suspense is killing me!"

I believe you're speaking of the skank from Watson's. She is the daughter of the store owner. My husband saw some article about her where she suffered from the delusion that she is the finest thing around. She opted not to continue any educational opportunities that were offered to her because her hotness will last forever. They are opening a new store in the Twin Cities so they are replaying the ads with a vengeance. That's Watson's!

Shout out to Portland, OR! If you're here you remember Tom Peterson! He sold/sells beds and furniture from SE 82nd Street. Tom's not movie-star studly. He looked like your uncle who was in the Marines and kept his buzz-cut haircut (but Tom was much happier!) The ad I remember most is when you were watching some crap movie at 3 am and suddenly there's his whole smiling face in the screen and a fist knocking on the camera lens: "Wake up! Wake up!" I don't remember much of the rest of the ad but for a while you could buy alarm clocks at Tom Peterson's with his face on the dial. He even had a cameo in Gus Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho." He's got a page in IMDB!

His business over-expanded and then went bankrupt (a too-often-told tale around Portland) but for a while he was a local celebrity. The business reorganized (or whatever they do) and now it's "Tom Peterson's and Gloria's Too" but it's just not the same and neither are the ads. Come to think of it we have quite a few local craptacular furniture store ads on TV. "Sleep Count-ree-U-S-A, why buy a mattress anywhere else?" "Jer Bear's--buy a bed, get a bear!" (a stuffed teddy bear)

edited to correct URL

Yesh! Watson's! I just checked out their website (no shank, alas), and I see they're a national chain. Is the skank from Minneapolis? I'm kinda curious to find that article--how long ago was it published?

Finally, a place to vent! In Wichita, there's a chain of burger joints called "Spangles." The food's okay but I freaking hate them because I can't watch TV for ten minutes without seeing one of their ads. They must have a pretty huge advertising budget, and rather than use it to produce a few really good commercials, they decided to make dozens upon dozens of cheap, really awful commercials. And I've seen maybe three or four different commercials from them in the same week. It's nutty. Their main spokesperson is a laterally lisping lady ("Shpangles!") but they also have an obnoxious voiceover guy plus frequent "guest stars" like the stereotypical mafioso-type east coast guy they used to promote their Philly cheese steak sandwich, various crappy singers whom I've heard are related to the lisping lady, a local college basketball coach (I think) and even a local used car dealer who has already saturated the Wichita airwaves with his own brand of redneck bucktoothed sermonizing (car safety tips are a fine alternative to screaming about prices, but don't talk to me like I'm a baby, dude). The ads are either sub-sitcom level "comedy" skits or for the singers, bad rockabilly or country numbers about their latest food offerings. Don't get me started on the scary-faced young guy doing a Roy Orbison impression. It's like somebody out there has a huge "bad commercial" machine, and they're turning the crank like there's no tomorrow.

Hall of Fame Local TV ads: The Wolfman (now deceased) and his daughter, Donna, who did the Gallery Furniture ads here in ATL. They may have aired these on TBS as well. And hey, ask for the Wolfman!

Ugh, yes. I hate hate hate the Sleep Country ads "our hide to find locations can save you money!" Yes, that is the actual tagline.

There's also "Carpet Carl"'s annoying as hell commercials that play when I'm trying to watch the morning news.

I think Donna looks better than she did when Wolfman was around.

That's a relative thing, you understand.

There's a series of ads by a local Oriental rug dealer with the 3 guys responsible for it, and one of them plays a lame 'comedy relief', apparently a salesman there, and he's called "10% Charlie", as in, "...and ask for me, 10% Charlie". I just have to ask most times the commercial airs, "10% Charlie, huh... who's the other 90% of him, anyway?"

Discount mattresses & female family shills seem to be a nat'l problem. Here in LA we have 'Neal-with-a-Deal', a blond cherub who shrieks, 'I won't be beat!' Unfortunately, Blond Neal's cheap pricing seems to have affected his advertising budget as his one commercial has been running for more than a decade & features a woman in elastic-waist pants (circa 1988) & an employee with a spiral perm (circa 1990). Away from Neal, there is a series of commercials for Anso carpet, pumped by a swarthy butterball of a dame whose sales technique is to erotically stroke (or sit upon) phallic piles of carpet while gazing soulfully into the camera. Makes you long for hardwood floors.

Our local personal injury attorney ads are kind of disconcerting, because they use stories from local people who were represented by the firm. Every once in a while, I'll see someone I know. "Oh, that's why he hasn't been in the shop lately. He got hit by a car." "Hey, I went to middle school with that guy who got mauled by the dog!"

Conversely, I know not to trust the "testimonials" from one of our Chevrolet dealerships. My friend, who has never bought a car in her life, was in one of them simply because they wanted to hire someone pretty.

I guess our local family-owned furniture store is alone in not having trashy, shrieking spokespeople in their commercials. Instead, we have the plastic family. They stroll casually amongst the fine leather with wooden, overrehearsed interactions and refuse to drop their gigantic smiles, even when speaking. But the commercials are tasteful, with good production values and no screaming.

One of my childhood memories is of some guy with an appliance store in the Kent/Seattle area shouting, "I won't be undersold!" on all of his commercials. Does anyone know who I'm talking about? (EDIT: This would have been in the late 80's/early 90's)

There are two local commercials that are bugging the bejesus out of me.

First is one for the closing down of a furniture store, (natch). Its this weird-looking overweight guy with long stringy hair in what looks like an oilskin overcoat and matching hat singing "please, please, please, we're down on bended knees", in triplicate! He morphs from one annoying caricature into three. I wish they'd just hurry up and close down.

Second is the commercial for a strip club in Arlington. There's this woman who says in what is supposed to be I imagine, a luring sexy voice, something like "do you think the men come here for the food? or the widescreen TVs?" while they show shots of strippers' platform shoes dancing on a platform. Oh and they're open 365 days a year.

I am currently enjoying the now bittersweet home-grown ad a local syndicated channel airs for The Andy Griffith Show.

Recently, on Saturday Night Live, there was a Bestie Boys-style parody video with the line, "The Chronic-What?!-Cles of Narnia." Our inventive locals have morphed it into the Chronic-What?!-Cles of Barnia." It's very funny, but since it's centered on Barney, and started airing a couple of weeks before Mr. Knotts' passing, kinda bittersweet now.

In L.A. we've got "attorney" Larry H. Parker. I'll FIGHT for you! (He's mostly visually annoying-with the receding poofy hair, scary eyes, flaring nostrils and big ol'mouth.) He needs to stop.

Also those damn mattress ads- Larry always says "I'll beat anyone's advertised price or your mattress is FREEEEEEEEEEE!" in this singsong voice. But worse than that, they built in a sidekick who always has to say "You're killing me, Larry" in response to Larry's latest crazy deal. But the worst part is the convoluted stories they create to get to the sidekick's "punchline." Ah, local TV.

I made mention of this just before the new forums started of the ad we have out in the Palm Springs (CA) area for the local news that features this horrible song that I can't get out of my head. I've lived in some small towns, but I have never seen a commercial for the news with an original song in it. It's bizarre! I just can't figure out if they think it'll get people to watch the news since it mostly airs during the news- if you're already watching that channel, how is that helpful? It's making me think about watching another station!

Remember the guy in the Larry Parker ad, sitting on a motorcycle, holding cash, and smiling, who says, "Larry H. Parker got me $2.1 million and man, am I enjoying it!" ? Back when Larry was allowed to do that in his ads.

If we're going to talk Portland, Oregon mattress commercials, then I think Mattress World is the one to beat. Sing along: "It's not too late to sleep like a baby, Mattress World!" Of course, this is not the real issue, the problem is the owners' demonic eight-year-old (think Children of the Corn hair and dead eyes) looming over a tiny baby, who is most likely sleeping soundly on the mattress, but could very well just have been smothered by the Children of the Corn child, who is now doing a "shhh" motion so we won't squeal to his parents about the murdered infant!!! Or, I've overthought it. Either way.

Also, love the Carpet Carl ads, with the random picture of a bull comin' atcha while belabored bull/cow noises are made. I'm assuming there's a No-Bull deal, though maybe I'm thinking of Carpet Warehouse, with ads where there's actually footage of a bull, with some woman holding onto his rope and poking at the bull's doolap [sic] with a stick.

And I hope someone else is with me but Leo Hillyard and that damn ugly-ass dog? Eat me. And why does Leo Hillyard's chin look like it was puttied on?

For Toronto area TWoPers, three words: Russell "Cashman" Oliver.
For those not in the area, he's a pretty crazy pawn jewelry shop owner who makes his own commercials where he wore a Superman outfit (buldge and all) begging people to bring him their jewelry for top dollar. They were just bad, and I seem to remember he was charged for using the Superman logo.

Not only that, but he was charged with selling stolen merchandise. He was once a very popular fence.

Hahahaha. I live 3,000 miles away and I've never seen this commercial, but I love your imagination.

I spent a lot of time in the '80s watching TV with my grandparents in Houston. Non-Houstonians may recognize this commercial if you watched Conan a few years ago. He went after the NBC affiliate there for not airing his show at the normal post-Leno time and showed this commercial on his show because he thought it was crappy, or something. Anyway, it's the Gallery Furniture ad, with the guy who says "Gallery Furniture really will...save...you...money!" [hops up/whips out a bunch of money]. My granddad would always say "monkeys" instead of "money" and make me laugh. Sniff. So, just an example of how an annoying local ad can become a fond memory of your long-gone granddad.

Philadelphia-area TWoPers, are they still airing the ads for Doctor Desert Dry? I used to see them in the late 90s when I lived in the Philly area.

Doctor Desert Dry is (was?) a product/system for keeping your basement dry. Worst. Commercial. Ever. It included the company staff "singing" the company jingle. Except they couldn't sing, at all, and it was crawl-under-the-couch embarrassing to watch.

DC area TWOPers will recognize, "Kiss my bumper, just kiss it," from the Senate Auto Insurance ads. Soooo bad, yet soooo funny, as spoken by the Martin Lawrence-esque Big Momma.

I'm pretty sure Doctor Desert Dry is, thankfully, gone. Of course now we have to put up with ads for the Dump. Or as the announcer says, "to the Dump, to the Dump, to the Dump-dump-dump!" No, really. What is it with furniture store owners and their shitty commercials?

I'm gonna try to represent for Boston TWOPpers, and vent about the two worst local commercials: Bernie and Phyl & Bob's Discount Furniture Store. Bernie and Phy; have always just bugged me to no end-- they are horrible actors, thier ads are stupid, the jingle is annoying and sticks in your head and they run all the damn time... However they are completely bearable in comparason to Bob and his skank assistant who scream at us all day and night about how other furniture stores suck and are ripping us off. But Bob has our best interests at heart. To quote Bob, himself:I doubt it!

I'm sure there's an exterminator out there somewhere who's used the Pink Panther theme: "Dead ant! Dead ant! Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant!"

I hated that one so badly, I actually waited for assurance it was finally gone before relocating back to Washington state! Now I live where I get poor reception and one of two channels comes from Canada, and I rarely even watch it because it's saturated with that annoying ad.


Another one whose creator should be taken out and shot, or even better, forced to listen to their own craptacular commercial 24 hours a day, nonstop for a year.



That would be Jack Robertson TV and Appliance!!! He died a few years ago though - it was all through the 80s and early 90s he was in his ads. Red shiny coat under blue overalls, big curly head, always flapping his arms ineffectively and saying "I won't be undersold!"

His shop is still right there on Aurora Avenue in north Seattle. They ran a few ads after he died, with three guys dressed like that an imitating him, but faded away gradually at least from TV advertising.

Lucky you, it's still going strong here in Ontario. The absolutely worst of the United Furniture Warehouse ads were the testimonials they did a few years back. The people they had talking about the virtues of UFW looked like they all had maybe 3 teeth between them.

What's weird is that the parents (Sherry and uh... Mr. Sherry) change, get older, lose/gain weight, but those two kids always stay the same age.

Sounds exactly like an ad for a commercial in Green Bay for a going-out-of-business furniture store, except it was the voice-over guy with a guitar and then being triplicated. Let me tell you, he has both the face and body for radio and voice-over work.

There was a funeral home ad in Milwaukee that airs in late night with the funeral director standing outside with an umbrella over his head in the dark of night. The problem was that it wasn't actually raining, and it was crappy CGI effects. The commercial ends with the 'clouds' lifting up, and it suddenly turning from dark night to 2pm sunny. It just so cheap and cheesy

And right after that, a commercial for a fish place where a fisherman is about ready to catch something in full Gortman's regalia...in the middle of the inner city. Yeah, he didn't get any attention at all.

I also don't want to forget Doc '55th and Lisbon' of Doc's "Fine Jewelry" (quotes by me), who offers you a 'free gift of gold' presented by a very ugly model you don't want anywhere near you, along with the legal questions of where this fine jewelry actually came from (since you can also sell your jewelry at Doc's).

I love local commericals, they're just a cheesy kind of fun.

I remember the most ridiculous local one I've seen was for a telephone company from Tulsa. It featured a family getting their phone cut off from a cartoonish villian in a cheap hamburgler costume. Then an actor in a even cheaper looking superhero outfit saves the day with his low rates.

I'm sure anyone from Oklahoma or the Tulsa area are familar with the Evans brothers commericals. These two bring the hoyay! like no other. It's hilarious because I've heard from various people that they're both gay in real life, yet they constantly try to feature themselves holding children or with women as if to say "hey, look at us! See, we're not gay! Not really! We have proof".

I think the the most annoying commericals I've been seeing is for various local phone hotlines, I'm not sure if we're supposed to believe it's an ad for phone sex or is a genuine phoneline for singles. Also, their used to be a really cheesy low budget ad for a phone sex line that had the most annoying commerical jingle I've ever heard, "you don't have be alone tonight, pick up the phone."

But they hold the babies just like they hold the dogs! They use them as fashion statements.

JuliJBG, that Bob guy's all over the region! I mentioned him in the Commercials That Need to Go thread, and this guy can't be mocked enough. He has the worst nasal, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice ever. He doesn't just say, "I doubt it"; it's like, "I doooooubt it", and me typing it doesn't even do it justice!

There's a recent My Bob's ad (with a slightly less notable similar one) that's just odd-surreal. First we see Bob as a magician - in claymation - doing the saw the girl in half trick, but it's him that splits, but length-wise. Then they cut to a live-action of Bob and what'sherface sitting on furniture. He's silent (Thank God!), and she says something, waves a magic wand, and Bob, this small, oval-headed, bearded white guy, suddenly turns into a handsome African-American gentleman. That's one of the weirdest non-sequitur things I've seen.

"Bernie and Phyl's -- quality, comfort and price. That's NICE."

Have you ever known even one person who shopped at Bernie & Phyl's or Bob's? And if you visited them, was their cheap furniture broken into pieces?

I'm starting to think I'm the only person in Northern NJ who saw the Bob's Furniture commercial with him and blonde assistant woman pretending to swim in a non-existent fountain. "When you come for our grand opening on October 6 there will be a fountain here!" And then they pretend to be fish. It's creepy. And it made me want to stay far away from their grand opening.