Merry Christmas From Your Favorite Beer......But Not Really

Ah, the commercial that wasn't good when it debuted in 1990 is back for year #20! Thanks for being here, Corona. Really though, who decided this commercial was clever enough to become such a fixture? Maybe there has been a standing challenge at Corona to anyone who can make another Christmas commercial with a beach theme that doesn't involve a palm tree with Christmas lights...somebody save us from this already. In the meantime, that palm tree has enjoyed more screen time than most Hollywood actors and the whistling guy is probably pissed that he volunteered his whistling for Corona when he was an intern there 20 years ago and isn't collecting any royalties....well, that and that his internship prepared him to do marketing for the extremely small "beach marketing" niche. I'm sure all of his co workers at Coppertone now know why they've been hearing him whistle for all these years.

So you thought a 20 year run was bad? How about this TWENTY THREE YEAR OLD commercial that is as much a commercial for beer as it is recycling:



Copyright 2006?! Who are you fooling? I bet whoever at Budweiser came up with the "hey when we reformat this commercial for HD we can change the copyright date so people will forget that it's from 1987" is (still) patting himself on the back right now. As with the Corona commercial can someone tell me why this commercial is good enough to have been on for so long? OMG! It's those horses! In the snow! With a Christmas tree! Do you think when this commercial was screened for the higher ups at Bud that they gave the commercial a standing ovation with tears in their eyes and exclaimed "It's beautiful! Let's show this commercial until the end of time!" I guess I'm just shocked that we never saw an equally pedestrian commercial with those stupid frogs in Christmas hats or something.

It really looks like I'm going to be seeing these commercials for the rest of my life...but why? I've seen great commercials (and really, just about any commercial) before that last no more than 6 months on the air. Maybe you disagree with me about not liking these commercials, but do you really like seeing these commercials year after year? Are Bud and Corona just hoping that at this point people just expect these commercials to be on and that they're associated with Christmas enough that they can be lazy and never make another Christmas commercial again? I guess if any two companies were to pull something like this, it would be companies that use the same gimmicks for their commercials over and over again--Bud with the horses and Corona with the beaches.

Do you think the employees of Corona and Bud send out the same exact Christmas card to their friends and family every year?

Everybody Knows You Never Want To Go Full Gray

God, I hate this commercial so much. Are we talking about his prowess in the office or in bed? Both? Ok, fine...but really, why? I don't think our horny and unemployed friend should be worried about his hair. You're in your early 50's, presumably unwed since you're after that secretary, and unemployed. What were you blaming this all on before your hair went gray?

Back to the sexual prowess thing. I am obviously not going gray and won't be for a quite a while so I can't say for sure, but I'm totally not buying this experience/youth combo that Just For Men is selling here. Somehow I don't think that women are out there checking out guys with grayish hair and thinking "I bet he's got TONS of experience in bed and is amazing at sex! And he looks like he doesn't even need to use Viagra yet either!"

On to the office prowess thing. Your gray hair means "experience?" Wonderful. It also means you're old and you don't have a job. You probably should have brought a resume or something instead of just relying on the hue of your hair.

Since I doubt the slutty secretary (Sidenote: Why are women in commercials exponentially more slutty in commercials than real life? No one ever talks about how misogynistic commercials are. More on this another time.) is the one deciding whether to hire you or not, good luck with your interview buddy. At least you can just blame the economy if the new hair doesn't pan out.

KAYAK Supports Saving Time, Infidelity

Mandy and her boyfriend Dave love to travel. But they have different approaches to finding deals...and life. Mandy uses KAYAK to compare hundreds of travel sites at once--an indication of her instant gratification, short-cutting lifestyle. Dave doesn't use KAYAK...he stays up SO late searching SO many sites that sometimes he sleeps in and misses flights because he believes in doing things the old-fashioned way and values things like hard work and the sanctity of love but has a bitch of a girlfriend who doesn't and doesn't even have a shred of loyalty to call him on the phone or go to his apartment to make sure he wakes up so he doesn't miss their flight and ohbytheway obviously doesn't live with him despite the fact that they apparently travel together frequently, most likely because she wants her own place so she can cheat on him on the reg all while poor Dave oversleeps....like he did today. Luckily Mandy has Dante here for company. They met this morning and will probably engage in consensual sex in the next hour or so because Mandy has no morals and only cares about her own satisfaction and will step on whoever stands in her path to pleasure...a lifestyle that KAYAK not only condones, but supports and glorifies.

And I bet Dante uses craigslist to compare hundreds of desperate and wanton women at once.

One more thing: would this commercial ever make it through management at KAYAK and onto TV if Dave and Mandy's roles were reversed? I think not.

Mini Forgets Where They Parked

Mini/BMW has always used their European image as a marketing ploy and in this commercial the trend continues to be the same. It wouldn't have been as cool if these cars had US license plates when we could instead see these cars in their true European form with the bland looking Euro plates that people in the US think are cool because they're different. (For the record, Euro plates are definitely lame...the variation in between countries' plates in the EU is so minimal it's hard to tell what country the plate is from! How are you supposed to play the license plate game?! Clearly whoever designed these plates has never been on a road trip...do they go on road trips in Europe? Maybe they don't.)

So obviously we're witnessing this trio driving around in this cool Euro garage (I'm sure European parking garages are 'cooler' than US ones for some dumb reason too) looking for a 'cool' Euro parking space to a park in....so let's check the sign to see where there's parking available. WAIT........METROPLEX PARKING?! Is that what the sign says?! Where the hell are we?! All the other signs are in another language! (I couldn't decipher what language the signs are in, but let's agree it isn't English.)

I don't understand why the parking sign couldn't have been in the other language as well. Given the context of the commercial, showing the board lit up with the numbers on it is enough to imply the purpose of the sign, right? And anyone who is sophisticated enough to pursue the Euro image in buying a Mini surely is someone hip who frequents a metroplex with a parking garage that has a similar parking kiosk that tells you where the empty spots are....right?

While we're at it, one my biggest pet peeves in car commercials is the omnipresent disclaimer that always mentions the commercial was shot on a "closed course." Why do we have to call it a course? I'd say at best 2% of car commercials are shot on an actual course. Since when is a parking garage a course? Throw some cones in there for a slalom and we can call it course and I won't object. Until then, can we say 'controlled environment' or just omit the part about it being a closed course and just say they're professional drivers?

Oh yeah, and the part at the end with the old lady parking her powerchair in the parking spot is stupid and unrealistic. Are you telling me she drove that chair up 5 stories to park it in a parking garage? Please.

Failure: It's What's For Breakfast

First off, I'm just going to ignore the fact that the mailman sings about rottweilers and pitbulls despite the fact that the dogs in the commercial are definitely not rottweilers or pitbulls because that's the kind of stupidity reserved for a Snickers commercial or something.

I actually didn't even notice that at first. What really annoyed me was the whole premise of the the commercial. I imagine the brain trust over the BK headquarters (castle?) sat down to discuss ideas for their new breakfast commercials and decided on this whole negligent public servant thing as they have another spot featuring ambulance drivers. Here's my best guess at a reenactment of the marketing department's meeting after they decided on their angle:

Guy A: So the ambulance idea is good, what else can we do?
Guy B: How about a fireman who is chowing down on BK breakfast while a house burns down in the background and the family watches on in horror as the dad runs out of the house on fire and has to roll around to put himself out?
Guy A: I think we can do better than that....
Guy B: How about a cop watching a bank get robbed while he eats breakfast and watches the robber get away......wait for it.....and then we cut to the robber at the drive through ordering breakfast with his loot?!
Guy A: Now that is an awesome idea! Let's think of some others though.
Guy B: How about a mailman that is kind of a jerk and he apparently delivers mail in the morning at breakfast time even though I don't personally know anyone who gets their mail delivered in the morning?!
Guy A: Perfect!

Duracell And The Plight of Adulterers, Drug Dealers

Behold the Duracell myGrid. Charge all your devices at once! How cool! As an aside, all these products that can wirelessly charge your phones are dumb because you have put a huge case on your phone that connects to your battery to allow your phone to charge. But anyways.

In the second version of the commercial in this video the commercial asks us if we think we can only charge one device at once (my response was "actually no, I have this super high tech thing called a 'power strip' that lets you plug a lot of things in at once" but that's besides the point). They proceed to show the myGrid charging 4 devices at once...but wait, they're all phones! Off the top of my head, I can only think of 2 types of people who might have 4 cell phones:

1. Adulterers (the careful, not Tiger Woods kind)
2. Drug dealers

So what's going on here Duracell? Whose phones are those in the ad? It looks like some guy who has 3 cell phones charging and one of his mistresses is charging her phone with the pink case.

I just don't understand....won't you explain Duracell? I highly doubt you see this product being a communal charger for the family, because what family is gonna park all their phones in the same place to charge them? Surely this is what you must envision though, because you wouldn't market your product to the immoral.

But then at the end of your commercial you say "trusted everywhere." If you have all your cell phones with their separate numbers always charged up so you can answer calls from your wife or one of your mistresses and lie through your teeth, you won't lose anyone's trust. I see what you did there Duracell. Sneaky.

What You Didn't Know About Satellite Dishes

I really don't have an issue with this commercial in its concept. He's a satellite dish! He fell over! He..........walked away? You had me going there for a second, Allstate.

Satellite dishes can't walk.

I don't know if I can trust you now.