Thursday, January 10, 2008

yay toyota...

I am sad to see the Toyotathon is no longer in session. And I'm not even shopping for a car.
Do you remember the commercials they were showing around Christmas time, into the beginning of the new year?
People, in the commercials, were looking for reasons to have to buy a new vehicle, because of the incredible end-of-the-year deals that could only be found during Toyotathong... er.. thon.
These people were seen chopping down trees with chainsaws so those trees would fall on their old car, burying their cars in snow so convenient snowplows would neatly slice them in two and pushing their cars off the top floor of parking garages.
For a long time, you would see, at the bottom of the screen during these activities, "DO NOT ATTEMPT".
But, and this to me is a minor miracle, the recent showings of the commercials had the "DO NOT ATTEMPT" removed! Yay!
Some hotshot young upstart of a lawyer for them must have decided to shake things up. He probably said, "Listen. If some family decides to drop a Wile E. Coyote boulder on top of their car, then tries to sue us for damages because they saw it on our commercial, I think we can win."

Apparently, the people over at Pepperidge Farms do not feel the same sense of security. They have a commercial of a large, pretzel looking Goldfish snack cracker doing some stunts under a child's bed.
First off, the kid's parents should be carted away, because under this bed is a hazardous waste dump of toys and clothes and snack crackers.
Second off, there is a warning stating that the cracker is a professional stuntman and that what he is doing should not be attempted.
It is a cartoon.
It is a cartoon of a cracker.
It is a cartoon of a small cracker, sliding on small items, under a child's bed.
If the caption had read "Professional stuntcracker. Do not attempt.", I would have found it clever and lovely. It does not.
Here is a frame from the commercial, right off the Pepperidge Farm site.


Pepperidge Farm remembers... how to stupidly cover their asses

3 comments:

Mark said...

"Professional stuntcracker" I could get behind that! I agree that would have been exactly the right thing. I wonder if the add guy sat up in bed in the middle of bed the night after the commercial was done and exclaimed "stuntcracker! Why didn't I think of that eariler?!? Oh well." And then laid back down on his bed of money.

Stove said...

Yeah, I think they were going for that kind of a vibe, he just missed the joke by saying stuntman instead of stuntcracker.

leej said...

Ditto with Steve. They just aren't as clever as you.