Arken

Amen to that, Deacon... in fact, I'm not quite sure how these big-time ad execs' brains process humor because almost none of their so-called humorous commercials are in the slightest bit funny to me... and let me add those damn Dell Interns and the Ditech.com guy to the list of annoying and not at all funny people that are on TV constantly, garaunteeing that I will never, ever spend money with either of those companies.

trunks2k

It doesn't matter if it's funny, annoying, or whatever. They have managed to get you to relate a specific person or character with their product. This makes you more likely to buy their product (or so they say). Granted I would much likely buy a product from a company that actually made an entertaining commercial that I could remember, but that's hard to do. It's much easier to come up with an annoying commercial under the guise of it trying to be funny.

Deacon Doubtmonger

Yes -- I now relate a loud, obnoxious anthropomorphized oven mitt (it sang "Volare" in an earlier ad) to a worthless rotgut fast-food roast beef factory restaurant. Ain't it odd that the mitt is so annoying I don't even know the name of the sandwich it's plugging?

Either that or the idiot public genuinely does find that crap funny -- though how such people can see it eight times in two hours and still laugh each time is beyond me.

Deacon Doubtmonger

"Speaking of delusional people, what about a guy who hears a voice in his head telling him to go kill his entire family, so he does it? Is this the only thing a voice in the head ever tells these people to do, is to kill others? Doesn't a voice in the head ever say, Go take a shit on the salad bar at Wendy's?"

--George Carlin

Jesse

That trend already exists, to me it seems even stronger than 70s nostalgia nowadays--look at VH1's "I Love the 80s" shows, for example. Pop-culture-wise, the 80s were great...look at this page of classic 80s movies...What I can't imagine is people looking back with nostalgia at the 90s! I'm sure it'll happen in another decade or so, though.

Graeme

Good point. By late 1978 the Detroit gay scene had already turned the remnants of disco into the seeds of house music, running 4-on-the-floor drum rhythms over top of disco records and basically birthing the 'rave' movement right then and there.

Opera Nut

Speaking of annoying commercials, I CANNOT STAND the yuppie dweeb in the black raincoat who is in all the Sprint commercials.


AGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Arken

His name is Brian Baker. He's married to Terry Farrel (a.k.a. Jadzia Dax of DS9).

Oxidizing Material

The worst commerical ever is for A1 Steak Sauce with the guy eating dinner and his fucking disgusting dog and the fucking sound effects

HeatherD

If I remember correctly, his character started out when the "X-Files" was still popular. He was supposed to be like an X-Files investigator looking for weird things, of course said weird things always had to do with poor cell-phone reception.

The ads are still funny at times but I'm surprised that they haven't retired him. They should have retired that dumb cell-phone "tech" who's constantly asking if they can hear them. How stupid, if you want to test reception and quality, you should hire someone with at least some technical background.

Luckily, those ads don't work on me. While I know they are for cell-phones, I have no idea who is advertising what. I know some companies, Sprint, Verizon, that big X dealy company. Other than that I haven't a clue.

Cipher44

I had been toying with the idea of doing a commercial review website in the style of Mr. Cranky, where I would bash the hell out of these dumbass crack-baby ad execs who pass their runny diarrhea over our heads every commercial break. I gave up on the idea when I realized that this would require me to actually start watching commercials again. I gave that up long ago.

However, it's unavoidable that I'm exposed to a least a little bit of TV advertising (after all, have to check to see if the show's on), and the worst thing out there, by far, is that Listerine superhero garbage. Dunno if you get this crap in the States; it's this dickhead in a big foam Listerine bottle costume who thinks he's a superhero, and it's been plaguing the airwaves her in Canada for years. Now he's got a toothbrush sidekick or some such tiresome horseshit. It is seriously the most fucked-up, apocalyptically retarded thing I've ever seen. Part of me (a very small part) feels sorry for the actors in those costumes. I mean, poor bastards. If offered donkey-porn as an alternative to donning a giant foam Listerine bottle for money, I'd say it'd be a toss-up.

Edited to add: I just went upstairs and emptied a quarter-full bottle of Listerine down the sink. I buy Scope from now on.