Yeah, there are a lot of them, come to think of it. But the one that inspired this rant is BowFlex. It's insulting to both men and women, as far as I'm concerned, as the people they use in the current commercial are so vapid it's scary. They probably hired them from the same talent agency that John McCain uses to get audience fillers.

The teaser "Size matters!" is particularly odoriferous. The actors have that glint in their eyes that the size of the gym equipment is as significant to their sex lives as the size of their-- ah, equipment.

Sometimes I think I'm just sensitive to commercials wherein the size of the brain is as obsolescent as the size of their schedule is pertinent. Am I alone in this thought?

is their insinuation you can get those results in 20 mins three times a week - yes INDEED

Or that one could look like those models using their crappy equipment in the first place.

They don't come right out and say "you'll look like this if you use our product", but the fact that they use the models in those ads (who have to spend HOURS of time in the gym each week, plus maintain a very strict diet) strongly implies that would be the result. It's extremely misleading.

with the exception of a few funny beer commercials.

But the rest are just trying to sell me crap I don't need and promising results they can't deliver. They lie. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

They're all lies.

where the two mooks are staying in a youth hostel in Brussels, and they're blaming the lack of phone contact for not knowing that they have the option of going to Paris and that now they have to hang out in the hostel with "the techno twins."

1) What is preventing them from taking a train to Paris if they really want to go, whether anyone invites them or not?

2) They're in Belgium and all they can think of doing is hanging out in the hostel?

Such people are too stupid to be issued passports.

I wanted to scream out, "You're in Europe! Go some place interesting!"

Actually, judging from some of the inquiries you see on travel boards, many of them written in text messaging style, several hundred American teenagers are turned loose in Europe every year with no idea of what there is to see, where they should go, or even the names of the major countries.

Way too often you see messages that go something like this:

"i'm going to Europe as a graduation pres what i shud see there."

Having seen that ad, I feel like answering, "Spend a weekend in a hostel in Brussels with the techno twins." However, once when I answered, "Buy a guidebook, read it, and then come back with questions we can actually answer" I got dog-piled by a bunch of snarky products of helicopter parents, telling me I was "mean."

All the commercials show how much they supposedly care about their employees and customers, and in actuality they have been shown to be the biggest employee rights violators in the history of corporate America. It is just disgusting.

Really... they are your "friends"? If my so-called friend made that comment I would shove that frickin Bow-flex up his ass

It was for a Toyota van...

A woman's voice:

"It was dark, and raining, and I was alone with the kids AND I KNOW I SHOULD HAVE BEEN AFRAID, BUT I WASN'T."



READ: Women are incapable of driving at night in the rain. They should have a man w/ them, or they should buy this vehicle.

:puke:

Some years ago now, I was royally pissed off at a friend of mine who I had to pick-up and drive home after a very long day. I had to go from Springfield, MA into Newton, MA to pick him up, a distance of about a 100 miles. By the time I picked him up, I was tired of driving, and it started to rain. Hard.

It was horrendous, and I was scared, because it had been a long time since I had driven in rain like that, but I was too angry with him to let him drive, so I held my tongue and took off. Thankfully we lived about halfway in between the mess, but I stayed at high speeds (almost legal!) the whole way home.

My knuckles were likely white when I got back home, and I was definitely shaky, but I don't think I ever told him how scared I was driving home.

every commercial because that was the price you had to pay to be "entertained" by the program.
She also drank a lot.

mark

:rofl:

Although she does have a point. I remember when all the sponsors ganged up on the VCR manufacturers when they tried to set up a feature where people could skim by the commercials quickly. At the end, the VCR folks capitulated, but when the issue came up a couple of years later, a skim button was introduced without fanfare.

Where sloppy looking guys are eating big, sloppy hamburgers in a dumb, sloppy manner... and they sound like they have the microphone in their mouths! Disgusting.

To that end, any of a number of commercials that present a stereotypical version of a 'real man' as a slovenly, crude, half-bright neanderthal sports-addict.

As if!

ad agency who really thinks the mouth sounds of slobs grossly eating their food is appealing in any way, shape or form. I switch channels as soon as a Hardee's commercial comes on.

OK, you pull up to the bank drive up window, you're waiting to do your business and

SMASH!

something slams into the side of your car. So what do you do?

You sit there looking shocked and NOT pull away, even after figuring it out that where these projectiles are coming from. And the fact that Mom hasn't heard the smashing sounds, nevermind the sound of something being sucked thru the tube system ....

:banghead:

is how big a lawsuit the car driver is going to have.....:)

I wrote a thread about five months ago on that one. Federal law says that the commercials can't get louder than the programming, but that doesn't mean they can't take advantage of the higher register. So that's why all commercials come off so loud. Take advantage of people like Mays whose voice borders on psychotic shrill, and you grab the attention of audience members. It annoys and shatters eardrums, but it does accomplish its goal of making viewers look up.

The shit's been done to death, and it wasn't even funny the first time.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a big-box home improvement store and a yogurt company running these themed ads.

Seriously, why do we need lawyers to pee all over these commercials?

The only one of its kind I like is that Panasonic Toughbook ad where they go into a long spiel of what they cannot say Toughbook can do, adding at the end, "Our lawyers are just doing their jobs." That was actually amusing.