Aquafresh's depressing look at "real people"

The really sad thing is, I totally believe that these ARE real people who decided to sell what little dignity they possessed for a few seconds of screen time on a toothpaste commercial.

So they mug and froth and giggle for the camera like a bunch of developmentally-arrested sixth graders being handed five dollars by their grandparents for every minute they continue to "act cute."  They tell us how much they enjoy this toothpaste stuff while it collects around their mouths and dribbles down their chins.  It's really stupid and gross and intensely dumb and something that only real people could pull off convincingly.

So congratulations, Aquafresh, for taking advantage of very sad but oh so very real people who don't care what they have to do to get on television, and never mind that this kind of ad only shows up in the middle of Comedy Central movies nobody really wants to watch anyway.  Could you do me a favor and go back to hiring actors now?  Because this is so pathetic, it hurts my soul.

Mission Accomplished. Continue to aim high, sister!

Just imagine- if this woman hadn't traded her soul for a big house and popped out these kids, those backpacks would just be sitting there on the floor.  And who would be spreading the Nutella?

My guess is- Nobody. And what a tragedy that would be.  So let's not build a flux capacitor, go back ten years, and suggest to this woman that there might just be something in life worth a bit more than spreading nut and cocoa cream on toast in order to get children to the breakfast table.  I mean, just imagine the tear in the space-time continuum that would create.

The Nutella jar would just sit there, unopened.  The kids would keep playing, and those backpacks would just stay on the floor.  Oh, the humanity.  Thank G-d we can't go back in time, because it would be really awful to mess up all this, wouldn't it?

Believe it or not, this is not a commercial for World War Z

...although it does include a conversation between two people who are clearly dead, and have been for quite some time.

I mean, just look at this:  Wife mutters "that's just brilliant" in a carefully measured, emotionless monotone.   Husband, who seems genuinely surprised to hear words come out of the corpse he's married to, gives a sort-of, "yes, I'm acknowledging you just spoke" response.

Somehow, this turns into a "let's compare these two things with two other things, because about five years ago we both ran out of things to say to each other, but weren't willing to admit that we made a bad choice and rushed into a cold, distant marriage of convenience.  Let's take this opportunity to have a something that bears some resemblance to a conversation, even if it lasts only a few seconds, because it would be kind of fun to at least PRETEND not to be among the walking dead."

As usual (for commercials,) both of these zombies manage to pull up the same mental image.  This isn't a gift shared only by the Undead.  All couples in tv advertisements have it.  It's supposed to make sense to us, The Living.  It doesn't (judging from the YouTube comments, a lot of walking corpses enjoy surfing the web for ad clips and then commenting on them- and they have terrible taste.)

My guess is that if this couple doesn't proceed to feasting on brains within a few minutes, and are in fact actual, living, breathing people, they'll relapse into silence for several more hours until one of them finds something else to be impressed by, leading to another 8-second conversation that keeps life bearable for a few moments.  Maybe they'll note the "brilliance" of the Kiss and Ride, one of them mentioning that hey, that's a lot better than a Kiss OR Ride, for some reason.  Then they'll both die just a little more.

That is, unless they really are already dead.  It's hard to tell.

Umm...what's for sale here again?

Snap.  Click.  Dance, dance, dance.

Check out the glossy surface.  Ease of use.  Portability.  Clickability.  Never mind all that- check out the awesomely choreographed dance moves.

Now go out and buy this flimsy piece of junk.  Because it's cool, and that credit card is burning a hole in your pocket.  You can pay for it later, and meanwhile think how well you'll show for your friends.

It was official a long time ago, but this just another piece of evidence pointing to the conclusion that Americans Are The Biggest, Most Gullible Morons on the Planet.  We never stop acting like kittens being teased by laser pointers.  What's that?  It's shiny!  OMIGOD it looks so cool!  Where do I get one? Best Buy?  On my way!

And what's the first thing I'm going to do when I get it home?  Tell all my Facebook Friends about it.  I bet they all Like it.  Second thing? Figure out what the f--k this is.

(BTW, anyone want to contest my theory that about a hundred times more thought went into making this commercial than in designing this...whatever it is?)

The Final line of this AFLAC Commercial is your acid test

Never mind the Rocky soundtrack, the "personal trainer," and all the rest of this crap- we all knew this was coming from the moment we first saw the "AFLAC duck has been injured" commercial months ago.  The "recovery montage" setup was only slightly less predictable than the sunset.

But if you find yourself actually going online to see "what's going on behind the scenes," your loser status is confirmed.  You have no life, buddy.  Nor do you deserve one.  You long ago ran out of legitimate excuses for being online, and this is the result of your determination not to get your sorry butt off that chair.  Feel free to get the "inside scoop" on how the CGI Commercial Spokesduck is doing, but don't pretend for a minute that your existence has any meaning beyond the next late-night excursion to Taco Bell, ok?

And don't even try to justify your interest in this--this--hell, I don't even know WHAT this is.  Your willingness to wallow in the muck of time-sucking Nothing would amaze me, if it didn't make me so damned sad.

Didn't these guys used to open for INXS?

I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the idea of a group of wannabee teen heartthrobs/American Idols composing and singing a 30-second song about a new, improved blood glucose meter.

I especially enjoyed the "Twenty-three percent more accuracy feels so right" line.  Well, yes, of course it does. Goes without saying.  And "you're the one I love!"  Naturally.  "I love you, electronic device used to let me know how well I'm managing my potentially life threatening health issue!"  What could be more clear?

And it's just so easy to imagine these adorable kids prancing around a stage getting the crowd into a song celebrating the new ease with witch diabetics can check their sugar levels.  I see lighters and jumping up and down and screams of "encore," don't you?

I mean, it feels so right!

Earth to Ace: This isn't rocket science....

Let's make this brief.  In fact, that's basically my advice to your ad team:  Make it brief.  Tell us what your product is, why it's something we can't live without, and where we can buy it.  Then move on- and let US move on.

Every once in a while, a company discards the 31-seconds-or-less rule which is supposed to rule Advertising Land in a country dominated by people with Attention Deficit Disorder.  I don't know why- if I find myself on a fourth or fifth paragraph of commentary, I stop typing and start editing.  And if I know there is a limit to how much of my grumpy snark people are willing to read, why can't more companies figure out that we don't want to see a fricking sitcom situation where we expected to see an Ad?

Simply put:  A really stupid idea does not improve with length.  Watching even an entire minute of this crud is like trying to politely listen to a six year old recite the Gettysburg Address.  It's about as entertaining as getting a tooth pulled- in slow motion.

I'm going to be kind of mean here.  If you sat through the entire three minutes of this stupid, Not In The Least Bit Funny junk, you either desperately need to get a life, or you are an incredibly lazy twat who couldn't find the remote because it was wedged halfway up your butt as you were splayed on the couch.  Please don't tell me you sat through it because you "wanted to see how it turned out."  Leave embarrassing stuff like that for the YouTube comment page, where NOTHING is too embarrassing.

And please, if you really DID watch this whole thing and actually enjoyed it, PLEASE keep that opinion to yourself and don't contact ACE to report it.  Because if you do, next thing you know three-minute commercials become the standard and the distance between me and my sanity gets much, much longer.