These Awful Charmin Bears can please Just Go Away Now

1.  Is the father bear in this ad listening to the narrator, or watching tv with his family?  In other words, is the father bear aware that he and his family are the subjects of a commercial, because that would be the only explanation I could think of for his sudden decision to hug his atrociously blue-for-some-reason family at just the right moment in the narration.

2.  What's the point of this ad, anyway?  A few months ago, Charmin wanted to assure everyone that the company wasn't intentionally keeping toilet paper off the market to create an artificial panic?  Did anyone think this was happening?  (Oh, who am I kidding.  This is the United States.  A significant population of citizens totally believed that COVID was a scam created by Marxists, Queen Elizabeth, Hillary Clinton, and Big Toilet Paper* to sink the American Economy and get Bernie Sanders into the White House.)

*and the people who make "vaccines" (autism delivery systems.)  And some company that found itself with 25 million face masks and no market for them.  They were all in on it.  Just keep peeling that onion, Sheeple!

Leaf Fitter knows its target audience

https://ispot.tv/a/Z9WN

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It looks for all the world like a group of a few dozen Senior Citizens were offered tea, sandwiches and something to do with their sad, retired lives* and took the bait, sitting in on a sales pitch for one of these gutter lid things being given by a guy who sounds like he'd really, really rather be selling them Time Shares.

It's hard to imagine that the gutter cover salesperson could have found a friendlier, more enthusiastic-to-learn-about-gutter-lids audience than these people, so he can stick to the soft sell....but I still wish he had broken into a song and dance about how they got trouble right here in River City or they really really need a Monorail but meanwhile the answer to their Upper Middle Class Comfy Suburban Lives is a screen for their gutters.

The sales guy answers all of their questions so nicely, I imagine that besides signing up to get the gutter things installed more than a few of these grandparents slipped him their granddaughter's phone number- "I can't believe she's still single, she's so smart and talented and cute, she's a real catch just give her a call!"  At any rate, from the looks of things Leaf Fitter is going to be very, very busy over the next few days installing cheap pieces of scrap metal with holes in it on to the homes of old idiots who were so mesmerized at their salesperson's description of Permanently Clean Gutters that they totally forgot they pay a kid $10 to clean those gutters once every spring.  And those are just the people who are sure they HAVE gutters.  The rest are NOT sure, because they never checked, but they would like this guy to call their granddaughter anyway.

*I guess I should be grateful that they are taking some time off from blathering into their awesome Consumer Cellular phones about how awesome their Consumer Cellular phones are.  That's something, anyway. 

Sun Basket makes no attempt to hide the Sexism

Not to pick on Sun Basket specifically; every single one of these Easy-Prep Gourmet Meals-in-a-box services (I think there are about 26,000 of them, up from 1500 in the days before Narnia fell under the spell of the White Witch of Covid, where it's always winter and never Christmas) feature delighted young trophy wives opening crates of ingredients designed to make their easy lives even easier (and to fulfill their end of the bargain with Their Husband/Lord and Master.)  They all operate under the assumption that only women really benefit from very expensive meal packages arriving at the door of Suburban McMansions; the guys just expect dinner ready when they get home, and maybe kind of expected Trophy to put some effort in, but as long as they stay young and cute, Sun Basket etc. works just fine.

And of course, Sun Basket presents the meal prep as "so easy a guy could do it," because to a Male, cooking is almost as alien a concept as giving birth (the other part of the bargain with TrophyWife.)  As for a man actually being handed a set of ingredients and a recipe, well- I'll just paraphrase Lyle Lanley's take on giving a spinning wheel to a mule- "he doesn't know how he got it, and danged if he knows what to do with it."

What's a "California Psychic," anyway?

"I'm very conflicted....and skeptical...." and Stupid.  Don't forget Stupid.  This doesn't work without Stupid.

"they can't be for real, can they?"  No, they can't.  Not going to stop you from pulling out that credit card and giving it to a total stranger bleating generalities at you over the phone, is it?

We asked these skeptics about California Psychics, and here's what that had to say!  (It helps that neither they nor our tv audience knows what the word "skeptic" means!)

"You know, it was probably the best psychic reading I ever had!"  And I'm sure that was a really, really high bar to get over.  Pretty depressing to think that this woman has thrown enough money at "psychics" to have a rating system in place.

"I got everything I could imagine from my reading..." wow, if you are impressed by unfalsifiable claims, there's a doozy for you. 

"She told me all this stuff, and I thought 'how could she possibly know that?'"  Umm, what kind of "stuff?"  That you are susceptible to believing medieval BS (especially medieval BS that places you in a good light) bleated at you by a total stranger on the phone?  Honey, California Psychics figured that out about you before they even answered your call. 

You can speak to a "California Psychic right now for "only $1 a minute" (I absolutely promise you that the unreadable text under this announcement includes the words "minimum charge.")  And if it's "not the best psychic reading you've ever had, it's FREE" (but it will be the best psychic reading you have- your aura will tell the reader so.  If you don't agree, it's because you aren't In A Good Place with your aura.  California Psychics can help you with that, too- just stay on the line.  One dollar per minute.

"I wasn't sure about the relationship I was in but now I know he was the right one."  Because the person on the other end of the phone knows that 99.99 percent of the women who call asking relationship questions want to be told that the time and emotion they put into their current relationship hasn't been wasted and he Really Is the Right Person.  Only the tiniest fraction want to hear "dump him," because that means starting all over again and that's a lot harder than just sticking it out.  Being told that your doubts should be set aside and you should just Go For It- whether its in maintaining a relationship with a certain guy or calling California Psychics- is just good business.  I do wish someone could call the guys and let them know they are dating loons who are really dumb with their credit cards, though.

Chantix will cure you of your desire to quit smoking

Seriously, the list of possible side effects from a drug that is supposed to help the patient quit smoking is downright....ummm....Depressing...

Not much more to say about this ad, which does a great job reminding people that there are Fates Worse than Cancer.  You CAN take this medication to help you quit smoking....but I don't know....you SURE you want to give up on those Nicotine Patches, chewing gum, and occasional overeating just yet?

FedEx, Chewy.com, and Overbearing Suburban Entitlement

Not really a commercial, but I'm going to comment on this video anyway:

I think this is what we are supposed to get out of this video is that

1.  The FedEx driver was not quite gentle enough with the packages from Chewy.com- packages which almost certainly carried nothing but dog food and toys built to be played with by DOGS. 

2.  The FedEx driver didn't lay down a soft mat on the doorstep before carefully placing the obviously not-at-all-breakable precious Dog Crap down in front of the palatial suburban mansion.

3.  The FedEx driver "doesn't care about his job that much" (an actual quote from the original poster of this video.)  Because he didn't spent ten minutes putting the packages down, but did it quickly so he could move on to the next Entitled Brat Homeowner.

4.  The person who posted this was so outraged that the FedEx Driver treated her like Just Another Customer (which- gasp!-she is) she felt it necessary to attempt to shame him on YouTube.  Accomplishing nothing but letting everyone know that she's a spoiled rotten little suburban princess drowning in her own Entitlement.  My guess is that all her neighbors knew this already, but now the world does, too.

Geico ads exist primarily to remind me that I'm out of the loop, I guess

1.  I'm supposed to know who Special Guest Star in this commercial is, I guess.  I don't.  Never seen him, never heard of him.  I'm not apologizing. 

2.  At the same time....am I REALLY supposed to know who he is?  After all, the idiot brushing his teeth clunkily tells us who he is, as if there's an audience in his house.  And he acts as if he's honored that this guy has appeared just outside his bathroom, uttering his name in an awed, hushed tone, whereas in real life I do NOT recommend that big black guys suddenly materialize outside the bathrooms of white men.

3.  The Not-as-Surprised-as-you'd-think white guy is brushing his teeth while staring at his cell phone.  Sigh....well, I guess this is realistic, but for the purposes of the commercial, there's no reason why he couldn't be just brushing his teeth like he's not completely addicted to that phone.  I don't look at my phone while I'm brushing my teeth, but I don't stare at it constantly as I cook or clean or eat dinner with friends, so I realize I'm an outlier here.

4.  What the hell is with this guy's house?  Judging from that corridor (it has a CORRIDOR) the Apparently Very Famous Motivational Speaker has to walk down to exit, that house is....well, actually, a typical Television House, actually.