Remember back in the 1980s when you played Pacman? Remember being young and going out and having fun pumping quarters into this and other stupid video games because you were young and it was fun and the whole world lay out in front of you?
Well, you can relive those years for a few seconds in this ad- if you are anyone but me, I guess. I'm too busy getting queazy watching this guy spend half a minute spitting on a rapidly-cooling pizza before finally putting his game on pause and eating some. I mean, go back and see how many times this guy utters the "p" sound. Ugh.
Meanwhile...the game starts in about half an hour, and as is my habit, I'll watch it while tuning out the commercials. That's right, I don't even WATCH Superbowl ads. I didn't even watch them for the two years I was a participant in the Nielsen ratings. FU, Capitalism! I'm watching your billion-dollar spectacle and I'm not contributing one penny to your insatiable maw!
It's almost horrifying to imagine that people were once drawn to Rent A Center by "awesome deals" like a 19-inch tv with Included VCR for "only" $14.99 a week for 91 weeks (total price: $1364. For a 19-inch tv with a VCR. And when you're done paying- you give it back. You don't even OWN it. And if THAT'S not scary enough, this commercial is from 1994, when $1364 was worth $2,382.)
And when you aren't enjoying your ridiculous I Want It Right Now Impulse Rent television with VCR, you can do a load of laundry in the clothes washer you are renting for $8.99 a week for 78 weeks (total price: $701, or $1224 in today's money.) At least you can sort of justify the washer (though seriously, I think you would have been better off with a weekly trip to the laundromat.) Most of the crap shown in this ad are not necessities. We see game systems, stereos, recliners....I mean, what the hell, people? Faced with three choices- Save Up, Do Without, or Empty Your Wallet into a Bottomless Pit, that Bottomless Pit sure was popular back in the 90s, wasn't it?
Well, here we are in 2021, and there are two Rent A Centers within easy walking distance of my apartment- and also several pawn shops and dollar stores. The poor we always have with us- and there are more of them than ever. And it's at least as expensive to be poor nowadays as it was back in 1994. It's not getting any better out there...
Or "This is Where the Magic Happens, using the word Magic very, very loosely."
1. If you're pumped about being given a tour of a freaking stock brokerage, your life is over and you ought to just start preparing for the funeral. Come to think of it, a tour of a mortuary must be at least one hundred percent more interesting.
2. If you find yourself calling the people who "helped roll over your 401(k)" and who "helped set up your account" (is that what she said? I don't care what she said. I'm not watching this again) by their first names, you desperately need to go out and make some friends, because it's clear that no one is going to show up at your funeral.
3. When they get to the end of the hallway, is Mr. Mousse going to show her the bathroom or the breakroom? Because seriously, except for the fictional place mentioned in the title of this post, what else is there to a brokerage besides people looking at computer screens and taking phone calls? I imagine that this woman is a High School teacher who is about to be divested of the notion that TD Ameritrade might be a cool place to bring her kids on a field trip. It's a freaking brokerage, lady. It's not even the floor of the NYSE. I mean, THAT might be a cool place to hang out for an hour or so, if you're so fascinated with numbers. What did you think you were going to get out of this "tour," anyway?
1. The jackass customer here is not told anything in this ad that he couldn't have learned by going to TD Ameritrade.com or making a quick phone call. But because he- and his broker- have all the freaking time in the world, he's going to talk over his need for a customizable online trading platform while casually sitting around a TD Ameritrade office in the middle of the day because no way does that broker have any other clients he could be taking calls from. Jesus, this guy makes Jake from State Farm look like a human dynamo.
2. Wonder if there really is a "green room?" Well, don't worry. Even if there is, you aren't getting into it. Talking to a broker from across a desk for ten minutes to be shoveled into a standard set of investment funds is good enough for you, me and pretty much everyone else who isn't pulling down at least six figures a year and wants to pretend they know how to manage their own money. You aren't sitting on a couch having a casual, slow-paced conversation with Mr. Mousse about how you'd like to be able to control your own trades, because you don't know how that's done, have other things to think about (like the monthly bills, and Life) and would just like to try to save a little bit to supplement Social Security and wouldn't try to do it on your own any more than you'd try to give yourself gallstone surgery...
3. Um...there's more than one chair in that room, guys. Why the hell are you sitting so close together? Am I the only person who finds this more than a little weird?
The people in this ad can afford a sprawling suburban McMansion in which every member of their family owns their own cell phone....but they can't afford more than one garbage-piece-of-plastic Weathertech phone holder? Yeah, right.
That last guy already has a laptop open. What the hell does he need his phone for? To carry on a conversation while doing work on his laptop? Why does he need for it to be at eye-level? Is he working on that laptop or talking on the phone? Jesus, buddy! Bur at least he isn't endangering anybody, unlike...
Um, wasn't this conversation over? What's with the "sorry, I dropped you?" Shouldn't he just hang up now?
And yeah, the stupid phone-holder junk might prevent Horrible Disasters like not being able to find your phone while you are operating a piece of heavy machinery. Know what else would be a horrible disaster? If you crashed into someone while looking for or talking into or otherwise being distracted by that phone. How about you just let the phone stay where it is and you keep your mind on the road until you get that thing safely parked again? Too much to ask? Am I kidding myself? Of course it is!
You're CLEARLY someone who takes care of yourself! I mean, most people just BUY running shoes, but not you! You're in the one percent of the population which not only OWNS running shoes, but actually uses them to run! You rock!
And now, the bad news. You have very serious medical issues. For one thing, you see giant marshmallows in the park. For another thing, you think you can interact with the giant marshmallows. And worst of all (for now,) you think the giant marshmallows are giving you medical advice. I know health insurance is expensive, but substituting a jogging marshmallow only you can see for a trained professional is not the way to save money....
Please, seek help. You need it more than you think you do. There are actual medications that can help make the talking, jogging giant marshmallows go away, but they aren't going to be recommended by the giant marshmallows. Go see a real doctor, before the giant marshmallow you think is running your life tells you to start ending the lives of others.
The woman in this ad is feeling immense guilt every morning because she has to leave a loved one behind as she goes off to work to make a living. Because it's 2021, the loved one she's leaving behind is a dog (if this ad was set in the 1980s, she'd be shown dropping a kid off at daycare with a sad "sorry" because she'd be burying us with Working Mommy Guilt. We don't do that anymore. We leave that to the MLM huns on Facebook who want us to sell doTerra, Young Living, LuLaRoe or any of the other 2000 pyramid scheme work-from-home-and-stop-abandoning-your-child-to-strangers BS crap out there.)
This woman is miserable because she has a crappy job which appears to us to be crappy only because she's lousy at it and because she doesn't like her coworkers (or, just one coworker who manages to do his job while having fun, the scum) and is thinking about her stupid dog all day instead of doing that job. Plus, her stupid job has a stupid coffee machine which messes up her clothes, and it also makes her get up early every morning the poor baby. Did I mention that it also requires her to leave her Suburban Mansion and her precious freaking dog behind?
So she decides that it's time to quit and start own business. In the 1980s, she'd be running a daycare center out of her home. Because it's 2021, she's going to be converting her house into a pet grooming center, and f--k you neighbors who thought there were zoning laws, get ready to see a lot of traffic and a lot fewer parking spaces on your street because the lazy idiot woman who obsesses over her dog got sick of actually working and decided she could replace the $75,000 per year career which allowed her to finance that house with an in-home pet-grooming "business" which, if she's really, really fortunate, might bring in one-third that amount. Sure she'll be in constant danger of not making her mortgage, but hey at least she gets to sleep in and be with her dog.
So this woman makes the great decision to trade in what was obviously a good-paying job for a stay-at-home business because....she wants more time with her dog, and she couldn't bring herself to use noise-cancelling headphones so she wouldn't be distracted by that one jerk at work. Oh, and because she couldn't bring a thermos of coffee to the office with her or go out for Starbucks like every one of her Awful Coworkers did. Good news and bad news, Stupid Woman: the good news is that yes, you get to spend more time with that dog for however many years it has left (hint: you're going to bury it, not the other way around, and you'll still have that small business loan and mortgage to pay after the main reason you made this stupid financial decision is gone.) Bad news: if you are successful, all the traffic and parking and barking will make you the absolute pariah of the neighborhood, and if you aren't successful, well, as long as you are home, I have a great Opportunity Available This Week Only DM Me For More Information You Would Totally Kill At This Biz Hon!
