Another Blast from the Past with a Progresso Soup Commercial from 1999

 

In this vintage ad, a guy at the office is perfectly happy with his bowl of soggy noodles in salty water for lunch, because he's been eating this stuff since he was a kid and didn't realize that his mother was constantly too hungover to put together a decent meal.  Again.  So it's become kind of a comfort food for him.  I just wonder where the saltines are (as if there's not enough sodium in a can of Campbell's Used To Be Something Resembling Pasta Condensed Soup Product already.)

He's perfectly happy- that is, until some nosy coworker barges in to condescendingly "remind" him that he's an "adult" now and "adults" don't eat Campbells because they've developed taste buds and realize that (despite the salt) there is absolutely no taste to Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup.  Turns out that once he reached a certain age, he was supposed to switch to Progresso, which as near as I can tell is exactly the same thing except with less water and bigger chunks of soggy, saturated vegetables which may have been nutritious when they were sealed into those cans months earlier but now have only slightly less liquid content than the water they are sitting in.  It's still tasteless swill and not at all a practical meal to consume at one's desk, but it's what Grown Ups are supposed to eat So There.

I have no idea why this woman feels entitled to tell her coworker what he's "supposed" to be eating for lunch; if she is really bothered by his consumption of canned soup, I'd think it would have more to do with it stinking up the breakroom and constantly leaving nasty residue in the common microwave.   At which point, she might suggest he make the soup at home in the morning and carry it to work in a thermos like a Good Boy.  Or, if she were a real friend, she'd suggest he eat something that will carry him through dinner- like a sandwich and a piece of fruit.  Best of all, she could just mind her own damn business and stop pushing her preferred brand of soup at people.  At this point, I'm just imagining that these two ended up getting married because she decided that was the only way she could get him to act like her own personal version of an Adult Man  in every situation. 

Pluto TV is PROUD to be part of the problem

 

Multiple problems, actually...

America has never been fatter or less mobile than it is in 2024.  "Binge watching" and "Channel Surfing" has replaced walking and generally being outdoors as our nation's favorite pastime (today so called because time passes even when you are doing nothing.)  And it's not about aesthetics- being overweight is linked to literally HUNDREDS of preventable illnesses.  Heart Disease, Cancer, and Strokes- all strongly linked to obesity- are three of the top four causes of death in the United States.  The other one is COVID which- guess what?- is far more dangerous if you are carrying an excess of adipose tissue. 

Americans have never felt more socially isolated (let's just call it Lonely) than they do in 2024.  Might have something to do with texts replacing face to face conversations, the internet replacing human contact, zoom meetings replacing...well, you get it.  And it's starting earlier and earlier - just check out how many preteens keep themselves glued to electronic best friends these days.  And know what more and more people are using to soothe the pain of isolation?  Cheap, processed, highly palatable chemicals disguised as Food Product.  Which is the perfect thing to binge on while you're already bingeing on television.

This commercial is like if Marlboro made an ad featuring a farm "harvesting" black lungs and played it off as "funny."  All in the service of Capitalism, I guess.  And the people who are applauding this garbage in the comment section?  Yeah, you guys suck, too.  It's bad enough to be played - you don't have to appreciate the company that's encouraging you into an early grave. 

Temu's "Shop like a Billionaire" Superbowl Ad is a celebration of mindless indulgence

 

Is Temu just Chinese for "Amazon," or what?  I mean, it doesn't seem to be offering anything that Amazon didn't "gift" civilization with more than a decade ago- a really quick way to make impulse buys of cheap crap produced by child labor with the touch of a screen.  I guess Temu just concentrates on all of the amazing "crafts" and clothes that are being disgorged from factories stretching from Manchuria to Senegal?  The very best that tiny little hands can sew and stitch and nail together?

"Shop like a Billionaire" sounds like "shop like money means nothing to you," which sounds cool but for the vast majority of us, money is actually a pretty finite asset that we have to spend carefully to get us from month to month.  Making it super-easy to buy stuff doesn't magically put more of it in our pockets.  Some of us have to actually pay our debts; it sounds like the only billionaire* Temu wants us to shop like is that guy who used to be President of the United States.

And I'm no worshipper of small businesses, but this has to be the most anti-small business, anti- "shop locally" commercial I've ever seen.  Want something available at the store down the street?  Buy a slightly cheaper-at-point-of-contact-but-not-cheaper-in-the-long-run version from your phone and get it sent to you from the other side of the planet at enormous cost TO that planet.  Because that's what a billionaire would do, I guess. 

*not actually a billionaire, like, ever. 

eTrade, Pickleball, the Superbowl, and a world of Dumb.

 

Hey look eTrade is at it again- exploiting toddlers willing to be exploited by their disgusting greedy parents to sell a brokerage service.  Oh, the hilarity. 

In reality, this is another slightly-amusing idea long since beaten into the ground nevertheless resurrected to be turned into a thirty-second ad to be played during the most overrated sporting event of the year: small children being manipulated by a combination of awful parents, an awful ad agency, and and awful CGI to generate yuks from the mouth-breathers in the audience who wonder why the stream of rib-splitting Funny is constantly being interrupted by some Sports Thing which itself is being regularly interrupted by Taylor Swift Sightings.

Anyway, here are some kids trying to play Pickeball because Pickleball is a craze right now, I guess.  And use eTrade.  For Reasons.

Pizza Hut completes the trifecta, and it's no honey

 

Having already established itself in the niche market of peddling poison in the form of processed carbohydrates and fat, Pizza Hut ups the ante by adding sugar to it's baked Death Discs.  What else was it going to do?  Put cheese IN the crust?

To be fair, there was already plenty of sugar on those things- primarily in the "tomato" sauce.  But there's no such thing as too much sucrose, especially now that we know how incredibly addictive (more than heroin or cocaine) it is.  So "for a limited time," we've got pizza drenched in honey "infused" with haberno peppers "to provide just the right balance of sweet and hot," or something.  

Someone else will have to tell me if this junk actually tastes good- honey on a pizza doesn't have any attraction to me, even if it was being offered by an actual pizza place and not being mass produced by a Diabetes Factory like Pizza Hut.  Neither does chronic inflammation, heart disease, or any of the other side effects of eating trash like the stuff dumped into the American diet by Pizza Hut, Domino's, Taco Bell, etc.  I like being able to tie my shoes, walk up a flight of stairs without breaking into a sweat, and getting up from a chair on the first try.  I'm kind of weird that way. 

State Farm, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the ultimate* one-joke Super Bowl Commercial

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger pronounces the word "neighbor" differently from most people currently living in the United States.  He doesn't pronounce it "wrong," he pronounces it differently.

Isn't that hilarious?  Well, it better be- because it's a "joke" that has to carry this overproduced mess of a commercial for an entire sixty seconds.  No kidding- this doesn't get strung out for ten seconds, or even twenty.  We are supposed to find this amusing for sixty seconds.  

Oh and here's Danny DeVito, because he costarred with Schwarzenegger in an overrated comedy during the Bush Administration.  The FIRST one.  So it's funny.  See how that works?

*to be fair, it's really hard to pick which Superbowl commercial is the "ultimate" in beating a single joke to death.  One Joke Stretched out Way Past It's Amusing Point is the common thread connecting pretty much all Superbowl ads.  This is true for primarily two reasons:  First, the ad agency has been handed a lot of money and is obligated to do something impressive with it that also fills every second of the paid-for time.  Second, the ad agency hasn't the slightest clue how to go about filling that time.  They can't do grandmas chasing a bag of State Farm Insurance, and eTrade is already using disgusting CGI-aided toddlers.  So it's Schwarzenegger, DeVito, one stupid joke repeated multiple times, and crossed fingers that 1980s nostalgia comes to the rescue again.

That RFKjr. Superbowl Ad Really Inspired Me!

 

If you want a man for President

Who's just a total loon

with takes on vax and other things 

to make Q-anoners swoon

A man who's like a warped guitar

forever out of tune

it's up to you 

it's up to you

it's strictly up to you....

If you want a man for President

who's slim and fit and tall

a man who doesn't have a clue

and nothing on the ball

sure he's a conspiracy freak and nut

(but Trump once won after all!)

it's up to you

it's up to you

it's strictly up to you... 

If you want a man for President

who isn't Just the Same

a man who's very much like Trump

but even more insane

A man who isn't much at all 

but check out that last name!

it's up to you 

it's up to you

it's strictly up to you....