I think we must have all been very naughty this year because look who Christmas has brought us again:

Lovely on the inside.

Ugly on the outside.

Prepare to have your mind corrupted in ways you’ve never before thought possible – yes, it’s the banned Apple iPhone advert:

Apparently, the above ad was misleading for “exaggerating the speed of the iPhone 3G”.

Shocking.

In their defence Apple said:

“No, but what it was, right, we were saying “It’s, like, fast when you compare it to the old way of browsing the Internet on a phone”, yeah?

You know, we were saying “The iPhone 3G is metaphorically this fast compared to someone shouting a load of zeros and ones down the phone at you, yeah, and you having to interpret them using an etch-a-sketch that your operating with your teeth”, right?”

I was having to paraphrase there a bit but you get the gist.

Anyways, even when taking into account the fact that if you have an iPhone 3G you’re so pleased with yourself that you don’t care if it’s not as fast as the advert implies and if you don’t have an iPhone 3G you could give a monkeys even if it does connect to the “interwebsitenet”, the ASA saw fit to ban it.

So, shame on you, Apple.

Shame on you.

The challenge faced by advertisers of High Definition TV’s on what are, quite frankly, pathetic, non-HD, Luddite teles is this generations “advertising colour TV on black and white sets”.

But a TV that can “make snooker even more enjoyable”, amazingly, isn’t much of a selling point these days.

No, HD is all about being able to see stuff you couldn’t see before.

You know, like being able to see James Bond doing some kind of pastiche of that bit at the end of Empire Strikes Back:

And in a World exclusive TV’s Worst Adverts can reveal the dialogue from the next instalment of these Sony adverts:

Goldfinger: “M never told you what happened to your father.”
James Bond: “She told me enough. She told me you killed him.”
Goldfinger: “No. I am your father”

Yeah, it turns out that Goldfinger is actually James Bond’s father. Who knew? Who knew?

Shockingly at the end of the advert Goldfinger actually does cut James Bond’s nuts off – to which Bond dryly retorts: “Bollocks!”.

Not really.

In reality, I don’t know what the hell this advert is really supposed to be showing us apart from the very obvious “green screening” of Daniel Craig – this generations “you can see the strings!”.

I get the feeling that this advert’s message is as simple as “Watching a Sony HD TV will make you as cool as James Bond”. In much the same way that the Barclay Card advert says “Spending money on your Barclay Card will make you as cool as James Bond” and the Ford Ka advert says “Driving a new Ford Ka will make you as cool as James Bond”.

And, although this message might seem exceptionally shallow, I think that we all agree that the coolest part of the latest James Bond film was when he drove his Ford Ka to Curry’s and bought a new Sony HD TV with his Barclay Card.

So, on the whole, magical stuff.

Toshiba Upscaling TV Advert

Here’s the new advert for Toshiba’s Upscaling TV’s – which “enhances standard definition content to near high definition quality” apparently.

I quite like this advert but can’t help but feel it’s what the Matrix would have been like if it was directed by Gus Van Sant.

The original version of the Cadbury’s Drumming Gorilla went down as many people’s favourite advert of 2007.

It was quirky and funny, completely different to every other advert, and seemed to do the trick for Dairy Milk sales.

But even so, sales still aren’t good enough, and now Cadbury need a cost-efficient way to tap back into some of the public’s gorilla-shaped goodwill.

Why not relaunch the drumming gorilla advert with a different song?

Because it’s everything the first one wasn’t.

It’s tired and predictable (“Oh, I see. It’s a Gorilla playing the drums to a ironically-shit-but-not-that-shit 80′s classic. Brilliant!”) and the way the film changes speed to make the Gorilla drum in time with music is toe curling bad.

But for me, this new version fails because – much like the Cadbury’s Trucks follow-up – it creates nowhere near as much joy as the Phil Collins version. Which, after all, is the whole point of the advert.

And if I had to quantify just how much joy the Bonnie Tyler version creates, I’d have to say, ooh, about a quarter of a cup – not a drop more.

Missing it’s mark but a good 1 and a quarter cupfuls.

What do you all think? Does this new version work for you?

Gary Rhodes is on a mission.

A mission to see if taking the bucketful of dirty cash from Flora makes up for sobbing himself to sleep every night since selling his spiky haired soul to a margarine company?

No, not really, Silly.

He’s on a mission to see which is better: Flora Buttery or a euphemistically named “leading spreadable from a butter brand” (or Lurpak Lighter Spreadable as the small print simultaneously tells us).

And there’s only one way to find out which is better… FIGHT!

Oh no, that’s a different programme.

It turns out the only way to actually find out which *is* better is to travel round the shopping centres of this once great country in a bright yellow VW Camper Van with a giant, half-eaten crumpet on the roof.

A feat that is so undignified that he may as well have strapped himself to the bonnet naked from the waist down, covered his buttocks with lashing of Flora Buttery and screamed “FLORA BUTTERY MAKES YOUR BUNS TASTIER” at passers-by as he’s slowly driven round the Coventry ring road.

Ironically kissing good bye to his last ounce of self-respect with his own ring, as he goes.

And amazingly there’s worse news yet for Gary; after doing all the terribly derogatory stuff in the shopping centres it turns out that the survey produced results that would make a cosmetics company hang its head in shame.

48% of the 200 people Gary Rhodes could bring himself to ask chose Flora Buttery. That’s a whopping 96 people.

Only 45% chose Lurpak Lighter Spreadable. That’s a minuscule 90 people.

The small print on screen also has the decency to tell us that 7% had no preference. These 14 heroes of our time are the only glimpse of sanity in this ridiculous “6 people prefer our spread” fiasco of an advert by simply stating that they had no preference as to what they spread on their crumpets before cramming them down their offence hole.

I imagine that Lurpak are devastated by these findings and I really can’t see a way for them to find a way back into the spreadables – or “butterique”, as I like to call it – market after that result.

I. Really. Can’t.

Or as I mean to say: 3% variance on such a small sample actually means “Sweet Fanny Adams”.

Spread that one on your crumpet Flora.

Judge for yourself.

UPDATE

As Robert says in his comment below, the ASA has banned this advert in it’s current form. They’ve concluded that :

We concluded that the claim “More people prefer the taste of Flora Buttery” had not been supported with sufficiently robust evidence and was therefore, likely to mislead.

Most shockingly of all, this whole affair has revealed a more sinister and worrying un-truth: it wasn’t Gary Rhodes who did the survey after all – it was a “third-party research organisation”! And I thought Gary really cared about whether we preferred Flora Buttery or Lurpak but it turns out he was just pretending all along.

Shame on you, Gary Rhodes! Shame on you!