It’s been quite a ride for Adam and Jane - or to give them their proper names “that bloke off of My Family” and “the MILF” - during their run in the BT broadband electro wireless hub cine projector thingy adverts.
As a parent you always try to do the best by your children:
You make sure they’ve got shoes on their feet.
You make sure they know the facts of life.
You make sure they don’t date flora.
The mother in the new Oasis advert appears to have failed her daughter on all three of these points.
Because not only is the poor (and seemingly only 14 years old) girl up the duff, she’s in that state thanks to a man who’s half cactus. And what’s more, she seems to have burnt the soles of her feet during the whole “having sex with a man who looks like he has a very prickly penis” affair.
She does look to have recovered from the coitus fairly well though because one would imagine that ramming a cactus up your vagina and having sun burnt feet would make you walk like John Wayne giving Fern Britton a piggy-back.
Spare a thought for the old Cactus Kid though, will you?
He can’t have had much luck with the ladies growing up covered in spines. Finally finding a consenting partner (lets not even go down the possible cactus man on under-age girl rape route) must have been like all his Christmases coming at once.
Although I can think of one positive of being a cactus man - no post coital snuggling. As the women hobbles off to casualty, you just roll over and drift happily off to sleep.
What bliss.
But just as the mother in this advert has failed her daughter so it seems the ad-makers have failed their botany exams.
For the only explanation (that come within a couple of thousand light years of being logical) for the Cactus Kid to actually be half cactus is to tie in with the tag line “For people who don’t like water”. Except cactuses don’t don’t like water, it’s just they can grow in a dry environment. It’s clearly not the same thing.
God, I bet they feel foolish now I’ve pointed out that flaw in their lunacy.
Anyway while you wait for the final part of this series in which the pain of child birth is compounded by the fact the baby is covered in prickles, here’s the madness of the first part to enjoy:
There is, so they say, a fine line between genius and madness.
This is obviously a load of old bollocks.
Don’t believe me?
Well, you have to look no further to see just how vast the chasm is that separates these two noggin states, then these two songs: Eleanor Rigby and The Frog Chorus.
Yes, poor old former genius, Paul McCartney went a little bit mad in the 80’s and has seemingly been on a slippery downward slope ever since.
But that hasn’t stopped us from loving the old duffer - even as he stumbles from one disappointing musical release to another embarrassing court appearance - even as his face slowly turns into that of Droopy.
And this is the face that the British Paralympic Fund have chosen to front their fund raising campaign - promoting their athletes as “super heroes”.
Which makes Sir Paul seem like an odd choice.
You see, Paul McCartney’s recent track record when it comes to judging the characters of disabled people has been, let’s be honest, poor at best.
The last disabled women who he thought was “pretty amazing” turned out to be a screeching, one-legged, former porn-star, crack-pot who cost him £24 million to get rid of.
Good one, Paul.
So when you ask him to front your campaign praising the high quality characters of some disabled women (OK and men), it’s a little like asking the Captain of the Titanic to endorse your brand of binoculars.
Sir Paul tells us that for just £3 a month we can help the Paralympic team’s pursuit of gold medals at the London 2012 games. This, coincidentally, is how Paul McCartney is paying his divorce settlement - in monthly £3 payments.
He’s only got 7,999,984 more payments to make and he will finally be free of Geordie maniac. Aren’t direct debits brilliant?
Anyway, when it comes to advice, if Sir Paul offers to give you some song-writing tips, get your pen and paper out. If he offers to find you a wife, run a mile.
And if you can do that in under 4 minutes, he might be able to get you some funding too.
I’m going to have to describe this advert in the style of a recipe on Gordon Ramsay’s F Word because I’m far too drunk at this very moment in time to type meaningful sentences:
Girl. Dress.
Tights. Rip.
Vomit. Hair.
Make-up. Smear.
Coat. Marinate.
Skirt. Wet.
Done.
Yes, this is another laughable effort by the Government trying to make us change our attitude towards alcohol.
“You wouldn’t start a night like this” the advert states.
No, you’re right, we wouldn’t.
That’s because nobody, and I mean nobody, goes out with the intention of getting vomit in their hair.
Not a soul.
“So why end it that way?”
Well, it’s a good question and I’m glad you’ve asked it.
One of the main reasons people go out and get so unbelievably drunk and do all the things you show in your advert is that the system has made their lives seem so completely meaningless that the only way they can forget the horrors of the world metaphorically puking in their hair is by drinking too many Smirnoff Ices, falling into the gutter whilst singing the hits of Girls Aloud and then actually puking in their own hair.
That’s one of the reasons. I agree with you, there are more, but that’s one of them.
So maybe if you helped construct more meaning in people’s lives rather than telling them not to “get a wet bottom” you might have a bit more luck reducing the levels of alcohol abuse in the UK.
Until then probably best to stop being so fucking patronising.
Whoa!! Could you back off a little? Your breath is fucking staggering!
That’s better. What was I saying? Oh yes.
There are many things that will get you a punch in the mouth in modern Britain.
Saying you voted for Boris but not in an ironical way.
Saying you really like Phil Collins but not in an ironical way.
Saying anything, ironical or not, when stood less that a centimetre from the end of a strangers nose.
Yep, that last one is a sure fire way to get a punch in the mouth. It’s because we all love our *personal space* and we hate it when it’s *invaded*.
Just ask any commuter on the London Underground. There’s no talking, no eye contact, so we can all pretend that we’re travelling in our own personal golden carriage and not the mass transit equivalent of a Turkish masseur’s armpit - which, occasion on the Northern Line, is what your face is actually in.
Some people like to use our fear of personal space invasion to their advantage. I worked with a guy who used to stand so close you could check your hair in the reflection on his eyeballs. He thought standing so close that it made you wonder whether he was going to plant a sloppy great wet one on you or not was a fool proof way for him to get you to do whatever he wanted.
I punched him in the mouth 6 times in 3 months.
This is something that…
Crickey! Sorry you’ve come a bit too close again. Go on, move away from the screen.
Brushing your teeth once in a while wouldn’t kill you, you know?
Anyway, our hatred of people standing too close to us is something that Wrigleys seem to have forgotten about in their new Extra chewing gum advert.
You know the one in which a room full of strangers all stand an inch apart from each other then stare freakishly into each others eyes. Wrigleys seem to think that we don’t all go round in each others pockets simply because we don’t like peoples’ bad breath (which, you should note, is true enough) and not because, in reality, having someone stand that close to you makes you feel more uncomfortable than watching a skin-flick with your parents - and one that stars your parents at that.
God, even just watching this advert makes me feel violated. And I’m not alone, the look on the face of the dark haired woman toward the end of the ad says (Although I’m smiling, come any closer and I will hurt you).
Which is why I think this advert deserves its place here on TWA. I’m fairly certain that any advert that leaves me feeling so repulsed by what’s being advertised that I want to punch someone in the mouth and…
Look, I’ll ask you one last time. Please, back off a bit from the screen!
What did you have for you tea last night? Dog shit in a bap?
I deserved that.
As I said, there are many things that will get you a punch in the mouth in modern Britain.
Over the years, TV’s Worst Adverts has been accused of many things: being a funking clown, having inappropriate relations with badgers, and most frequently of all, having no sense of humour. What. So. Ever.
This is mostly because TV’s Worst Adverts thinks that “irony” is something that looks a bit ferrous. And TV’s Worst Adverts thinks that wit is the lowest form of sarcasm.
But compare to the 200 (or so) mirthless Jim Davidsons who have complained about the Heinz New York Deli Mayonnaise advert, TV’s Worst Adverts is funnier than watching a monkey playing the drums after you’ve smoked your own body weight in woolers.
If you could imagine such a thing!
Yep, it seems that the sight of 2 men kissing, even though it’s a peck on the lips, even though it’s clearly part of a joke, even though it’s about as offensive as a tin of magnolia paint, is too much for the homophobic bigots trapped in the narrowness of their own Daily Mail addled minds.
So Heinz has pulled the advert after the back-woods, yokels complained that it was “inappropriate to see two men kissing”, you know, like they do when men celebrate scoring a goal in big, gay, men-on-men football.
Others - who were previously believed not to have yet evolved enough to use a phone - complained the advert was “unsuitable to be seen by children” and that “it raised the difficult problem of parents having to discuss the issue of same-sex relationships with younger viewers”.
However, what many haven’t thought about during this whole debate is the constant barrage of adverts showing men and women kissing which raises the difficult problem for same-sex parents having to discuss the issue of different-sex relationships with younger viewers.
Anyways, one of the reasons this advert has proven so shocking to viewers with lower IQs is that same-sex relationships on TV were previously limited to Luke being bummed over the bonnet of a car in Hollyoaks and that bird from Pushing Daisies tonguing another bird in a Liverpudlian cul-de-sac.
Other than that, same-sex relationships have never been shown on TV. Nor ever mentioned. Nor has anyone on TV ever even thought about it.
On top of this, British children have never before been exposed to such blatant displays of homosexuality on the TV screens, in front of which their lazy, distant parents plonk them, before in their short lives. Accusations that the majority of male children’s TV presenters were as “camp as Christmas” were dismissed as “outrageous, Sweetheart!” by an anonymous spokesman for that group whom I recently met on Clapham Common.
But it’s not just the ignorant, hate-filled pissdrips who have come out of this one badly. Heinz also seem to have more than egg on their faces since they cowardly pulled the “gays” off. They have faced claims of being spineless, of being no better than the homophobes who complained and that their advert was based around the inherent fact that “homosexuality is funny”.
Regardless of TV’s Worst Adverts own sexual preferences, we here at TWA like the advert. I think the joke is actually that the family haven’t noticed that their mum, who clearly was a woman at some point, is now a bloke from a New York deli.
If I were being really picky, just to say something negative, I get the feeling that the man is about as authentically from New York as my Yankees baseball cap is. That’s not to say that he was also made in a sweatshop in Vietnam just that he seems a bit too NYC to be real.
But more so, I really dislike this adverts regressive depiction of the modern British family, in that “Mum” is still the one who makes the sandwiches.
Come on Heinz, it’s not the 1950’s you know. “Dads” make sandwiches for their families too.
Alright, before I start it’s probably worth stating again that this blog isn’t “TV’s Worst ROI Adverts” or “TVs Least Memorable Adverts” - it’s TV’s Worst Adverts. A subjective look at TV adverts in the UK based 100% on whether I think they’re worth their weight in cathode ray tubes or not.
So even though after seeing the live Honda skydiving advert you might have run straight to the nearest Honda dealer, pulled down your trousers, thrown yourself across the bonnet of an Accord and offered yourself to the salesmen because, gosh, you just love skydiving that much, it doesn’t mean the advert shouldn’t appear here at TWA.
Now that’s out of the way…
An awful lot has been made over the fact that this advert was shown *live* on TV. No, you’re not hearing things, I did say *live*!
Can you think of anything better than an advert *live* on national TV - without any retakes or editing or anything?
I thought not.
You’re not alone either. Some folks on the internet got so excited about it being *live* that they got that warm, tingly feeling down the front of their pants and started dry humping their computers. Even in the build up to the advert being broadcast they were so turned on by the idea of *live* TV adverts that their comments were little more than a string of “Ds” and “Rs” as they repeatedly rubbed those keys with their limp lob-ons.
Honda themselves were little better.
They’re tying this ad in with their new slogan “Difficult is worth doing” but I can’t help but think that they got caught up on the “*live* TV is difficult” aspect a little too much.
Because even if showing something *live* on TV is difficult to do, it’s not any more difficult to watch - except for Loose Women, of course.
And I don’t care if there’re so many things that might go wrong, or that timing is of the essence or even that if one of your skydivers so much as farts at the wrong time millions will be left thinking “Who the monkey are ‘Hondr’?”.
Because as a viewer, I don’t see any added value to doing something *live* - except for Richard and Judy, of course. Because if it wasn’t live the show would just be called “Judy” as Richard’s ridiculous comments get him edited out of the show again.
And skydiving, it might be difficult to do as well but it look as easy as falling off a log - albeit one that’s flying at 21,000 feet. Plus, it’s just oh so boring to watch. Which is my big problems with this advert - it was just so boring.
That’s because skydiving is essentially the synchronised swimming in the air. And we all know how exciting synchronised swimming is.
If I had to pick (because you’ve threatened to make me watch the advert again if I don’t), I’d say the scene right before they jump out of the plane is the most exciting part of the advert. But that’s only like saying “taking the lid off the tin is the most exciting part of watching paint dry”.
Maybe if the skydivers had been naked AND on fire this advert might have been exciting. Maybe if the skydivers had jumped out as soon as the green light went on (rather than 10 seconds after) AND there were Germans on the ground shooting custard pies at them this advert might have been exciting.
But just having some bloke shout “There’s an ‘H’! And that’s an ‘O’!” then show the words “Hi Mum” written on his gloves definitely didn’t make this advert exciting.
So, Honda, difficult might well be worth doing but boring most certainly isn’t:
Follow Up Adverts
Here’s the follow up advert for the Accord:
This actually looks harder to do than the *live* advert which is probably why they didn’t do it *live*. Because difficult is worth doing but only if you can do it in 3 minutes 30 seconds and you don’t make a tit of yourself on live TV.
Anyway, my favourite part is when they spell out the name “Accord” with stacked parachutes. But I just get the feeling that they did that with CGI rather than with real people.
Maybe I’m wrong but again it seems that some things are too difficult to be worth actually doing…
We meet our hero Silky Shitbiscuit enjoying a chat in the pub with Bertie Cobblers:
“…and that, dear Bertie, is how the badger ended up in my bed. All perfectly innocent, so no need to ever mention that again. It’s my round isn’t it? Same again.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ll have a pint of lager and an orange juice, please.”
“Sir, hello do you mind stepping out of the car and doing a breath test?”
“What’s that? I’m not in my car. I’m stood right in front of you?”
“Look, you had 2 pints, you’re over the limit - that’s a 12 month ban and a criminal record.”
“No, no, no. The pint’s for Bertie Cobblers. I’m driving, so orange juice, please barkeep.”
“Hey, it’s company policy I’ve got to let you go.”
“Let me go? I don’t follow. Let’s just call it 2 orange juices?”
“I know there’s only 20,000 on the clock but that’s my final offer.”
“No, you’ve lost me again. Have you been drinking on the job? Because you might get fired for that.”
“Well, that’s just great man. No licence. No job. Now what?”
“Whoa, whoa, whao! No need to get upset - I said might get fired. Why don’t you get me those orange juices and you might feel better about yourself?”
“So what’s it going to be?”
“2 orange juices! I’ve told you a dozen times! You’re possibly the worst barman I’ve ever met.”
No, what I mean to say is that with the new Think! Don’t Drink and Drive campaign it seems that we’ve all become such a bunch of selfish, drug taking (in a socially acceptable way, of course) manslaughtering cunts that we can’t possibly understand why drink driving might be bad beyond the fact that:
If you drink drive you might get caught and some things which are in no way as bad a losing your life might happen to you.
At least, that’s the message I’m getting anyway.
It seems to me that this advert is the equivalent of warning you against rape by saying:
Be careful, you might catch crabs of your victim!
In the past the Think! Don’t Drink and Drive campaign has given us some pretty shocking and memorable ads - most of which end up with someone dying at the end. Sadly by the end of this advert I’m actually hoping it’s the rat-faced and exceedingly judgemental barman who’s killed.
In fact, I’d planned to kill him myself. Yeah, I’d ironically run him down in my car even though I’d not had a drop to drink before hand - after all, I don’t want to miss.
I changed my mind against committing this heinous crime though because I was worried the brain juice that slops from his skull as I crush it like a grape might damage my paint work.
Oh yeah, and something about murder being wrong or something…
Seriously though kids, don’t drink and drive - you might lose your job.
After banning smoking in public places last year the Government is on the anti-smoking warpath again. This time they’re determined to stop children taking up the filthy habit and, in the process, to ruin the NHS for us all.
Their plan of attack includes an excellent TV advert (you know, the one featuring the “I’m the King of the Swingers” sound track but sadly no smoking monkeys) and proposing the removal of all branding from cigarette boxes.
Some have criticized the idea of unbranded cigarette packets as madness and another infringement on our personal freedoms. A spokesman from the smokers’ lobby group “Coughing Up Blood” wheezed:
“My granddad said the only thing that got him through the Normandy landings was chain smoking the cigarettes he stole form bodies of his comrades strewn across the beaches of France and again later from the mortuary.
This proposal goes against everything he fought for.”
But, even considering the convincing arguments against the proposals, I’m with the Government on this one.
After all which do children like more comic books - with all those pictures and words and stuff - or sheets of plain paper?
Answer me that, will you?
And what do kids buy more of, Miley Cyrus albums - with those dirty pictures of her back - or blank CD-Rs - that contain absolutely no nude back pictures at all?
Yep, categorical proof that kids like stuff with pictures, words and recordings of cats having their claws pulled out on it.
Anyways, forget all that, I have a better plan to put kids off the idea of smoking - make all cigarettes look like the Nicorette Inhalator.
Because if by making smoking a cigarette look like you’re sucking a lit tampon doesn’t reduce the numbers of smokers then nothing will.
And I say while we’re at it go the whole hog, design them so you can only stick one in your gob by using an unwieldy plastic applicator, ooh, and put the little bit of string on the end too.
I think it’s fair to say that most people would rather walk round with massive blobs of blue ink in the corner of their mouths then suck on a tampon - even if it was in a designated tampon sucking area.
The only down side I can see to my plan is that there could be an increase in the number of vaginal burns amongst absent minded female smokers but I think it’s a risk worth taking.
I wonder, if you can even remember those happy, care-free days?
The ones when all we had to worry about was the Russians vapourising our arses with only 4 minutes warning. The ones before we were all forced to pretend we actually give a toss about the environment. The ones when I wasn’t made to feel guilty by the checkout girl at Tesco because I forgot to take my organic hemp bag and had to use a plastic bag instead.
Yeah, they were magical times.
You could eat as many orangutans as you wanted and no-one would bat an eyelid. And you were all but encouraged to saw up the rain forest just so you could build a petro-chemicals plant.
But then Sting came along - wanting to save the bloody rain forest.
And I’ll give EDF Energy their dues - it’s quite a hard act for an energy company to be green, you know, what with power stations traditionally pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere then all the tractors in Chelsea.
But I don’t doubt that they’re really giving it a go (mostly because I’m easily lead and can’t be bothered to read what they’re actually going to do).
What I do doubt, however, is that there’s any substantial benefit in making an advert from recycled clips all edited together over, ooh, let’s say making the exceeding studio light intensive Accident Advice Helpline advert.
Although they may not make any claims about the energy savings from using recycled film clips, the implication is clear “recycled adverts are better for the environment”.
But even id that is the case, there’s one thing for sure, recycled adverts aren’t as good for the environment as, for example, not holding the Olympics Games, are they?
Which brings me to Toby Hammans, who submitted the new Olympic Dreams advert:
Whilst the first 39 seconds are relatively inoffensive, the final
tagline is so hideous I can barely bring myself to type it.
This commercial was made from recycled dreams.
Yep, just like an electricity supplying equivalent of Martin Luther King, EDF Energy have a dream - although EDF Energy’s dream is suspiciously like edited versions of other people’s achievements.
Which makes their dream come out all Earth Song on us, and golly, I feel like jumping on stage and flapping my bum cheeks at them.
You see EDF Energy want to be seen as a lovely green company but they’re promoting themselves and their nauseating dream by sponsoring the Olympic Games. An event that’s surely already has a carbon footprint the size of Ian Thrope (you see, he’s won 9 Olympic medals and has really big feet. So he’s got a big footprint. That’s why I picked his name. See? Oh forget it!).
Now don’t get me wrong, I love double standards, they make life so much easier, but asking us to help make the 2012 Olympics a turning point in the fight against climate change seems a little bit silly. They might as well asked us all to help save the environment by asking us to all leave our fridges open or getting everyone to start a tyre fire in their back yard.
Or is it just me?
Is it?
Don’t Worry Dear
As a side note, what I really love about that first advert posted above is the girl from the conference who very pompously says:
“Jungles and rain forests; I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see”.
Well look. It’s somewhere between the 3rd and the 14th of June 1992. You’re, what, 15 years old? It’s now 16 years later, and they’re still here.
I’m fairly certain that they will exist for your children.
God, there’s nothing I enjoy more than a false apocalyptic warning to cheer me up between Corrie and Tonight With Trevor McDonald.
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