Here’s an older Vision Express advert (but still from their “What Do I Want To See” series):

What really cheeses (that’s right, I said “cheeses”) me off about these adverts is the implication that the opinions of people who *uses their eyes as part of their job* (you know, a photographer, a pilot, a peeping Tom, that sort of thing) are in some more important than those of us Stevie Wonder types groping our way through the blackness that is lives.

“I’d like to see an eye exam that can test my eyes 100 different ways” babbles Mark Whitney.

Why 100?

Why not 1,000,000 ways. Surely that eye exam has got to be a thousand times betterer than your pathetic little 100 ways.

What relevance has that number actually got to the quality your vision?

Absolutely none, that’s what.

Anyways, now I’m in the mood for ranting, here’s what I’d like from an eye exam:

1. I’d like to see an eye test where the optician doesn’t snort on my face when he’s stood inappropriately close to my face shining a light in my eyes.
2. I’d like to see an eye test where the optician hasn’t drunk a bath tub full of coffee before standing in appropriately close to my face.
3. I’d like to see an eye test that doesn’t last 30 minutes on top of the 15 that I’ve been waiting even though I’ve made an appointment for a weekday.

So, Vision Express when do I get to do my advert?

Anyone else want to share what they’d like to see from an eye test?

Old blokes - don’t they just go on and on.

“During the war” this. “When I was filming Zulu Dawn” that.

And it never takes them long before they’re repeating the same old stories.

Like this old fella, Peter O’Toole:

God, I swear I’ve heard that story before. Now where was it?

Oh, yes. I remember, it was here:

Thanks to Snooks for submitting this bad ad.

Sometimes the bad ads submitted by TV’s Worst Adverts readers are one word long (usually that word is “Shit!”) then on the odd occasion there’s a gem of a rant against all things advert that turns up in my inbox.

Like this one from Marsten. So I’ll let him/her take it from here:

Apparently this Just for Men advert been around in the States for a while and, just like a bad case of diphtheria, it’s spread over here.

The entire concept hinges on the idea that the kids want their dad to dye his hair. Why does this matter so much to them? Well, they want a new mummy.

Isn’t that sweet?

No. No it’s not.

Implying that the entire gamut of issues facing single-parent families in our modern society can be solved by dying your hair, is fucking ridiculous.

Really, it’s no wonder that the man looks so surprised when he pulls down his newspaper (probably also due in part to having an entire tub of talcum powder tipped over his head during the make-up session for this advert) to be confronted by his kids - I’d be pretty fucking surprised too.

What the fuck is this? An advert for hair dye or an expose into childhood disenfranchisement and the gradual dissolution of the nuclear family?

Obviously what they DIDN’T film was the sequence that was due to take place in the middle, where the father explains to his kids with heartfelt tears flowing, just how difficult things have been since his beloved wife was killed, how he’s taken up drinking to quash the memories, and cries himself to sleep each night through a haze of misery and cheap whisky.

Oh wait, you mean that’s NOT what the advert was going for?

Well then maybe it should leave the idea of ‘kids who want a new mummy’ alone and stick to shilling out hair dye, then!

Because trying to bring serious issues like that into an advert for dye that has a tenancy to wash out, is ultimately about as funny as someone catching a new, rare form of cancer that causes them to set fire to an orphanage and stamp on puppies.

And it’s SO fucking sentimental and mushy, I swear I could just die in a puddle of my own vomit.

So what’s next for ‘Just for Men’? My guess, a heart-warming and sentimental advert about Jack, a quiet loner, who lures women into his basement, strangles them with fishing wire, and wears their skin. And he can do it all and overcome his quietness and lack of confidence, all thanks to Just for Men hair dye!

Nice one, Marsten.

Here’s a bad ad submission that features one of my pet hates in adverts: actors pretending to be “real” customers.

Obviously you can’t have real “real” people in adverts because “real” people have shit hair, and goofy teeth, and dribble uncontrollably from the corner of their mouthes.

“Real” people are the very people you don’t want buying your product - let alone promoting it.

And even if you want the “real” people in your advert to be *quirky*, it’s still safest to get actors to be fake real quirky people for you.

As Orbit demonstrate below:

Thanks to Inssey for submitting this bad ad.

For the purposes of transparency, I should disclose that it wasn’t me who copy and pasted Inssey’s submission into this post but an actor. It turns out she’s better at being me than I am.

What a bitch.

I bet you’re pretty pleased with your life, aren’t you?

What with your hair 100% free of grey.

And your shiny new Mondeo.

Oh yeah and saving the environment by watching the Olympics.

In fact, you think things are so good you walk round naked from the waist down so the whole world can see how lucky the good lady wife is, don’t you?

God, life is just one great big baby’s arm holding an apple swinging in the breeze, isn’t it?

Well let me be the one to tell you, you’re wrong.

Your life is empty, emotionless, desolate - little more than a pimple on the arse of human existence. And no one ever sees that hair-on-a-gnats-leg you call a cock for one simple reason - you’re in Low Definition.

In fact, the definition of your life is so low that you’re not officially *living*. Yes, you’re plugged in, but you’re on stand-by. And if you died, as you sit there reading this, you wouldn’t notice and neither would anyone else.

To add insult to injury, you’ve no way of feeling love. That feeling you get inside your underpants (on the off chance you’re wearing any) when someone brushes past you a little too closely to be a mistake is just the cockroach in your brain pulling another lever, pushing another button.

You’re a human wax cylinder in the age of digital love downloads.

God, I pity you. No, that’s wrong. I don’t pity you, I despise you. You are everything that is wrong with this world. You might as well just kill yourself.

Mightn’t you?

Well, no actually, because thanks to Panasonic there is another way. You could buy one of their Viera PZ81 TVs (with FreeSat HD built in).

Because buying the Viera PZ81 TV (with FreeSat HD built in) will make such a massive difference to your life - if not the whole of human kind - it’s like the moon landings, the discovery of penicillin, and the big JC all rolled into one 42 inch piece of “slightly off black” plastic.

Wonders will never cease. You’ll finally be able to experience love and hate and life and death and people running round a race track and a woman falling off a trapeze just like you’ve always dreamt you’d be able to do.

Or… or… it might only be a 42 inch piece of “slightly off black” plastic that makes absolutely no difference to the way you live your life.

I don’t know.

But from watching the advert it’s definitely one of those two options. Yes, definitely:

Bulmers have managed to squeeze three of the things I hate most into one 30 second advert: primary school poetry, nationalism and Stephen Tompkinson:

Very well done to you, Bulmers.

What really gets me with Olay is that they keep banging on about “pentapeptides this” and “pentapeptides that” - as if it’s their greatest achievement.

Clearly with the unveiling of Eve Cameron “Beauty Journalist” as the new Nadine Baggott “Celebrity Beauty Editor” (don’t worry, you retain your Most Ridiculous Job Title crown, Nadine) they’ve managed something far more impressive in their labs.

Because unless I’m very much mistaken I recognise Eve’s “head tilted slightly to the left” presentation style, her tussled hair and her seeming inability to smile. Aren’t you Nadine Baggott, Eve?

Have Olay perfected human cloning or are they knocking out gynoids like the do in Stepford.

Either way it’s frightening.

But enough of that, I’ve got more important fish to fry. What really impressed me about this advert is that report she gets out of her filing cabinet. You know the one I mean, the exciting one revealed at the World Congress of Dermatology?

Well, Eve is very excited about it anyway.

It reveals that “pentapeptides are as effective as retinol in reducing lines and wrinkles”.

This is very good news for Olay because they’ve just bought a shit load of pentapeptides from a bloke they met in a pub in Chepstow. Apparently he gets them from a Russian farmer who harvests them from beneath a badgers foreskin.

Obviously not, I’ve just made up all those “facts” about pentapeptides. Easily done, though.

As Eve was so excited about the report I thought I’d have a quick look at the World Congress of Dermatology’s Web site, just to see what the vibe was over there with the skin doctors and all.

What first struck me on the home page were the very prominent names of the event’s sponsors at the top: L’Oreal, Johnson & Johnson and, oh, who’s that, P&G Beauty.

Can you guess why that’s interesting? Can you guess what P&G Beauty manufacture?

That’s right - Olay.

Come on, you’ve heard of Olay, right? It’s the one with all the pentapeptides in it. Yeah, I knew you knew.

But hang on. If you think for one minute that I’m suggesting that the World Congress of Dermatology (sponsored by P&G Beauty) announcing that pentapeptides are “bloody brilliant” (I’m paraphrasing there) just as Olay are touting them as “the hottest anti-ageing ingredients around” is anything other than pure coincidence, then you’re very wrong.

Very wrong, my friend. Pure coincidence.

Because in reality it’s very much a chicken and egg scenario. After all, can you say with any certainty which came first: the scientists discovering the effectiveness of pentapeptides in the battle against ageing or P&G Beauty bank rolling the scientists week long jolly in Buenos Aires?

Can you? Can you?

I thought not.

A blank canvas. A carte blanche. A free hand. Do whatever you want.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well, except for the fact that there’re few things more terrifying that the prospect of having no rules at all. Trying to comprehend the possibilities of complete freedom is enough to make your brain go all Halliwell on your arse and for you to curl up in a ball on the floor whilst gently sobbing for your mother.

That’s why when we have the choice to do whatever we want, so many of us end up doing nothing at all (or writing blogs about adverts and the such).

So, that’s my thoughts on freedom - it’s not all it cracked up to be - some times you need rules to stop you from becoming a gibbering wreck.

Anyway, here’s a question for you:

Do you remember the Ford Cougar?

It was a “sport saloon” (according to the internet) and Ford sold about 3 of them in the UK (according to my brain) in the late 90’s.

For those that remember the car this might sound like quite a high estimate of actual cars sold but I know they sold at least one because I worked with a bloke that had one. Can you believe he was a smug, middle-class, bell-end with a misplaced opinion of himself and a bad taste in woolly jumpers and a worse taste in cars? And, using water tight logic, seeing as I worked with like 50 people I figure they probably sold two more.

Anyway the Cougar was named after the “large, tawny cat, Felis concolor, of North and South America: now greatly reduced in number and endangered in some areas” (thanks Dictionary.Com) where as the wholly differently named Kuga - the new SUV from Ford - means “we like the name ‘Cougar’ but we already used it on another car”.

But believe me, “Cougar” and “Kuga” are two very different names. They’re spelt different for a start. Look:

“Cougar” and “Kuga”.

See?

And go on, say them out loud.

“Cougar”
“Kuga”
“Cougar”
“Kuga”

Hear? Sound different too, don’t they?

“What do you drive?” Someone might ask you.
“A Ford Cougar” you might reply.
“What are you, a smug middle-class bell-end from the late 90’s?” they might mock.
“No, I said Kuga. Totally different name.” you might be forced to say.
“Oh, I misheard.” they might apologise.

Here’s another question for you:

Do you know the difference between the Ford Maverick and the Nissan Terrano?

If you say you do, then you’re either talking about the name badge or you’re a liar. Because they were the same. Built in the same factory by the same Spaniards.

By sharing the costs, it’s less expensive to build a new car, you see, so there’s more money in the coffers for the annual hunting trip to shoot Kugas (or at least something that sounds like a Kuga) in North and South America.

Here’s a final question for you:

Have you heard of the Nissan Qashqui?

Hhm, I thought you might have.

Now, I’m not implying that the Kuga and the Qashqui are the same. It’s just I can’t help but think that the canvas that Ford started drawing the new Kuga on wasn’t quite as blank as they’d like us to believe.

The Kuga’s probably a much better car for it too.

What do you think the makers of this advert were watching on MTV when they came up with the idea:

Leave your answers in the comments, please.

Not yet though….

Wait for it….

OK, Go!

Some might say that watching American Idol is torture enough but having to sit through these Chicago Town pizza adverts every ad break compounds that torture no end:

Much like the pizzas they are advertising these 10 second thumb screws are exceedingly cheap and particularly tasteless.

All feature a hapless bunch of misfits who were found, I presume, scavenging round the clothes recycling bins at the local Asda by the production company. Although, quite aptly for sponsorship of a TV talent show, the *stars* are clearly desperate to get on TV now matter how badly they have to degrade themselves in front of the viewing public.

Such as the charmingly retiring girl in the advert shown above.

As she (amazingly) manages to “out-slag” Girls Aloud, with her bingo wings flailing and bosomers heaving in her bestest River Island dress, I can’t help but wonder “Why?” (For the record, I also normally wonder whether I’m going to keep my tea down).

Why would you do that to yourself?

What did they tell her that made her think appearing in that advert was a good idea?

I guess they offered to pay her in Chicago Town pizzas and she was more than happy with this deal to make herself look like a giant lime and orange jelly having a fit.

But Chicago Town, what do you think she makes you look like?