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.

More guff from Peugeot about their new 308 SW:

“Room to explore your dreams”

Anyone who’s dreams involve a Peugeot 308 SW in any way shape or form - regardless of how many “individual seats” it might have and even if that dream is seeing all Peugeot 308 SW wiped from the face of the Earth - isn’t doing dreaming properly.

Judge for yourself.

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.

Even those of us with only a rudimentary grasp of human biology know that there are 2 types of sex configurations.

But now-a-days what with all this sexual equality guff (women wearing trousers?) and an obesity epidemic that makes most men have breasts that would put Katie Price to shame, it’s getting harder to tell the sexes apart without asking people to drop their trousers.

Fortunately for the less gropey, science has come up with an answer - the Keys Factor.

The Keys Factor (KF) enables laymen to judge whether the person they’re about to sleep with (either for professional or purely pleasure reasons) is of the male or female persuasion.

Here’s how it works: someone with a high KF score is very manly and likely to be a man. Someone with a low KF score is very feminine and likely to be a lady.

Simple.

Using the KF scale scientists have proven that they are catagorically no females in some parts of Eastern Europe and not a single female in all of South America. They have also found that the male professional cyclist is, on average, 57% more female than French women. FACT.

Despite this overwhelming evidence I was dubious that lowering the Keys Factor could make a woman more feminine, so I did a little test of my own.

I took the hairiest woman I could find on the streets of London and made her sit in a bath of Veet for an entire day.

Amazingly, it worked!

If you don’t believe me, check out the before and after pictures below:

Before:

After:

She’s quite the stunner, I think you’ll agree.

Note to Reader: My lawyers have asked me to point out that under no circumstances should you sit in a bath of Veet for an entire day.

God only knows what it might actually do.

Judge for yourself.

I’d lined up this advert from Churchill Car Insurance on the grounds that “it was a bit of a rip off of a recent AA Car Insurance advert” - you know a bloke driving a car insurers around in his car.

But in the time it’s taken me to get round to writing something (which at the moment is approximately the same time it takes Jupiter to get round the sun) there’s been a bit of a storm in a dog’s bowl over the Chruchill’s Dog using the F-word:

Does it sound like he says “Fuck”?

“Oh Yes” (do you see what I’ve done there?).

Of course, in no way is this as bad as the time the Kia Ora boy used the C-word or when Mr Soft said the N-word (who even knew he could speak?).

But with Churchill’s track record of inappropriate behaviour around women - one that would put even John Leslie to shame - revelations that he swears come as little surprise.

In the next advert I fully expect to see him dry humping the leg of a Queen Mother lookalike (if not the actual Queen Mother - you know what dogs are like, they’ll dig up anything) whilst smoking crack and listening to Scooter.

Where will this dog’s crimes against the British public end?

Here’s another entry in the Scorn in the ASA category.

If you’re anything like me, when you heard that people had complained about Peter Jones’ co-star for having “pointy teeth, green-grey skin, large ears and goblinesque features” you thought “She might bot be the Mona Lisa but that’s a little harsh on Deborah Meaden”.

You’ll then have gone on to feel a little foolish when you found out that the complaints were actually about the Gremlins featured in the BT IT support advert and not about the sour-faced Dragon after all.

Who knew? Who knew?

It does however, turn out that 11 mummies and daddies complained to the ASA that their little prince and princesses got so scared by the advert that they went on to have “nightmares”.

Now, I’m not going to be too critical of the children that were frightened by the Gremlins though, because as a child I had the bejesus scared out of me on a weekly basis by the children’s TV programme Worzel Gummidge.

For all you cocky, city dwelling ex-kids a TV programme about a scarecrow that COMES TO LIFE (yeah, that’s right, bold and capitals) might not seem that bad. But I lived in the countryside, surrounded by fields inhabited by literally hundreds scarecrows which thanks to a kids TV programme I thought COULD COME TO LIFE!

Which sicko thought that was a suitable topic for kids? Honestly.

Anyways, for those of you with a mental age over 4 or those hidden behind a settee, here’s the advert with the frightening Peter Jones and those hilarious Gremlins (I think I got those the right way round):

Just a quick apology to say that we’re having some technical difficulties here at TWA towers so some things are appearing then disappearing - like the voting icons.

Fuck knows why, but I’m working on it.

Cheers, Silky.

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:

Oh Nickelback - Canadian *rock* *band*, players of the same song, owners of a rhyming dictionary and all round weasel-faced fucknuts.

Ah DFS - purveyors of cheap sofas, makers of butt clenchingly terrible adverts (I’m still hunting for that Subterranean Homesick Blues ad), former employer of Linda Barker.

What were the chances of these two atrocities of the modern world colliding in one horrific televisual advertisment?

But wait, what’s this?

As you’re contemplating your bad luck for having watched an advert that’s made both your ears and your eyeballs bleed, just like buses - albeit buses being driven by the Grim Reaper on a Special Service to Hell - two of the bloody things turn up at once:

Advert 1

Advert 2

But, golly, I just can’t decide which is the gut-wrenching so I’ll open it up to you lot to decide. This poll will run for the next 2 weeks then it can go in the TWA archives for the rest of eternity.

Thanks to Jemma for submitting this bad ad.

Some of TWA’s less drunk readers might have spotted the new “Sponsored Video Content” section now dominating the North-East face of this blog.

As it’s a pretty big change to this blog I thought I’d better mention it rather than hoping you’d all think it was just another binge induced hallucination.

The euphemistically titled “Sponsored Video Content” - or less euphemistically titled “Video Adverts” - section is going to be there for the next month on a trial basis.

Although I’ve been trying to ruin TV’s Worst Adverts slowly with increasingly sloppy and decreasingly funny posts, I’m keen to hear your thoughts on the “Sponsored Video Content” and how you feel it affects this blog.

If you hate (and it magically pays off my mortgage) during this trial period I’ll get rid of it for something more pleasing to my erudite readers’ eyes.

Cheers, Silky.