Carry the one

Behold “Copy that Floppy” (via in4mador and digg) a ten-minute PSA from sometime in the deep dark past of the computer age (around the time people were still calling it “the computer age”)

This is an excellent case study of all the advertising clichés from the eighties, from the overplayed “let’s put a rap in there to communicate to the kids” concept to the stilted dialogue all the way down to the subtle pro-Reagan undertones which still permeate popular culture today (SUBSCRIBE TO MY POLITICAL NEWSLETTER FOR MORE INSIGHTS LIKE THIS!!).

Sorry I think I was channeling my Sociology 101 professor for a second. What (maybe) makes this entire video worth watching are the references to specific games from this era, like Oregon Trail (the Indian has dysentery and a broken leg and has also been dead for three months) and Carmen Sandiego. That’s right kids, before it had an acapella theme song, it was a crappy video game that made learning tedious. (Hit F-12 to see Carmen topless).
(Oh there is more…)

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Somebody call Al Sharpton

Since the Checkers franchise is a regional chain, not everyone in America has the pleasure of knowing Rap Cat, the rappingest cat this side of the White Castle demilitarized zone line.

The “thing” about Checkers is that it has two drive thrus, so the current television campaign plays on this by imagining a beef between the left and right side drive thrus. The left side, with the white guy, always seems to beat the right side, with the black guy, which makes race-conscious middle America a little uneasy. And now the left side drive thru is co-opting the right side’s music with the corporate-shilling, no skills-having Rap Cat. Rap Cat was born sold out, people, just look at him, and listen to his over-produced rhymes that are in no way shape or form “phat”.

I do like this commercial, if just for it being so very stupid. The right side guy’s reaction to Rap Cat, as if to say, “somebody call Al Sharpton”, at least allows the commercial to par the hole.

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Kentucky Fried Soap Opera

It’s hard to hear this commercial when it comes on because it’s drowned out by the sound of a million eyes rolling in unison. What is worse, the heavy-handed pseudo-drama over a family actually sitting down to dinner, or this kid’s horrible acting, is currently too precise of a measurement for our top scientists to conclusively make.

The start of the commercial leads you to believe this is a (cheap) anti-drug commercial which will berate parents into checking up on their children to make sure they aren’t losing their heroin-virginity while they are hob nobbing at the racquetball court. But no, the kid’s mom simply can’t believe a family is sitting down to a nutritious (wink wink) dinner.

Maybe hearing the other side of the kid’s conversation would make this less of a train-wreck, at least for the sake of trying to cover up the fact the kid is just cold-reading lines into a prop phone. The spot starts off too serious, and the “joke”, if it can so be called, is so vapid viewers run the risk of becoming so enraged they start to jab at the television with forks, umbrellas, and whatever other implements of impromptu jabbing might be handy.

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Low fat doesn’t mean low calories people

Once in a while a spot is so awful, you cannot look away when it is on TV, despite your higher instincts. This heavy-handed tome features a cast and plot so dense it would choke Noam Chomsky on his own hubris. And I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean.
In this commercial some kids run out of ice cream, which excites them, because they can eat more ice cream, because it is low fat ice cream, so they dance. Well, dance away, dorks, because you’re going to have to do a lot of exercise to burn of those extra thousand calories.

This spot lacks so much self-consciousness it can be endearing, if somewhat retarded, much like my little brother.

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