The new TV ad for Excedrin Migraine stopped me in my tracks (well, I was on the couch, so I guess you would say it stopped my eyeballs in their sockets). “Is that Peggy from Mad Men?” I asked nobody in particular. The commercial didn’t make it obvious that it was her (by, say, putting her name on the screen), and the company doesn’t typically use celebs in their commercials, so was it really her?

Well, Jezebel answered my question in this post. And the answer is yes. The video is not being friendly to embedding, so, uh, I guess you should just watch it at Jezebel.

But the whole Peggy being in an advertisement is a little weird, considering her character in Mad Men. What would Don Draper think of this ad? More importantly, what would Sal have thought of it? Couldn’t she have jazzed it up with a number from Bye Bye Birdie? I know it’s just a commercial about an over-the-counter pill, but dammit, it’s really about America.

Kathie Lee Gifford is a drunken joy on the fourth hour of The Today Show, but when I was growing up, she was simply the lady on the Carnival Cruise Lines commercials. Here are a couple of classics.

This is pretty funny, if only because I’ve seen those fake Cover Girl commercials being shot in so many seasons of Top Model, and they’re in such desperate need of being mocked. Ellen DeGeneres really seems to know how to send up the whole thing, with her confusion and inability to look at the camera (which could be a scene straight out of Top Model). And the opening line is genius and so true — it’s something I wish all makeup commercials would say.

I just saw Avon’s new commercial for the perfume “In Bloom,” which was apparently created by Sweet Home Alabama actress and sometime Jake Gyllenhaal canoodler Reese Witherspoon. And, I know, perfume ads are always cheesy (see every Britney Spears designer fragrance commercial ever made). But for the love of all things tacky, did they have to make it so ridiculous and over-the-top?

They should have gotten David Lynch to direct it. Then the cheeriness would be tinged with the suspicion that a darker side is lurking just beneath the surface, like in this Bambi-themed Playstation 2 ad he did a while back.

Thanks to Rock the Vote, I got a sneak peak of this new commercial, which is set to start airing tonight. Actors Zach Braff and Donald Faison from TV’s Scrubs voice their support for health care reform, and Donald shows off his sexy abs (well actually it’s more of a pot belly). Oh, and Zach Braff implies he’s had lots of extra nipples removed. That would make sense considering his last commercial role.

Actor Ron Perlman, best known for playing Hellboy, appears here in an ad for beermaker Stella Artois. The ad is titled “Devil’s Island,” a reference to the famed prison colony of yore.

This is one of the better directed beer commercials I’ve seen. Well worth checking out! And if you know who directed it, drop me a line!

This is a very Wes Anderson-ish Wes Anderson commercial for a Japanese cell phone company. Brad Pitt appears as some guy who looks fly in a safari outfit and gets into adventures.

Actor Jason Statham is pretty good looking, and I don’t mind his acting. So even though I was pretty late to the game, only discovering this ad a couple of months ago (as opposed to during the Super Bowl when it first aired), I was excited to see this commercial. Audi cleverly references the style and tone of one of Jason’s action movies, making this an ad you can almost forget is an ad.

Action-packed Audi ad with sexy Jason Statham

Lovable Bruce Campbell, of Evil Dead fame, has done a lot of good work in his life. But you probably don’t remember his short stint as an Old Spice pitchman. Check it.

Bruce Campbell likes Old Spice

Remember Bic Banana markers? Yeah, me neither. But this amazing commercial makes me want to go out and get some immediately. Legendary TV personality Charles Nelson Reilly dresses as a banana, sings a song about bananas and drawing, and generally makes a lot of references that could be construed as phallic if your mind is in the gutter like mine.

Charles Nelson Reilly for Bic Banana

I love me some cheap haircuts, and half the time I’m too cheap to even get those and end up letting my friends cut my hair (bad idea unless you’re getting a buzz cut). But when I do decide to go all out and pamper myself, I still can’t bear to spend more than $15 or $20 on a haircut. It just seems wrong, especially when hair grows out so fast. If you have thick or unruly hair, I could totally understand it, but my hair is as thin as a rail and I could basically cut it myself with nail clippers, so there’s not a lot I can do with it, style-wise. I usually get my hair cut at a local Brooklyn beauty shop these days, but when I lived in Tucson I was a Fashion Cuts girl all the way, and when I lived and worked in Manhattan, I went with Supercuts. I worked at a deli downstairs from one for a time, so the haircutters who I gave free coffee refills and so forth to every morning would cut me a deal on cuts and colors. I always gave them free reign to try whatever they wanted, and once my favorite stylist, Dorca, gave me purple hair with a blonde streak. She scolded me that my washed out Manic Panic red hair was getting unattractive, and that even if my boyfriend didn’t say anything about it, I should fix it up for his benefit. Oh, Dorca, where are you now?

ANYway, this Supercuts ad was just playing and I recognized the voice as Amy Sedaris’ immediately. Hell yeah! Cheap haircuts and my favorite funny woman, together at last.

Jerri Blank would go to Supercuts

Ed McMahon was a wonderful entertainer, and I think everyone’s a little bummed that he’s gone. But in honor of Ed, and in keeping with the theme of this website, I’d like to celebrate him with a look back at a really awesome Cash4Gold ad he made last year or so. He will be missed.

Ed McMahon sells his gold toilet

Tourism ads are everywhere right now, what with it being the height of the vacation season, and most of them seem to be for places I would never in a million years visit voluntarily, like, say, Michigan. But the new Pure Michigan ads are cool just because it seems to be John Goodman narrating them, and everything he does is awesome. I could be wrong, but it’s pretty hard to mistake a voice like that. Observe.

Update: Thanks to the very kind comment from Matt Bach (Public Relations Manager of the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau in Flint, Michigan) as you can see below, I now know that it is not in fact John Goodman narrating the ads. It is fellow Michiganian (Michigeno?) Mr. Tim Allen, of Home Improvement fame! I actually have a real soft spot for that show, and Tim seems like a nice person, so that’s cool too. Thanks again, Matt!

Pure Michigan ‘Time’ Ad

Have you seen the new TV ad for Latisse, a magical eyelash growing serum that promises to help women (or men, I suppose) regrow missing lashes and/or lengthen and thicken their existing lashes? It’s downright terrifying.

Click here to watch it.

Brooke Shields stars in the commercial, which makes me wonder why she’s been receiving so much exposure lately. I don’t know exactly who’s behind her return to celebrity status, but I have some questions for them.

Anyway, Brooke’s involvement is irrelevant, because the product itself is what’s disturbing. The ad promises that Latisse will give you amazing huge eyelashes, but also warns that side effects include skin discoloration on your eyelid which MIGHT go away over time. And that’s not all. They also mention (I’m not kidding) that your eyes might permanently turn brown. Yes, your very irises. Brown. Forever. What??

This sounds like such a bad idea. And they’re marketing it like a beauty product, even though it’s a prescription drug. This is far worse than when they marketed medicine for Restless Leg Syndrome to the public in a deceptive way that made it seem like it was for anyone who was remotely fidgety. This is something normal everyday women who wear mascara or false lashes for an extra boost will think they need, and then we’ll find out that it actually blinds people and Latisse is going to have one major class action lawsuit on their hands. Or not, I just like to think about worst case scenarios. Like how I firmly believe that sunless tanner is going to turn out to cause skin cancer, and deoderant breast cancer, and birth control pills everything cancer. Either way, there’s no way in hell I’m putting this crazy crap on my eyes.

This old and much-aired ad for the ASPCA is just too sad. Sarah McLachlan I could do without, but until then I’m torn between joy at seeing cute animals and sadness that the world is so cruel. Talk about effective advertising!

Sad cute animals