With this semi-subtle visual reference to the popular Old Spice commercials, Pledge (which is, I don’t know, furniture polish?) seems to be attempting to steal a slice of that elusive sexually frustrated but youthful female market, as opposed to their usual sexually frustrated older female market. The decision to make the man British Australian a New Zealander was a brilliant one. If there’s one way to top the sexy Old Spice Dude, it’s with an accent.

Here’s the original just for comparison.

You know those creepy Pledge cleaning product ads, where some faceless British-sounding narrator diabolically traps innocent women in glass boxes with furniture in them, and forces them to clean against their will? At the end of this one, the woman even knocks and asks if she can go home.

In another of these ads, a woman’s white couch is lowered into the room covered with black cats. In a recent one, the disembodied man in charge tells a mother to clean an entire room, despite her protestations that she has to pick her kids up. Then at the end she leans her hand on it, and the narrator clears his throat and, with fright, the woman quickly wipes the spot her hand had made.

Does this remind anybody else of the evil Jigsaw dude in the atrocious Saw movies? Here’s the trailer for the second film to refresh your memory.

I keep expecting the Pledge narrator to say, “Come on, Emily. With the cleaning power of Pledge, you’ll have plenty of time to pick your kids up. Now where did I put that bottle of Pledge? Oh right. It’s embedded behind your left eyeball! It’s your choice, Emily. Use the feather duster I’ve left you to gouge your eye out and clean the room, or the kids die!”

Seriously. These cleaning product people have issues.