The latest Six Flags “More Flags More Fun” commercial is just plain creepy. The old man encouraging the comely young lass to “churn,” alone, is gross. But I also recently watched the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s “Choke” (the book is good but the film sucked), which includes lots of sexualized scenes of a woman churning in the same fashion, so this commercial now seems doubly disturbing.
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!
Those Disney ads where people open envelopes and let loose a torrent of balloons and fireworks freak me out. I guess they’re implying that getting a free day at Disneyland (or the slightly crappier Walt Disney World) is really awesome, which is true, but the way they execute it worries me. All these kids, parents, and animals in the ads seem transfixed by the indoor fireworks display, whereas in real life they’d be shrieking and diving for cover under the nearest piece of furniture. And then would come the lawsuits.
The Canada tourism board or some shit (slogan: Keep Exploring) has been advertising Canadian travel with short, cryptic home video clips showing travelers having surreal and/or amazing experiences. But instead of inspiring me to book a vacation in the Great White North, they frighten me and remind me of horrific moments in Cloverfield. The following link will take you to a collection of all of the videos. I particularly recommend “Iceberg,” “Jimmy versus the whale” and the truly terrifying “Seal on kayak.”
The Sandals Resorts company has never been particularly known for their intelligent advertisements, but this one goes too far. The very first thing that comes out of the narrator’s mouth is glaringly grammatically incorrect.
“Isn’t it times like these that reminds us of what’s important?”
Ugh. Where’s the attention to detail?
See for yourself.
You may have noticed that theme park chain Six Flags recently merged their two annoying mascots into one Super Jerk. Back when it was just the funny dancing old man, I didn’t mind the ads at all. In fact, they were a delight! Here’s the spot that started it all:
The old dancing man’s reign lasted for many long months, and it was good, even though the cognitive dissonance caused by the man’s old face and young body drove some mad.
Then the Six Flags people seemed to decide it was time to freshen up their image with some good old fashioned racism. Observe.
The Asian stereotype guy freaked me out enough, but even worse, the ads now began with even more obnoxious scenes of people attempting to have fun in terribly dull ways (i.e. waving hand puppets around and making noises). And to top it off, they didn’t even take away the most annoying part of the ads since the old man danced his first step….that goddamn Vengaboys song!
Anyway, I thought that would be the end of it, but no! Now they’ve gone and combined the two ad campaigns, eliminating the questionable aforementioned Asian stereotype mascot but retaining his catch phrase, “More flags, more fun!” Now they just have the old man doing it, and somehow when he talks he becomes about 100% less funny. See for yourself.
What a long, strange trip it’s been.