The hell?

Remember those commercials with Woodsy The Owl, the ones that told kids and adults to "Give a hoot. Don't pollute!"? I haven't seen them in a while, but I think the USDA Forest Service is still using the icon in their campaign. But they're also very serious about how people get rid of their Woodsy The Owl costumes. You can't just throw them away, you have to incinerate the entire costume, and it has to be done in front of a USDA Forest Service official!

As some of the readers at Boing Boing have wondered, why such strict rules? Are they updating the character and want no trace of the old model? Is it environmentally friendly to burn the costumes? Hmmmm.

Yes, I'm one of those people, the ones who watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. I have no interest in football whatsoever.*

I'm a tennis and baseball fan (my brief affair with basketball stopped when the Celtics stopped being good, too long ago to remember), but I never miss the Super Bowl even though on most days I'd rather watch a Sex and the City marathon than watch football. I get involved in the pre-game hype of the commercials, what the ads cost, who is going to advertise when, how many ads a particular company has during the show, and even the post-game analysis the next day, usually in USA Today, where they have people watch the ads with meters and pick their favorites and least favorites (Budweiser wins many years, and I've never understood that). So I'm looking forward to the game in a few weeks, and we'll have full coverage of the ads here at Adjab.

*Of course, if the Patriots make it, this could all change.

I was watching Demetri Martin's new special on Comedy Central last night (funny, as usual). Can someone tell me what the hell was going on with those Microsoft Vista ads that ran throughout the hour? I know that Martin is a spokesman for the product, and he even starred in some of the spots, but they were very confusing and offputting, especially if you tuned into the special halfway through and didn't hear anything about Microsoft Vista.

Actually, the whole idea behind the ads makes me think someone at the ad agency or Microsoft is a Lost fan. The old guy in charge of an odd secret organizations (The Institute For Advanced Personhood), telling you to go to a site that will help you get rid of your clutter, the retro look of the spots, the use of old footage and computers. Very Hanso-ish, very viral. But I wonder if they're too odd to be successful?

I always thought that AAA's commercials were rather clever. Especially the tag line, which was "Sooner or later, you'll break down and join AAA." I thought it was a great play on words and simply told what AAA does and why it's important to be a member. And that's not easy to do in one slogan.

So I'm a little confused as to why they seem to have changed their slogan. Actually, the new line is so mundane that I swear I've completely forgotten what it is, even though I just heard it about 10 minutes ago. That's never a good sign when you're trying to get the consumer's attention.

I'll admit it, I succumbed to all those TV ads from Publisher's Clearinghouse that tell you to go to pch.com and enter to win the $1000 they're giving away every day or the big $10 million prize. I got an e-mail from them today and for a split second I thought I had one something.

Um, I didn't.

But the e-mail was entertaining. It was a suggestion for what I should say should the PCH van show up at my front door with a giant check and balloons. Now, I'm sure they don't really want me to use this script (nor would I - I can't see myself saying "It really is true!" after I win, though I'd probably wrestle Rush Limbaugh naked for $10 million), it was just a sales tactic to get me to imagine winning such a prize, so I'd enter the contest. But I wonder how I'd do in such a situation....

Back in October, my local supermarket, put out Christmas candy in a special aisle of the store. Now, I thought this was just a little bit early to put out holiday-related food, and it was made even more ridiculous by the fact that right next to it on the next shelf was...Halloween candy! Chocolate Santas fighting for shelf space with candy corn.

Now it looks like they're doing it with Valentine's Day. I went to the store on January 2, and they not only got rid of Christmas candy (get out of here Christmas candy, it's the day after New Year's!), but they've replaced the entire section with Valentine's Day candy. This isn't as bad as having candies for two different holidays on the same shelves, and Valentine's is only a month or so away, but I think it's interesting how fast and how furious retail stores will stop advertising one holiday and start advertising the next one.

They better get the Valentine's candy off the shelf quick, because Washington's Birthday is five days later, and they'll have to make room for all that candy.

I just bought the complete series set for The Dick Van Dyke Show (I'll be reviewing the set over at TV Squad this week if you want to keep checking over there), and among it's many goodies are some Easter Eggs, hidden extras you have to do some detective work to find. Included are several commercials the cast did, for products such as Joy dishwashing liquid and Kent cigarettes. These weren't just commercials that the actors did, these were spots that the actual characters of Rob Petrie, Laura Petrie, Sally Rogers and others did, and on the actual sets of the show! It was a different TV world back then, but these spots are quite interesting and fun to see.

After the jump, two clips: one from a Kent ad featuring Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, and another featuring Van Dyke, Moore, and Rose Marie. (Also check out the video for Mary Tyler Moore's HotPoint ad that Adam posted yesterday.)

While watching the Patriots/NY Jets playoff game yesterday, I noticed several versions of the Burger King ads featuring the father and son who are cheeseburgers. The father is always yelling at the son because he's made a bad career decision or he's lazy or whatever. The ads are pretty funny, though I noticed something odd for the first time yesterday.

The mother is human.

The next time you watch Sunday Night Football, imagine John Madden naked.

OK, don't do that. But imagine what you would do, if you were a parent, and the John Madden football video game you bought for your 14 year-old contained porn images on it. That's what happened this Christmas to the Mahoney family in Utah. They bought the Madden NFL 07 game at a Circuit City, and when their son put it into his Xbox 360 console, he saw something you don't usually see on the football field: naked people!

His first thought: "this is definitely not Madden."

He told his parents and they called Electronic Arts. They're investigating the incident. In the meantime, they gave him a new game for free. No word on which game he'd rather have.

[via The Obscure Store and Reading Room]

Dear Late Night Chat Line Girl,

I see you every single night between midnight and 1:30am, during syndicated repeats of "Friends" and "Scrubs", and I wonder if you could ever really love me. Sure, I know you're just playing a part, a hot chick who supposedly talks on the phone late at night with horny college guys and drunks and writers and other creatures of the night who are lonely and want to talk to someone on the phone. But sometimes I wonder if you and I could ever have a real relationship.

Have you noticed this trend? Ads for cars now show the ad flying through the air, usually above some large city. What's up with that?

I've mentioned on this site before that I don't get automobile commercials. They never talk about what the car can actually do for the typical consumer. Instead, they show trucks being tossed by the Loch Ness Monster, a woman buying a guy's dry cleaning, potential employees going to the airport to pick up a company exec, and cars that fly. There are so many of them now, including a new one featuring the Chevy Silverado that doesn't just show one car flying around a city, but a dozen of them, on the back of a big truck.

I don't want you to tell me about flying cars. Tell me about how it handles on the road, what gas mileage I can expect, what the safety rating is, how many it seats, what the inside is like, stuff like that. Please?

Before I even get into the Growing Pains part of my gripe, can someone explain to me what the hell these new spots for McDonald's are supposed to mean? They're hip kids who always buy stuff off of the dollar menu? What group is this supposed to appeal to? Overweight kids who want to be cool? Nope, can't be them, because the ads mention being cool and good-looking. The copy for the ad sounds like they just got a list of hip-sounding phrases ("Menunaires?") from some marketing group. Mickey D's doesn't even remotely know how to do ads anymore. "I'm lovin' it?" Mother of God.

And this new ad features Jeremy Miller. Who's Jeremy Miller? He played Ben on Growing Pains and...well, he played Ben on Growing Pains. I don't really get why former stars want to lower themselves like this. I mean, I can understand wanting to be on television again, but why pick lame commercials (or reality shows)? And Miller is in this ad for approximately 3 seconds, in a very I Love The 80s sort of way, sitting in a chair talking about the product. Some people might not even know who he is, which might be the worst embarrassment of all.

It's not an easy thing to create a successful ad that uses singing and dancing. Either the singing is OK but the commercial is annoying, or they use an established song to set some mood and sell a product, which can often be just as annoying.

There's a third category too: a spot that uses terrible singing and terrible dancing and is annoying. That's the trifecta hit by KIA in their new ads. The ones that have the KIA sales team singing "Adieu, Adieu..." and "I hate, to go, and leave this pretty sight..." and hopping around dancing as the cars roll off the showroom floor.

If there's one thing that's good about the commercial is that it's for their year-end sale, and January 1 is this Monday.

Do not adjust your television. It's true: the Bedazzler is back.

I don't know if this product every went away, but the commercials did. And they became the butt of many jokes by standup comics over the years. But I was watching TV the other night and saw a new ad for the product, and the ad is just as annoying as the old ones.

To be blunt, who the hell would want this product, except a 9 year-old girl or a 47 year-old white trash chick? Is there another market for this thing that I'm not aware of? I mean, putting shiny rhinestones on sweaters and shoes? The ads and their site say it's "only $19.95!" But you only get 300 rhinestones. Is that really enough if you want to go Bedazzler crazy?

They also say it's the "fashion craze of the season." That would be a season in hell.

I bring this up because I've been seeing a lot of ads lately for the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes (it's that time again). Did you know that he didn't work for them? He never did any commercials for them (scroll down to "Do Your Homework")?

This may come as a shock to most people, because it's amazing how many references have been made to McMahon doing the commercials and showing up at homes with a big check. It's now part of pop culture lore and legend (even his book publisher's site has the wrong info, as does Amazon). But he didn't work for them, he actually worked for American Family Publishers, which was the competitor of Publisher's Clearinghouse.

I know, you probably think I'm nit-picking, but so many people believe that McMahon did the ads that I think it should be brought up. Go to Google and type in "Ed McMahon" and "Publisher's Clearinghouse" and you'll see an onslaught of results. I would say most people in the world think that he worked for the company when he didn't.

American Family Publishers filed for bankruptcy several years back.