2009 Superbowl Ads: Hyundai's World Domination

From the Imaginary Reviewer at the Imaginary Review


Football, like many team sports, can be seen as a metaphor for war. There's the need to gain territory, offensive and defensive strategies, the crushing desire for victory and, of course, the metal hats that keep your head from getting hurt.

So maybe it was just because it was shown within the context of the Superbowl that this ad brought to mind a certain - how can I put this? - international conflict.



Is it just me? Am I the only one here who sees businessmen from a Japanese company and a German company getting all upset about Hyundai's success, and thinks, "Heh, in your face AGAIN, Axis Powers!"? There's points in this ad when I feel like I'm watching that scene from the film Downfall when Adolf is going mental in the bunker, only instead of realising he's lost the war, he's realising that his company's dominance in the North American luxury vehicle market is being eroded by an up-and-coming Korean car manufacturer.

It's like the ad is suggesting that in some way, Hyundai is somehow preventing a potential rise in global facism by keeping BMW and Lexus in check. I'm not crazy, am I? Isn't that the beginning of the theme music to The Dambusters playing in the background?

Pause the ad at 29 seconds: doesn't the big screen show a split second from the end of The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen jumping over the fence on a motorcycle? A Hyundai motorcycle? No, wait, maybe I am going crazy. I should probably close my eyes and count to ten.

Christ, this ad makes me want to buy a Hyundai, and not because I like the cars, not because I need one, but because I feel like I'd be helping out with the war effort! Never mind that the war ended more than sixty years ago, you can't be too careful when the freedom of the world is at stake! Sign me up for two, and I'll take some war bonds while you're at it!

I tell you what, though: Ferrari must be pissed that they didn't make it into this ad. Just saying.

2009 Superbowl Ads: Doritos 2

by pistols at dawn of save your generation

In this second Doritos ad apparently airing this evening, we learn a lesson thanks to familiar character in the Commedia dell'arte of advertising stereotypes - the 20something Slacker Dude.



As the ad opens, Dude is taunting his roommate's cat with a laser pointer, a poignant metaphor for the endless, Sisyphean tasks that comprise all our lives, hours spent grasping at straws that turn out never to have been there at all, leaving us empty vessels which only process pain into slightly more tolerable pain via a soul-deadening process of hard liquor, drugs, passionless coupling, and snack chips.

Knowing this, and egged on by his angry girlfriend, Dude's roommate taunts Dude similarly - with moving Doritos. Dude then proceeds to chase said Doritos, and numerous pratfalls - allegedly comic ones - ensue.

There is but one problem with this: as a huge fan of Doritos, I can tell you that no huge fan of Doritos can get up off the couch, much less chase a moving bag of Doritos around a room. One of the main reasons fat guys love Doritos is because, unlike women who want "dinner" and "you not to stare at their boobs" and "you to get their consent before filming them doing it with you," Doritos never play hard to get.

Also, taunting a cat is still okay, because cats are dumb, as they lack the single most important aspect of intelligent life: the ability to establish mercantile systems with the end result of enabling its participants to purchase Doritos.

Pistols and a 2009 Superbowl Doritos Ad: The Perfect Storm

If there's one thing people value in both jokes and ads, it's originality. So today, when you're watching what advertisers call "The Big Game," because the term "The Super Bowl" is trademarked or copyrighted or whatever and can only be used with hefty licensing fees, make sure to say, "Sometimes, the commercials are better than the game!" because no one in the history of time has ever said that before, you effing Oscar Wilde.

Your witty repartee thus established for the evening, let's turn to an ad for All That Is Good And True In This World: Doritos.



This ad, which I suppose we should call "The Power of Crunch," since "Backdoor Vixens #8" is already taken by a very popular (with me) DVD series - starts off with a fairly plausible thesis: that Doritos are crunchy enough to have magical/sonic force level powers.

Naturally, our male protagonist's first use of this power (as it inevitably was in every single movie in the 1980s where a male gained magical powers, be it Zapped!, Zapped Again, or School Spirit) is to rip the clothes off of an attractive woman, leaving her in her incredibly ornate underthings.

(Note: if these movies and fantasy scenes are to be believed, women always wear a matching set of sexy-yet-not-actually-that-revealing bra and panties, as well as stockings and a garter belt. Having lived with women upon whom I used my magical powers (read: roofies) to undress them regularly, I can say that this is, unfortunately, not always the case.)

Somehow, our hero decides to not just use this version of the power and disrobe every semi-attractive woman around (showing the director's disdain for realism), and instead aims the crunch power of Doritos at an ATM. While this is an apparently easy way to earn extra money to buy more Doritos, it does raise the important question: how do we ensure that terrorists never learn of the explosive crunch power of Doritos? Sure, I do my part by eating four bags a week, but I'm only one man (unless you weigh me, in which case, I'm technically two).

As money pours out of the ATM, a man who appears to be a stripper dressed as a police officer gets out of his cop car to restore order. "Not so fast," our anarchic, devil-may-care protagonist says (via his actions, the way a real man "speaks"), biting a chip in Johnny Law's direction.

Naturally, instead of knocking his clothes off, as it did to the attractive woman just eight seconds ago, it turns the cop into a capuchin monkey (easily one of the four funniest monkeys one can be turned into), because Doritos inherently know that the male body is hideous and should never be seen unclothed, and adjust their crunch power accordingly from "extremely localized gale-force winds" to "transmogrification."

Then, as if all this weren't enough, the protagonist gets hit by a bus.

So, in short, if you buy Doritos, you will gain magical powers that will enable you to kind of see parts of the breasts of attractive women, destroy our financial systems via attacks on innocent ATMs, and mock the efforts of law enforcement to reign in your crunch-based Reign of Terror. And yet still, you will be brought low by the oldest trick in the "we need an allegedly funny end to our ad, and we've got 1.7 seconds to do it in" book: cheap physical humor.

It's really a metaphor for life.

Ford F-150: Taking a Man Step to Gay Town

by Pistols at Dawn of save your generation

As discussed yesterday (I could link to it, or you could scroll down, hero), Howie Long and Chevy are here to chew gum and kick ass, and they're all out of chewing gum.



In the second Howie Long Chevy ad that shows that these particular ad execs still have a fourth grade view of male sexuality and gender roles, the masculine Mr. Long is at the lumber yard, loading a palette jack's worth of Large, Heavy Bags Of Concrete into his Silverado.

Next to him, a Prancing Sissy in a Ford F-150 (the "F" stands for "Loves to Fellate Dudes") is using his truck's "Man Step" to get out of the bed of his truck, in which he has tied down a comically oversized wooden birdfeeder. Sure, no person I know would ever think of the lumberyard as a perfect place to buy a birdfeeder, but that's because everyone I know hates birds and hopes they all starve to death. Especially ospreys.

While attempting to get down out of his truck, F-150 Man (who initially misses the step, since all men who aren't Howie Long are incapable of even walking without incident) moves in a manner that indicates he either has a hernia or has just had a week's worth of nonstop vigorous gay sex with a team of incredibly endowed male elephants. A few steps into his "lady penguin on her period" walk, Howie roguishly informs him that he's left his "uh, man step" down. The man then fixes this problem while facially throwing a bitch fit worthy of Bette Davis' or Joan Crawford's finest work.

All in all, the Chevy Silverado ad strategy is clear: trucks that have features that the Silverado doesn't are for clumsy homosexuals. Hence, if you buy those trucks, you are a clumsy homosexual. Lastly, the Chevrolet company hates homosexuals, and finds their lifestyle and mannerisms something worth spending millions of dollars mocking in a national ad campaign.

I can't imagine why American car companies are in trouble.

Finally, Someone Speaks Out Against the Pickup Truck Industry's Secret Homosexual Agenda

by Pistols at Dawn of save your generation

Usually, when I'm watching my court-ordered 18 hours of football per week, I don't see a single commercial thanks to the majesty of my DVR. However, this weekend, I made the mistake of leaving my house to watch the games, and thus, subjected myself to hours of crappy ads, possibly three of which weren't truck-related.

And thank God for that, because after viewing about 3,000 Howie Long-centered ads for the Chevy Silverado, I learned an important lesson: buying any pickup truck that isn't a Silverado means you're gayer than Perez Hilton singing along to an Elton John/Indigo Girls duet in P-town at an Advocate benefit concert for animal shelters named after Barbara Streisand movies.

First of all, there's the "Manicure" ad.



In this spot, a fancy City Gay accidentally backs his Dodge Ram into Howie Long's Silverado while attempting to parallel park it. Note that even in the act of parallel parking, the Silverado is the dominant Top, while the Ram is a submissive bottom.

Ram Man's gender treason doesn't end there. While Howie magnanimously accepts his apology with a suave, "it happens," Howie's gaze is drawn to the man's hands resting on what Howie instantly identifies as "a heated steering wheel." It's unclear how Howie does this, as there is nothing about the steering wheel to identify it as such (like, for example, a rainbow color scheme, pictures of Judy Garland, or a built-in mp3 player with Kylie Minogue dance tracks on it), but such are the wonders of Howie Long.

Ram Man instantly denies this accusation, clearly in the closet about the Second Most Important Issue To All Gay Men: whether or not their pickup truck's steering wheel is heated. Then, like a classic self-loathing queer, he reverses himself and admits it, exposing his shame to a complete stranger as if it were his penis in the glory hole of a men's room in a West Hollywood nightclub.

Howie, reveling in this inquisition, continues. "Is that a manicure?" he asks, oddly fixated on the man's hands and steering wheel for someone embracing all that is Good And Straight About Truck Ownership. Ram Man can only laugh awkwardly. Howie smirks demeaningly at him, pats him harshly on the chest, and walks away, presumably to have sex with numerous women while drinking a brew dog and watching an MMA fight with a John Wayne movie in the picture-in-picture box.

As Howie gets in his truck to drive off into that Totally Straight Future, somehow, the Ram has vanished instantly, clearly indicating that Chevrolet wants all homosexuals (and their pickup trucks) to disappear entirely from the face of the Earth.

However, a vestige remains: the likely reason for Ram Man parking on that block is revealed in the upper right corner of the frame – a marquee for the ever-popular "Theater" indicating a "Film Fest, Mon – Fri."

It goes without saying that there is nothing – short of having gay sex while driving a Dodge Ram – gayer than a film festival. Worse still, the film festival is held during the work week, because everyone knows Gay Pickup Driving Men don't have jobs and live like welfare queens off the tax dollars of straight people.

The only question that the ad doesn't answer is why Howie's parked on this block, sitting in his truck while men in gay pickup trucks attempt to parallel park so that he can take careful notice of their hands. I'm assuming it's because there's a Huge Hardware Store For Salt Of The Earth Types just across the street.

That, or he's cruising for twinks.

Tomorrow, Part Two of This Series: The Man Step.