Best and Worst Commercials

Being stuck inside for the better part of the past 2 years due to COVID concerns, I’ve seen a lot of great commercials on the TV and on social media and I’ve seen my fair share of terrible ones.

Here is a brief list of some good ones and some terrible ones. It’s in no specific order, and I’ll try to explain why I like or detest them. If you have any to add, please do!

Like: Any commercial for Tide Cold. These commercials with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ice-T, and a combination of laundry / cold / ice related players like Vanilla Ice, Mark Messier and Falcons QB Matty Ice, are absolutely hilarious! The most recent one with Gordon Ramsey which ends with Stone Cold yelling, “That guy needs to chill out!!” is so good! I get quiet for these commercials.

Like: Any Skip the Dishes commercial with Jon Hamm. Watching him promote the brand (which I use and love) while pretending to be a Canadian makes for very funny commercials.

Like: Uber Eats commercial with Elton John and Lil Nas X is hilarious! It took me a few times of watching it to catch all the little funny bits.

Dislike: KFC “Chicken Rich” commercials. The jingle doesn’t match the commercial, it’s terrible and it doesn’t make me want to eat KFC at all… It doesn’t make sense that fried chicken and chicken rich are a good combination, which is why it’s not. I had to pause it after grabbing the link.

Dislike: Intuit TurboTax Free “Dance Workout” commercial. It’s terrible. You know they say any publicity is good publicity? It’s not true. This commercial, which has a fitness instructor in short shorts saying “free” over and over again while leading a class doesn’t make you think of a tax product, but makes you wonder why Intuit would make another terrible commercial. I had to ask friends, and they all wondered why the commercial led you to believe that someone was going to come free from the instructors shorts, and nothing else. It’s super-cringy. Shame.

Dislike: The BMO commercial about the couple who are out for dinner and the menu is in German and the female comments that she stopped taking the German lessons because the free trial ended. The BMO guy who tells her that she’s paying now is fantastic! I think he’s great and I really enjoy him in the commercials. He’s really awesome as their spokesperson! But what gets me, is that when she finds out she’s still paying she says something in German, which sounds like she’s saying “fuck me!” I had to watch that commercial quite a few times before I realized it wasn’t what she was saying, but regardless… It’s in poor taste. The rest of the commercial is great, and I see they’ve added subtitles now, but still… UGH.

Like: There is a commercial that I’ve seen recently about a family who have a massive hole in their kitchen. I’m not yet sure what the commercial is about, but I like that as they’re staring in the hole, the female says something like, “my cat is in there” and then you hear “meow”, and a second later the male says something like, “and it has my keys”… I just find that last little commentary to be very clever and quite hilarious! I think it’s for one of those non-dairy coffee creamers…

Like: One last one while I remember is a commercial for I believe, Chevy Silverado, and it involves a cat named Walter. This cat loves the winter, and seeing the cat outside partaking in all winter activities is hilarious, especially the scene where a guy is buried in snow, and the cat starts to dig him out. The guys looks at the cat and says, that’s amazing, and the guy who owns the car and the cat says, yeah… that’s the 2022 Chevy Silverado, and he proceeds to discuss the car. Then the guy says, no, the cat! The cat owner says something like, what? you’ve never seen a cat before… It’s clever, it’s funny and it’s cute. Well done!

What’s on your list?

Lemmy from Motorhead has died! His Life Comes with a Parental Advisory: Kids Don’t Try This At Home!

Here is an example of how parenting evolves as our kids get older;

Just before the new year came news that Motörhead frontman Ian Kilmister, simply known as “Lemmy” had died after a brief battle with an aggressive form of cancer.  Kilmister – famous for his handlebar moustache, villians cowboy hat, mutton chops and a mole on his face was 70-years-old.

As I sat down to write this post, I realized at that time that I was not a Motorhead fan.  I didn’t really like their “big” hit, “Ace of Spades” and to be honest, I really knew nothing about the band until they penned the theme song for then WWE superstar Triple H / Now CEO of WWE, Hunter Hurst Helmsley.

Doing some research I learned and interesting fact about Lemmy, that he was once a roadie for legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and that he formed Motörhead in 1975 after being kicked out of a band named Hawkwind.  I learned that Hawkwind was a space-rock outfit so warped, that their lead singer/poet once came onstage in a witch’s hat and attacked Lemmy with a sword.  I can’t see how he would have fit in with an outfit like that.

After all, Motörhead did okay for themselves, releasing 22 studio albums over 38 years.

But with all that what people were really talking about was the fact that Lemmy loved being on the road – claims he slept with over 1000 women – but he also claimed he was going to sell his facial warts on eBay (UGH!).  He loved the drugs and the booze and I remember reading somewhere that by 1980, his doctor told him, “You don’t have human blood any more. And you can’t give blood, either. Forget it, you’d kill the average person because you’re so toxic.”

He did “claim” in recent years to have given up his daily regimen of a bottle of Jack Daniels with Coke – in favour of vodka with healthy orange juice.

Yes, Lemmy passed away at 70-years-old, and by all accounts because of his partying and lack of attention to his health, its amazing that he did.  I feel it’s important to have that conversation with our children who hear about people like Lemmy and think that it’s okay to treat their bodies this way, because it’s just not true.

Word on the street was that Lemmy died sitting at home in front of his favourite video game.  He played rock music and he loved WWII memorabilia.  He might seem to be a rock g-d to adults who grew up thinking that was cool – but to the younger generation I think we owe it to them to also let them know both sides of everyone, and that as he aged, Lemmy had to cancel shows due to a hematoma, respiratory issues, and a heart condition for which he was fitted with a defibrillator.

Years of abuse caught up to him.  He forgot lyrics to songs, and walked off stage at concerts because he couldn’t do it anymore.

Fans of the band from back in the day and fans from their recent WWE success will mourn the musician and curious fans will read about Lemmy, the rock legend.  Hopefully there are articles about him which present both sides of the man and comes with a warning message to children…

Kids.  Don’t try this at home!