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?

March 16th, 2020 is Austin 3:16 Day! (Cause Stone Cold said so!)

Sandwiched between Pi Day (March 14th), and St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) is Stone Cold Steve Austin Day (March 16th).

What the hell is Stone Cold Steve Austin Day, you ask?

Let me educate you!

As a life long wrestling fan, there have been many memorable events and occurrences which shape the wrestling landscape. In the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) sphere, there was an event in 1996 called the King of the Ring – a tournament of which the winner was declared to be the “King of the Ring”.

After defeating Jake “The Snake” Roberts to be crowned the 1996 King of the Ring, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, in his post-event interview, berated his vanquished opponent and exclaimed, “Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!”

Why did that reference matter? Well, Jake “the Snake” Roberts, at the time, had been portraying a former alcoholic man who was able to defeat alcoholism with his faith, which made the mocking even that much more direct and to the point.

That moment changed the face of the WWE and marked the beginning of the WWE’s extremely popular “Attitude Era”, and launched the career of Stone Cold aka the Texas Rattlesnake to epic proportions.

In the years that followed, Austin – famously adorned with a black T-shirt with simple, large, white lettering that read “Austin 3:16” –  became one of the most popular wrestlers of all time.

Austin became known for doing what he wanted, when he wanted, and that included flipping the bird to anyone and everyone and doing whatever it took to get the job done and score the win.

So on this 16th of March, grab a Steveweiser (beer), ready your two-finger salute, watch some clips on YouTube or the WWE Network, and take no prisoners because that’s the bottom line, ‘cause “Stone Cold” said so!