Saturday, August 1, 2009

Our First Commercial Break

Originally Posted 4-16-08

So, that was the first season. I’m not quite sure what I got myself into here. If this goes like every other thing I do, I’ll eventually get tired of doing this, and I’ll stop. However, I feel like I should finish something in a life. It’s a shane that this is the thing I decide to take a stand on. Besides, the rest of the series is in my Netflix queue. It's not like I can just quit. I’m going to have to go in and delete the remaining discs from my queue. That isn’t a difficult task, but it would be admitting an unwillingness to finish what was once started. That said, I did put a few non-Friends discs in between Season 1 and Season 2. I’m far too lazy to remove nine seasons form my Netflix queue, so I will be back to doing this in a week or so.

So, working under the assumption that I do, in fact, finish this, I came to the realization that this project may, at some point, “Jump the Shark.” It happens that the writing just isn’t fresh and I’ll run out of things to say. In the world of sitcoms, new writers could be brought it or someone could inject an interesting curve to the story, like “suddenly I’m pregnant” or “twin separated at birth.” Being pregnant and/or learning that I have a twin are all very unlikely. It would also have no bearing on this blog. So when I do jump the shark, there will be no gimmick to save me or to push me further down.

Anyway, I’d like to keep this project fresh for the entire run of the series, but I don’t know if I can pull that off. Jumping the shark is a near inevitability. I wonder when I will jump the shark. I wondered if it would jump the shark at around the time when the actual show did. That would be a neat coincidence. So, I went to jumptheshark.com to see when general “People who take part in Internet voting” public believed the show to jump. In an overwhelming lead is “Never,” which is what I’m aiming for with this.

In third place is “Day One,” which I hope isn’t true.

Second is when Monica and Chandler got married. So, if I can keep this going as an interesting thing beyond that, then I’ll feel good.

Anyway, I should be getting my next Friends disc next Monday, so the lunacy shall resume next week.

In the meantime, what better to insert between posts about a TV show? A post about a commercial.

Check out this commercial I found.



It’s a British commercial—or should I say “advert”—for Colgate. The jingle is to the theme of a Madness song Baggy Trousers, and they’re all dressed and dancing like Madness as well. At least I think they dressed like that for one of their videos. If not, that I’m somehow left with the idea that they did.

I’m not sure why this blows my mind as much as it does.

While I like Madness, I never pictured them being so popular—especially with the kids—that they would use their music and style for a children's toothpaste commercial.

I’d have to say, it’s done pretty well. I like the tall kid who does the neck thing whenever he can fit it in. I'm curious as to why they keep doing the walk a good 7 seconds after the music ends

Then I started to consider that maybe they really were insanely popular in Britain, so much that they even appealed to kids so much that attaching their music to a toothpaste commercial would seem like a viable marketing option.

Then I found this.



This seems like it’s an American spin to a British idea. I can tell that that’s what this is because:

1) Usually when we take something from the Brits, our version is far more inferior. The one exception to this is The Office, which can hold a candle to its predecessor.
2) The American Dental Association’s Seal on the lower left-hand corner in the beginning. The other had no such seal. One could make the joke that Britain has no counterpart to the American Dental Association, but that would be a low blow.
3) For what seems to be no real reason, Uncle Sam is there.
4) The voiceover at the end has an American accent.

This commercial blows my mind, but in a way completely opposite to the British version. I cannot figure out what Colgate-Palmolive was thinking when it greenlit this idea.

They’re cashing in on the popularity of Madness, only I don’t think they were nearly as big this side of "the pond." Still, the Madness music is there, being sung in a British accent. The words are different, because they have to make reference to Maximum Fluoride Protection, or “MFP.” This leads me to believe that American consumers are dumber than British ones. The British commercial doesn’t feel the need to make up some term to make it sound like it’s that much better or different than anything else on the shelf.

Really, what the hell is "Maximum Fluoride Protection?" There's no way that's an actual thing that exists.

Since the words aren’t the same, it makes me wonder why they didn’t just take a song that was wildly popular in the U.S., and make stupid lyrics to that.

I'm guessing that "they" already bought the rights to that song and didn't really have the budget for another song. So, they decided to use the same song in the U.S., even though the American version wouldn't really make that much sense.

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