ONE MORE TIME

This is the first article I have written by popular request. So many of you readers liked my take on three automobile advertisements on TV that I decided to tackle a few more.

Several of you mentioned the Matthew McConaughey commercial where he approaches a swimming pool dressed in a $1000 suit. He looks into the water. Then he turns around and executes a backward dive into the pool. I assume he puts a towel on the seat of the expensive car he is next shown driving. However, I know he stopped somewhere first to blow-dry his hair, because he is looking pretty good---as only Matthew McConaughey can. I can’t remember the brand of the car, but Matthew does have a nice set of teeth when he smiles. So maybe the ad is about brushing your teeth with whitening toothpaste, after taking a bath. He is probably smiling because he is thinking, “I can’t believe I am getting paid to do this.”

The next celebrity ad that totally perplexes me is the one featuring Johnny Depp. He’s kind of a confusing guy even when he doesn’t appear in a commercial---kind of resembles a raccoon with all that tattooed eyeliner. At first I thought this was another car ad, because Johnny is driving down a road and sees a water buffalo. Then he stops to dig a hole in the sand in the desert. “There’s got to be a pony in there somewhere,” but I know he doesn’t find it, because he throws down the shovel, to gaze upon a bottle of Man Perfume that is floating in the air. No, I don’t know the name of the floating perfume, but after all that digging in the sand, I guess he needs a spritz of something.

The next commercial is in the realm of the creepy.  It features a big talking frog, attached to a bathroom wall. He is holding a role of toilet paper in his webbed toes. The frog is complaining that when people come to and fro into the bathroom, he is forever doomed to watching them. As the television camera zooms in on those big, popping frogeyes, he sits on the bathroom wall staring at the toilet.

Why would anyone in his right mind want to buy a brand of toilet paper that is being promoted by a peeping Tom frog? Even the ads to cure constipation are more appealing than this.

And then there’s the commercial where a guy talks and then people lose the tops of their heads, because they find out that they can buy some stuff cheaper, than when they had their heads intact.  Makes no sense at all!

Esther Blumenfeld (“Where’s the beef?”)