The Video Game Critic

I just saw a new Snapple commercial on Facebook, and my first reaction was that the puppets looked like they were from Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, the YouTube horror series that pretends to be a children's show until people start dying. Watching it made me nervous because I kept expecting something horrible to happen. Here's a link if anybody wants to see it:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158547709688876&id=64867348875

What about you guys? What's some of the worst examples of advertisement you've ever seen?

Most Apple commercials are pretentious garbage.

"What's a computer?"

RadioShack’s “Let’s go to the Shack” commercial.

An Atari PC commercial, which said their PC-Cline had IBM power. That implies the ST wasn’t as powerful as a PC-XT, which undercut their other marketing efforts.

Atari’s “The Fun is Back” 2600 Jr. ad.

That Pokemon Red/Blue commercial where the bus driver crushes his bus into a Gameboy.

Some local furniture store ads where a guy belly-flips onto a mattress, or beats furniture with a baseball bat.

A PSA where a man is walking with his daughter, about 10 years old. A bunch of teen boys on leashes run out to her & start begging for attention. The dad then turns to her & says “Well, I guess it’s time we have you spayed!” The camera then cuts to the girl, showing her as a puppy. Just...no.

Another PSA where a woman slaps herself each time she makes an excuse to not give money.

The famous anti-smoking PSA which shows animals with cigarettes in their mouths and a narrator says "If you think this looks ridiculous, remember, smoking is unnatural to you as it is to them"

The boogerman commercial of some fat dude eating jalapenos and beans and has an "atomic butt blast"

This rare exercise commercial "This is your butt" zooming in on kids rear ends.

When I was in California back in 2002, Carl's Jr. would play these commercials of people eating their burgers like pigs. They would be munching, smacking, slurping. It got so bad that I actually had my girlfriend send me my N64 so that I wouldn't have to watch so much TV.

Of course had she known what I was doing with those California babes. Ok, I was striking out miserably, but that's not the point...

Anything with that damn Gecko or damn Duck

Any time the commercials of Flo from Progressive Insurance and her gang really makes me want to get a running head start and ram my forehead on the corner of our coffee table.

I know you didn’t ask and it’s not an ad per se, but this INTV demo from 1979 would’ve absolutely blown my mind back then. https://youtu.be/ppYK29cHygQ

pacman000 wrote:RadioShack’s “Let’s go to the Shack” commercial.

An Atari PC commercial, which said their PC-Cline had IBM power. That implies the ST wasn’t as powerful as a PC-XT, which undercut their other marketing efforts.

Atari’s “The Fun is Back” 2600 Jr. ad.

That Pokemon Red/Blue commercial where the bus driver crushes his bus into a Gameboy.

Some local furniture store ads where a guy belly-flips onto a mattress, or beats furniture with a baseball bat.

A PSA where a man is walking with his daughter, about 10 years old. A bunch of teen boys on leashes run out to her & start begging for attention. The dad then turns to her & says “Well, I guess it’s time we have you spayed!” The camera then cuts to the girl, showing her as a puppy. Just...no.

Another PSA where a woman slaps herself each time she makes an excuse to not give money.

"The fun is back" is the reason I purchased another Atari 2600 after mine got sold off in 1985. In 1988, I had a setup in my bedroom to kill for, especially for a 15 year old. I had a nice L shaped desk (well, 2 desks in a corner, but they formed an L), with a pretty decent Trinitron TV on it. I had a Commodore 64 and my 2600 Jr. hooked up to it. The nice thing was my controllers were cross compatible. While I spent a lot of time with my Commodore (I had everything for this thing, the tape deck, 2 cassette drives, a printer, mouse, an acoustic coupler, which I would use when my friends would call and play the content from their commodore cassette games so I could copy them onto a floppy, interesting way to pirate games, etc.) I grew to love the 2600 again. By 1988 the games were getting pretty cheap, so I was buying quite a few of them. A lot of fun was had. The price tag in the commercial (Under 50 bucks) was too good to pass up!

Sticking to retrogames (because otherwise the possibilities are way too vast), even as a young teen I was dumbstruck by Atari's ad for the 5200 that showed a game like Pac-Man on the 2600 (implication: yuck!), then showed the 5200 version and had some gamer proclaim "NOW we're talkin'!"

Any pharmaceutical commercial that features A: painting, B: a big salad, C: an animated mascot, double offense if the mascot is “evil” or D: Someone grilling shish kabobs.

VideoGameCritic wrote:Most Apple commercials are pretentious garbage.

Amen to this. What’s even worse is the stock “friends and families” they use for demonstrating Apple products and services. In an blatant attempt to show diversity they forgot to show people without an $800 wardrobe or anyone over 140lbs soaking wet.

Oh how the mighty have fallen from the iPod Silhouette days. Steve Wozniak must be turning in his grave.