Hello again bloggers, I thought I might restrict myself to one blog a week as to not exhaust both you and I with a wealth of words and useless shite that I spout about. This week, its CREEPY ADVERTS...WOOOO!!! Whoops sorry for that.
On a break I had from work last year I stumbled upon (joke for the cybergeeks out there) a blackhole that pulls you in and doesn't let go, a Youtube trip! In my immensely bored state of mind, I started searching for clips of things I remembered from my childhood, but as what frequently happens in this quicksand of the world wide web, I kept searching until I stumbledupon (there it is again) on an advert of Kinder Surpise that was shown (and apparently banned) in the mid 1980's.
Now first let me say that I am not normally frightened by horror films or similar programmes set out to shock or scare you. But the next three commercials I am going to talk about are just too weird and far too fake to make me want to eat chocolate or popcorn or even buy myself a dolly of a laughing child, this was probably Gary Glitter's shopping list before the day he got caught.
The 30 second clip consists of an all too convincing Humpty Dumpty character enticing the viewer into buying his chocolatey treats. Humpty's possibly far to realistic to come across as a cuddly child's character and this was probably one of the reasons it scared littl-ans shitless back in the day. It manuarisms are far too chilling and real which gives it a slightly sinister edge.
Which brings me to my next commercial. In 2007, American popcorn tycoon Orville Redenbacher appeared in an advert promoting his number one selling product. I watched this advert in a compilation of these clips and straight away noticed that something was not right with our host. It was only when a caption appeared on the screen saying that this man was dead, that I genuinely had to turn it off. Redenbacher had indeed been dead for the last 13 years when the commercial was released and this was a sort of weird CGI zombie telling the viewer about what he likes to pop in his mouth! The only thing that could be creepier is to share a sleeping bag with a hologram of Michael Jackson.
And thats the trouble with these both of these adverts. They both revolve around a man-made central character or figure which has been made to look convincing but looks far too synthetic and flawed to come across as being genuine. And for that reason it sends a shiver down your spine because you know that although they both are not real, the quirkiness is what makes them slightly un-nerving.
The third and possibly most frightening advert I watched was a commercial for the American doll Baby Laugh A Lot from 1971, which when you pressed its stomach, laughed hysterically for about a minute. One clip I found suggests that the voice mechanism used was of a man's laughter and not that of a small girl as used in the advert. Whichever way you look at it, the creators of Child's Play and Bride of Chucky must have been taking notes. Im seriously convinced that Tony Soprano and other mafia types should have used use this product on squealers by tying them down to a chair, turning the lights off and shining a torch on it as it laughs its victims into a state of utter horror to get the information they needed. It would have worked.
In conclusion, I am pleased I am not an LSD casualty or these would have probably been the kind of nightmares I would be subjected to all the time. All the more reason to channel hop during the commercial breaks I think.
Kinder Suprise Commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGxWxjEr6F8
Orville Redenbacher Creepy Commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcn4p213Zg8
Baby Laugh A Lot Commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44e-Y08_B-0
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