I ran into one of my favorite infomercials that I haven’t seen in years the other week on YouTube and that’s the “Ronco Showtime BBQ Rotisserie.” In the late ’90s early 2000s, I remember watching it all most every mourning while folding papers for my paper route and thought it would be perfect for MST3K. Now, what say you?
On further consideration, it seems like this is too narrow a topic, so let me broaden it a bit to include ALL TV commercials.
I, for example, would call out the plague of prescription drug commercials. Not just their terrifying lists of side effects “including death,” but also lines like “tell your doctor about your medical history.” Up to now my doctor’s had no interest in that!
Have at it!
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Anything involving the stereotypical Stupid Man/Woman. “Too stupid to figure out how to roll up a hose? Here’s the new Acme Super Hose that shrinks itself like a twelve year old boy in a cold shower!”. You know the ones I mean. The person is portrayed as a helpless moron then Product X saves the day. Yeesh!
anything medical.
I always hated those ones that hawked a kitchen tool for a very specific task. Something that you’d use maybe a few times and then put on a back shelf, never to be seen again. The Slap Chop comes to mind. I tried one of those and found a knife is just better and easier to clean.
The Flexsteel (Flexseal?) ones with the guy shouting about all the millions of leaky things you have that need sealing. Like when you accidentally cut a gaping hole in the bottom of your boat. Riffing goldmine, I tells ya.
Just imagine the fun they would have with.. The Ronco Inside The Eggshell Egg Scrambler!
The one for the new, nearly painless catheters.
I’ll nominate the commercials for The Snuggie®. People, it’s a frickin’ blanket with sleeves. Or a backwards robe. Y’know — for those too moronic to know how to put on a robe.
(If you love/hate ads and infomercials, join us amateur cappers and riffers over on Hipsoda’s Caption Crack. Tons of ads in the Grab-o-Matic for your capping pleasure!)
Those many different infomercial for addressing advancing baldness with Ron Popeil’s Hair in a Can. I had thought in this day and age that it is no longer used by anyone. I was struck dumb when I saw a government official appear on national news with his head spray painted in the style of Count Chocula.
TRUMPY BEAR –
I have no words to describe this commercial (that I can use here).
But don’t look for it now, it’s only available in the Year 2000!
“RiffTrax Live: Giant Spider Invasion” is now available at Rifftrax.com. :-)
? I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect har-mo-ny; I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it com-pa-ny. ?
CROW: Pepsi, however, is utterly EVIL!
Crud! I tried to put in musical symbols there.
I get the point, but I’ve always loved those commercials! It’s always seemed like they’re trying to make us laugh by exaggerating how hard/unpleasant it is to do X (slice a tomato, roll up a hose, etc.). Now, on the other hand, I’d like to see The Brains go after those ads in which: 1.) someone is too dense to understand simple explanations of simple things because he/she is so fixated on the product being advertised; 2.) characters are fanatically obsessed with the product being advertised–those stupid blue bears with their bathroom tissue, for example (ick, ick, ick); 3.) people interfere with other peoples’ lives to advertise something–Jennifer Gardner interrupting a wedding to talk about Capital One credit cards, or Samuel L. Jackson braying in your face about same.
Voiceover: Cialis for daily use is the proven treatment for erectile dysfunction. Cialis is also indicated to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH. Tell your doctor about all your medical symptoms and ask if your heart his healthy enough for sex. Do not take Cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. Side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache. To avoid long term injury get medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. If you have any loss of hearing or decrease in vision, or allergic reaction such as hives, rash, or swelling of the lips, tongue, or throat, stop using Cialis and get medical help right away. Ask you doctor today about Cialis for daily use and a free 30 day trial.
Crow: J—J–Joel? What’s “erectile dysfunction”.
Tom: Yeah! Well, whatever it is it sure sounds better than this stuff!
Any and all Progressive Insurance ads. I especially want to see them go full Joe Don Baker on Flo, the most irritating presence on my TV set.
Also, ads for cars in which the very essence of all human happiness, freedom, love and fulfillment is simply driving down a road in a particular automobile.
Out in YouTube land, there’s a fan made M&tb riff of a Trojan ad for… um… yeah.
Hopefully this link works.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Iqc5cyWZjs&list=PL6E62F9F610A15315&index=1
Most televangelists on commercial TV are technically infomercials, so I’m counting it:
– Jack VanImpe – the guy aged between 85 and 2000 with a fawning wife next to him who thinks every headline is a sign of the rapture. Not the most corrupt, but I had records of him saying Jesus is coming back in the 70s, so look busy.
– Jim Bakker – The granddaddy of all disgraced televangelists. For a few minutes in the 90s he seemed to have turned over a new leaf, but dogs and vomit and all. He sells more random crap and has more kooks on as guests than he ever did in his heyday, plus he has a new wife nearly 20 years his junior. At least Tammy seemed self-aware after their fall (RIP Tammy).
– Creflo Dollar – Man who demanded $65 million from his followers so he could buy a new jet. The name’s kind of a tell, but his wife’s name is Taffi Dollar and now I want discount candy.
– Mike Bickle – Runs a place in Kansas City where they pray 24/7 called IHOP Neither of these things are bad by themselves until you watch their live stream and realize it’s really really cult-like and Bickle thinks this is bringing God back soon with them leading the charge. Plus there’s no pancakes.
Any Flex Seal/Flex Tape ad featuring that loony Phil “THAT’S A LOT OF DAMAGE” Swift!
Highly riffable!
Matthew McConaughey’s Cadillac ads would be alright, alright, alright to riff.
Seriously. I can’t be sure if he’s hawking Cadillacs or weed.
Which brings to mind the whole gold mine of locally produced TV commercials. Let’s riff our local cannabis shops’ ads, in which the people barely know which way to face for the camera and where grammatically correct language is but a dream.
Any of the Magic Bullet series, with Mick and Mimi and their houseguests.
RonCo’s Showtime Six Star Knives. Ron’s cousin Arnold cutting various items with the knives, and the martial arts instructor in the audience could bring Master Ninja callbacks.
There’s one commercial where some poor, hapless woman is trying to apply make-up, making a mess, while the soundtrack is a woman’s voice going, “Ha-ha, ha-ha ha-ha-ha…” I always riff in defense of that poor sap being laughed at by the music.
When the aforementioned Progressive ads are on, I always refer to the Flo character as being Mr. B Natural’s daughter. I do unironically laugh at the “I’m not the maid” ones, though.
Cialis: I refer to it as “See Alice”, a woman so sexy that the ED goes away immediately.
And often when watching the Three Stooges on Boston’s channel 38, they air an ad for a lawyer that’s practically the spitting image of Moe Howard! Usually I go, “It’s Moe” in Curly’s voice (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!)
That’s to be expected from someone who’s dazed and confused most of the time.
Car dealerships and furniture stores here in Maine always think it’s cute to have the owners droning on with their kids and/or dogs in tow. Have at ’em, ‘bots! Back in the ’90s, some local ad from New England was actually based on MST3K! Two ladies sitting in silhouette in a movie theater and commenting on whatever the product was as it flashed on the screen!
LOOK POLISH
About the only ads can’t avoid anymore are car ads on my Pandora feed, with the inevitable fast talking over the unpleasant details of what it’s really going to cost you to drive away in that new Volvo for only $548 a month.
Voiceover:seventytwomonthlease seventhousandfourhundredfortytwodollarsdueatsigning tencentpermileoversixthousandperyear …
Crow: “Two-point-two-percent financing only applies on the second Tuesday of each month only with a full moon clearly showing the night before and if you were wearing red socks. All dealer markdowns apply on all other days of the week except Sunday (Servo joins in, they battle to see who can finish first) inwhichcaseyou mustbringyour mother andthedoctorthatdelivered you into this world with you to verifyyouridentity. All other cars on the lot except theblackone inthecornerunderthetree willbesoldatmaximumprofitasdeterminedbythe salespersonatthetimeofsale.”
Disclaimer: text stolen from https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/whats-with-the-quiet-fast-talking-gibberish-at-the-end-of-some-radio-commercials.634068/. No endorsement is implied. Celebrityvoiceimpersonated. Nobailmentcreated.Donotremoveunderpenaltyoflaw.Nottobetakeninternally.Anyotheruseofthepicturesdescriptiosnandaccountsofthispostisprohibited.
Have to second Sampo and goalieboy82: Big Pharma ads are a noxious blight on the culture: “Ask your doctor if you actually have this disease before begging him to prescribe Prolxydnticaliaexpialidosious. We may be able to help you get a high-interest loan if you can’t afford it.” Could see a lot of good tie-ins to The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, or The Unearthly here.
Other abominations are those ads that show people using mouthwash or deodorants, or sitting on the toilet. I mean, who wants to see any of that?!? I can hear Crow: “Okay, so we’ve seen the inside of her smelly mouth, her pits, and now we see her perched on the throne! Thanks, Madison Avenue!”
Sampo said: I, for example, would call out the plague of prescription drug commercials. Not just their terrifying lists of side effects “including death,” but also lines like “tell your doctor about your medical history.” Up to now my doctor’s had no interest in that!
I agree with him. Those drugs have hundreds of side effect’s including death and going into a coma. That’s well worth the risk to cure your acne.
Maybe I’m a purist but I go for the classics:
– “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”(TM). Seriously, who says “I’ve fallen” instead of “I fell”?
– “Clap on, Clap off, The Clapper”
– “Head-On, apply directly to the forehead”
– Wilford Brimley’s “Diabeetus” commercials
My most-hated commercial of all time is the Grand Daddy of all prescription drug commercials, the original ad for Claritin. At the time, pharmas were apparently allowed to place ads for drugs but not allowed to say anything about what the drug did. So, it was the most inane, cloying commercial, with people in hot air balloons flying in clear blue skies accompanied by various voice overs. “Claritin. Ask your doctor about Claritin. It’s a new day with Claritin. Ask your doctor about Claritin.” No indication of WTF Claritin was supposed to do or what condition it was supposed to treat, everyone was just supposed to ask their doctor to tell them about it, whether they could use it or not. It still makes me furious!
I’m imagining The Mads taking inspiration from this for the invention exchange and turning it into a helmet.
One of the many, MANY ways to kill the hapless TV’s Frank.
The My Pillow guy… I see him a lot and he annoys me horribly. I’d like to see J, M, or J&TB get a hold of him.
AMEN! If I saw him inside my medicine cabinet, I’d scream bloody murder, grab a sharp object, and start stabbing repeatedly, long past the point that he stops breathing!
Also, seeing Phil Swift and his hawking of FlexSeal/FlexTape/FlexWhatever makes me long for the quiet dignity of Billy Mays.
Last but most certainly least, any Sonic ad featuring those two unfunny assclowns in the drive-thru. There are no Sonics in the U.P., but even if there were, I would refuse to eat there out of protest to the existence of those morons.
would love to see Bridget and Mary Jo do some of the late night commercials (for pills that make a certain part bigger and late night call me girl numbers)
if i had a boat and it got a gaping hole in it, i would just just write it off (and get some money for it too)
First, logging in with Disqus is deeply hosed.
Now.
Inspired, no doubt, by Cal Worthington (preserved forever on YouTube, young ones), the generations of morons who establish their credibility as trustworthy transportation counselors BY RIDING ON GIANT, DANGEROUS QUADRUPEDS THROUGH FIELDS OF RUSTING FORD GRANADAS WITH HUGE NUMBERS ON THEIR WINDSHIELDS.
That hasn’t gone away; there’s a long-time ambulance chaser in Wichita named Pistotnik who rides a longhorn steer and advertises himself as “The Bull.”
It wouldn’t have worked for Mike, but Joel should have had a regular routine riding on an outside-the-grocery-store mechanical horse in the studio. Joel would look sleepy-eyed and say friendly, Howdy, partner! things. The mechanical horse could be kitted as a polar bear, a narwhal, a tardigrade.
Seriously, can’t you see Joel waving a white hat, rocking back and forth on a coin-operated pony covered in carpet samples, saying, “So come on down to Joel’s Jewelers, home of me and my buddy, Carl the Friendly Creeping Terror!”
On The Lighter Side From My Childhood –
The commercial begins with two flamenco dancers rat-a-tatting away on a wooden floor. The camera zooms in on their feet stomping away, then they suddenly cease. “STOP! THAT’S NO WAY TO KILL ROACHES!!”
It was for a local exterminator service.
This would be specific to Christmas, but I’d love to see them take on those car ads you see around the holidays. Someone runs out of a house on Christmas morning and goes to the driveway, where they see a BRAND NEW CAR with a big bow on top! Seriously, who buys cars as Christmas presents? If you’re a billionaire, maybe, but otherwise it’s almost always an exercise in present-shaming – if you’re not taking out a second mortgage on your house to buy presents, your loved ones are getting short-changed .
I was trying to put “rant over” at the end, but it didn’t show up. I miss the Edit button.
There are so many kids today who just DON’T REMEMBER what J&tB was making fun of, in the Amazing Discoveries segment from “Phantom Creeps/Jungle Goddess”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpTXK_p2iE4
I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing.
As for MSTing unMST’ed commercials, I remember being so fatigued with antacid commercials in the late 80’s/early 90’s, all featuring young yuppies talking about their acid reflux problems with a grim note of grownup mortality-fear as if their doctor had just diagnosed a two-years-to-live disease, that the riffs just started writing themselves:
“My heartburn had been bad…I mean, really bad. I was scared–There’d been a history of heart problems in my family, so I went to see my doctor. Was I relieved when he told me it was only indigestion, and recommended Mylanta. Then he called me a ‘hypochondriac’, and slapped me in the head.”
A good one for “deep hurting” are these ads for a face tightening cream Plexiderm. They have an insufferable tune at the start of the commercial and if you’ve seen it before it triggers dread. The diabolical thing about a Plexiderm ad is that it can be a regular commercial, an true infomercial or somewhere in-between in length. The worst is the latter one, where you think the commercial is going to end, but it just keeps going.
I still have–and occasionally use–my Ronco (mini-)rotisserie!
I’d recommend “Sprite: Sun Fizz,” or “IKEA: Old lamp,” both directed by Spike Jonze, but let’s face it: they’re too brilliant to riff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjK1aUU2Dx4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecTUnfHyj8k
Any ads where someone starts casually talking about their diarrhea or vaginal infections.
Also there was a series of ads run by Duracell that featured this incredibly annoying family of clockwork automaton style robots. Unfortunately some of these ads got recorded on some of my MST tapes. To this day when given a choice I buy Energizer batteries.
CARL MALDEN: What will you do? What will you do?
SERVO: Um…um…pass! Next question!
CARL MALDEN: American Express Travelers Checks. Don’t leave home without them.
CROW: Or your pants.
Those Go National ads with Patrick Warburton (probably the only things I don’t like him in). The one currently being shown in more commercial breaks than there are commercial breaks, starting with him coming down the escalator and ending with the exercise guy in a sight gag worthy of one of those Geico or Liberty ads, but much stupider.
The part of it where Warburton tosses the bottle and that guy we see moments earlier catches it in a hilariously odd superimposed bit of business. My simple riff at that moment: imitating the “beew-woop!” sound from the old Looney Tunes (originally a vocal effect by Bob Clampett). Sometimes a variation of that. An example of riffing a moment I actually like, making it funnier.
Ah, local car ads. Many of my childhood Movie Monster Memories (TM) were brought to me by Art Grindle Dodge, which by remarkable coincidence would be perfect riffing fodder.
“He’s yelling at us! Why is he yelling at us? He’s jumping on the car! He’s climbing on the roof! Now he’s yelling again, and pointing at us! He’s gonna blow! AAAAAAAAAA!”
Much later in life, “There’s only one Bob Rooooarrman!”
Believe me, we’re all grateful for that.
There was a super-irritating ad for condoms that used to play on Comedy Central back when the show was there. It has some brainless, all-attitude punk ranting against condoms and how condoms are a tool of The Man or some such nonsense. It was easily the Most Annoying Commercial In The World. The guy made you want to punch him the face and kick him in the ‘nads.
But in lieu of actual violence, I would like to see it riffed.
I’d say any time there’s a commercial with a gratuitous shot of a woman’s rear end (such as the latest Target ad with the female delivery worker in tight jeans).
I aways riff to myself, “I see the reason why this ad got greenlit.”
Speaking of cryptic medication commercials, I remember one that featured a girl in a lime green swimsuit windsurfing over a field of wheat. Cryptic, but definitely easy on the eyes.
Also, I don’t know if this is true, but: the place where I work has an elevator with a sort of bulletin board that lists bits of useless trivia. One bit of trivia said that the My Pillow guy was a drug addict whose addiction got so bad that his own drug dealers staged an intervention. Make of that what you will.