The Affari Edge Blog

Everyone loves puppies. But how many people love yanking newborn puppies out of their mother’s womb? Thanks to HASBRO, now you can join in the fun!

I guess in 1991, when this spot was made, the folks at HASBRO were looking to jazz up their toys a bit. Anyone can make a stuffed animal, but only HASBRO makes the animal you can safely un-stuff! And exactly what is Puppy Surprise stuffed with? Pocket change she shouldn’t have eaten? A bad batch of ALPO? A tapeworm the size of your living room couch? No, good old Puppy Surprise is stuffed with baby puppies because she’s been whoring around again.

This product was obviously marketed towards young girls, and I can see why since raising a small child to adulthood is part of a woman’s life. But puppies pulled right from the mother’s gut? WHAT?!? I understand baby dolls that wet themselves or need feeding as educational and I suppose fun for young girls to play with while unknowingly training themselves for motherhood, but how many kids are around for a live birthing of a dog? And even if they were around, wouldn’t they be horrified to know newborn puppies don’t come out all plush with ribbons on their heads? There’s a lot of sticky goo on those cute little puppies when they first hit the ground.

Maybe the whole motherhood thing wasn’t the point of the product… it was just training kids to take care of puppies early on. Okay, I get it, every kid gets a chance to raise and take care of a puppy or kitty until it dies many many many years later. But I can tell you firsthand pulling babies from its mother just isn’t fun or appealing. For me it came in high school when we were dissecting dogfish (ironically) in marine biology class. Cutting open a dead fish and looking at its insides– no problem. Having my teacher feel around inside the fish and pull out four or five fully-formed babies like he was God and Doug Henning’s love child– lunch was not eaten that day. And how many kids were mauled by their neighbor’s dog because they were squeezing the dog’s stomach trying to guess how many babies were inside? I smell a lawsuit here!

If the idea of having your daughter stick her hand up the uterus of a stuffed animal so she could pull out the babies isn’t disturbing enough, the fact HASBRO had the gall to randomly insert various numbers of puppies into the mother is just cruel. So you go out and spend $20 on this toy, and your daughter is unhappy because it only produces three puppies. Do you go out and spend $20 more in the hopes she hits the jackpot and gets five? How many stuffed dogs and their puppies were left abandoned because girls pulled a Veruca Salt and wanted more right now?

So HASBRO has done the amazing, making animal birth as cute and cuddly as a teddy bear. If only the kids saw the “Puppy Surprise’s One Night Stand” toy explaining how those little puppies got in there in the first place, abstinence would be all the rage!

Some commercials need no grand introduction…

Really now, who came up with this? And what marital problems was he experiencing at the time? I can only imagine what the creative meeting for this product was like.

Mego CEO: Okay guys, we have this new game that’s a combination of checkers and pool. What should we call it? Tommy?

Tommy: How about, “Cock Knockers”?

CEO: Not bad… Bill?

Bill: I was thinking something along the idea of, “Scrotum Squasher”.

Jim: Ooh! Ooh! I know!

CEO: Yes Jim?

Jim: BALL BUSTER!

CEO: Brilliant! We need to make 30 million of these games right now!

Finding the funniest part of this commercial is tough, because there are so many moments outside of the name of the product itself. Here are my nominations:

* Little Timmy’s reaction when his kid sister busts his balls. Or the look on his sister’s face as if she were saying, “Up yours!”

* Our announcer saying it’s a “family game”. Well maybe if you’re part of the Manson family. If my family did this I would have been a teenage runaway.

* Dad chasing the kids away from the table when he realizes it’s time for Mom to bust his balls.

* Our announcer very slyly, slowly, almost in a gangster kind of way informing us the point of the game is to “try to bust your opponent’s balls!”

* Our announcer telling us this game is as easy as checkers. Well, I suppose a kick to the groin is easier than checkers… and quicker. I still wouldn’t call it family fun though.

* Dad yelling at Mom for being a ball buster… and Mom giving that wink to the camera as if she were saying, “Your damn right Henry! Now pick up those empty beer cans or I’ll do it again!”

Before you think this is all just a sick joke, realize that this really was an actual board game! And while Mego was promoting Ball Buster, the founder of the company declined a licensing agreement to make action figures of some little movie called Star Wars. Not surprisingly, Mego was out of business by 1983. Can we call George Lucas a ball buster because of that?

I’m sure a game with a similar name is available at adult “toy” stores across America, but make no mistake when it comes to the original source of family fun: Ball Buster!

As a broadcast news junkie, one of my favorite things to do when I have free time is check out vintage TV news promos and newscasts. I know, I’m a big fat dork, but some of these are truly entertaining. Others are classic(ally bad) like this one from 1983 in the bustling metropolis of Grand Forks, North Dakota!

Gee… makes you just want to jump in the car and drive to North Dakota, doesn’t it?

We start with our bright, young reporter proudly announcing there’s good news on WDAZ-TV, channel 8. And that shot is followed up by a shot of… snow! I guess the good news is there appears to only be a couple of inches on the ground, which means that shot of the state capitol in Bismarck must have been recorded in May or early June. After this odd selection of establishing shots, we’re presented with an even odder selection of other shots supposedly from North Dakota. I say supposedly because a doctor answering the phone and an oil pump can be anywhere, but we’re reminded this is North Dakota with a shot of a plane pulling up to a jetway in snow! Keep hitting the snow!

Now up until this point the random shots of people and things doing things was at least set to the beat of the 1983 news music. But the intern putting this together apparently got bored or was forced to rush the job because we’re inundated with more random shots randomly put in to wherever the hell they fit. Telephone operators, surgery in process, a locomotive at a round house… remember, this is good news North Dakota! Typing, dialing the phone, weird green waves, buses driving, and some schlep fiddling around with a piece of paper! More at 6 p.m.!

Then we’re left with an Atari 800 graphic, followed eventually by a voice-over, that at WDAZ news, the difference is people. Well that sounds nice, but where are the people? If your whole positioning statement is your people make the difference in being better than the competition, why did you bombard us with stock footage of buses and typing and trains spinning around in circles? In fact the only person from the news staff we saw was the unidentified guy in the first two seconds of the promo!

Twenty-five years later, WDAZ-TV is still on the air and now they’re calling themselves “Your Home Team”. I’m sure the latest promos for the station feature fuzzy bunnies, a house of cards on a coffee table, and a kid setting ants on fire with a magnifying class to remind folks that, yes indeed, we are your home team!

Pete Rose has done many pathetic, illegal, and downright awful things during and after his glorious baseball career. This commercial, however, may be the worst of them all!

Gambling on the Cincinnati Reds while he was the manager? No big deal…

Making a quick buck off autographed baseballs that said he gambled? Ehh, a man has to pay the bills…

Doing a show tune about aftershave with Mel Sharples from “Alice”? Unacceptable!

When this commercial was released in 1976, the “Big Red Machine” was on its way to its second-consecutive World Series title, and Rose was just nine years away from becoming Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader. It’s no secret Rose will do pretty much anything for a few hundred dollars, but even this seems far-fetched and unbelievable.

First, Rose has had far more nastier things said of him from a heckler other than, “What’s a man really want in an aftershave?” Yet this intriguing question from actor Vic Tayback not only incenses Rose, he actually calls time out while at bat! You can call Pete a degenerate gambler, a womanizer, or a low-life scum, but don’t you dare call him a perfumed-up sissy boy! And to prove he’s clearly not going to take that abuse from a grown man wearing a powder blue sweater, Rose decides to show how manly he is by going Broadway baby!

There is something very Billy Bean or Brady Anderson-esque about this quartet to say the least. Four men, some wearing tight pants, singing about how a man should smell. Rose, who is a terrible singer if you haven’t figured it out by now, crows loud and clear how one wants to “feel like a man” although one can almost sense his Y chromosome evolving into an X as this commercial laughingly winds its way to the grand finale. All four participants, to the beat of the syllables A-QUA-VEL-VA, proudly display their Aqua Velva in a way that makes Van Halen’s ultra-Caucasian dance number in the music video for “Hot For Teacher” seem like something out of Motown.

I can only wonder how well this commercial worked for the makers of Aqua Velva. Were gangs of men crashing through grocery store doors, leaping and skipping their way to the men’s fragrence aisle singing this song? Were women swooning over their sweet-smelling Aqua Velva men at the Barbara Streisand concert? Did the rest of the Big Red Machine sing this at team parties in front of hookers and mountains of cocaine? One can only wonder. And one can only wonder if Rose got paid well for this commercial, and if he invested it wisely on betting for a Reds sweep over the Yankees in the ‘76 Fall Classic!

Did you ever wonder why they called that toy company, “Wham-O?” Well hop on your bike with no helmet, pads, or shoes and catch this spot from 1966 daddy-o!

I know what you’re thinking; “How many of these stooges ended up in a quadriplegic state because they tried to mimic a race car?” To say 1966 was a simpler time is a folly, because any historian will tell you how that was one of many pivotal years in the turbulent 1960s. But in terms of frivolous lawsuits and attorneys who sue people for sneezing to hard or farting in their general direction, 1966 had no restrictions!

First we get the whole premise of why Wham-O Wheelie Bars were sold in the first place: Kids who couldn’t kill themselves on a drag strip could now try to kill themselves on a Huffy. We’re told that motorcycles do it, cars do it, even trucks do it. Heck, we all do it. But bicycles? They don’t do it. Why? Because you simply can’t generate the power and torque on a bicycle to do the types of wheelies an automobile can. Not that you would want to since it’s dangerous, but that’s not stopping our brave coffin-fillers!

I mean, look at the stupid things these kids (and an adult or two) are doing! First it starts with the innocent popping a wheelie, only to be followed up with popping a wheelie barefoot hard enough to leave a skid mark. God only knows what that kid’s feet look like 42 years later. Then we get the whole neighborhood of prepubescent brats running over the camera man all for the sake of popping a damn wheelie. Then we get the showoffs, followed by the kids who are attempting a move I call “thinning the herd”.

Part of you says, “WOW! That’s cool.” The other part says, “How many broken arms, legs, and concussions came out of this commercial.” Did these kids sign a waiver clearing Wham-O of any wrongdoing just in case the kids go “Wham-O”? And what about the pencil-neck geek popping a wheelie with his kid? Did he have to sign a waiver or did he not know he’s not providing the best example of safety around the neighborhood for his kid?

So we’ve had the dream factor (MAKE A WHEELIE LIKE A BIG BOY’S CAR!) and the wow factor (HERE’S WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE BEFORE YOU END UP IN A MOTORIZED WHEELCHAIR!), now we have the superstar spokesperson factor… 1966 style! That’s not just any little old lady in the car, it’s THE little old lady from Pasadena featured in the song of the same name by Jan & Dean. Thanks to that song, the little old lady (a.k.a. Kathryn Minner) was actually a celebrity at the ripe old age of 74. Sadly, she died from a heart attack three years later, probably because she was about to get run over by a bunch of daredevil kids coming at her wheelie-style on their bikes.

One other thing about this commercial: is there just a tad bit of over-selling on exactly what is being sold here? Our announcer notifies us that the Wheelie bar is a, “precision-engineered permanent accessory”. Well, not exactly. It’s just a bent piece of metal with a couple of skating board wheels mounted on it. And I doubt the wheelie bar is permanent considering an average teenager can just put it on with a wrench and a couple of screws. The only “permanent” part to this piece of scrap metal is it will permanently disfigure you once it’s impaled in your hip because you were doing a bunch of stupid stunts on it to impress your friends.

The Wham-O Wheelie bar! Sold at bike stores and other outlets not concerned about your safety! Ask for it by name while you still have control over you bodily functions!

When people think about the biggest day in advertising, they immediately think: Super Bowl. In the next 10-20 years, there may be some competition for the standard NFL Super Bowl. There is a new trend that is slowly emerging in the sports advertising scene that has been under the radar until the past couple years. What is this ‘new Super Bowl’ you may ask? Tune into FOX this Sunday at 3pm EST and find out for yourself.

Fox is eager to present the NASCAR Daytona 500 this Sunday. Considered by drivers, fans and sports writers alike as the ‘Super Bowl of NASCAR’, the Daytona 500 continues to draw attention. In fact, FOX sold out inventory for the event over two weeks ago (a record for the network).

It’s kinda funny when you think about it. If you asked the average American to list the top five most popular sports in America, you would probably expect the NFL, MLB, NCAA FB, and possibly the NBA and NHL before you would expect NASCAR. Surprising to some, NASCAR ranks second among most watched regular season sporting events.

The Daytona 500 isn’t your ‘typical’ Super-Bowl-esk broadcast in terms of audience. While the NFL Super Bowl doesn’t discriminate in terms of demographics, the “Daytona Bowl” reaches a good amount of a specialized audience. Many advertisers have been trying to tap the difficult to reach audience of M18-34. The viewership rating among this age group increased last year, and is supposed to increase again this year.

Why has the Daytona 500 become so huge over the past few years? Is it because of the increased hype from ESPN? Maybe the growing ad dollars are attracting a larger audience. I believe it has a lot to do with timing. Being a huge sports fan, I find this time of the year mostly depressing. Both NCAA and Pro football season are over, which is extremely hard for most American sports fanatics to stomach. The only major sports going on at the moment are pro/college basketball and the NHL (which are all in mid-season and experiencing declines in fan-ship).

Then, two-weeks into our Super Bowl hangover, we sports fans hear of a huge event in the American sports world. Something to hold us over until March Madness beings. The Daytona 500 Bowl. Nestled in a quiet Sunday afternoon, it poses a perfect opportunity to invite over some friends, grill out and enjoy one of America’s classic pastimes.

The numbers are there. FOX even sold out the QUALIFYING event last Sunday. Usually qualifying is aired on SPEED or some other cable station. This race airs the qualifying in prime the Sunday before. While there will always be critics who contest that the sport is one-dimensional and boring, there will also always be those die-hard fans who will continue to bring large numbers to the sport and it’s viewership.

I’m not claiming that the Daytona 500 is going to become what the Super Bowl is today. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it became something similar. With the inflow of huge dollars from major corporations, attention is sure to follow. I know exactly where THIS male 18-34 will be on Sunday with about ten other peers. The funny thing is, so do those huge advertisers…

Not that I want to keep video submissions all in the family, but I have to thank my brother Dave for sending this classic(ally bad) commercial. It’s undated, but I recall seeing it a lot during the Saturday morning cartoons so let’s just call it 1985. And let’s just laugh as elderly people get crushed by three tons of fruit!

The first thought in my mind is whoever runs this hotel or yacht club the elderly people are gathering in is about to get the pants sued off them. Who keeps giant bundles of strawberries, grapes, and watermelons tied (rather poorly) to the ceiling? And what’s the deal with this Minnie Pearl wannabe? Was the idea of having some pumped up Miracle-Gro Frankenstein candy fall on people targeted towards hicks as a good time? Well, in a way that describes the WWE, but I digress.

Our good friend Minnie has a trick up her sleeve, as she’s apparently the only one in the building who knows “Bonkers bonks you out”. But the joke is on her after she gets a kick watching three people get squished by tumbling produce. You’d think she’d know better, chewing that disgusting little morsel of fructose corn syrup would only give her trouble. But noooooooo… wacky little Minnie has to give in to her Bonkers obsession only to get crushed by a giant Watermelon in an elevator. I now believe this commercial is solely responsible for America’s Funniest Home Videos, the revival of Gallagher in the late 1980’s, and frivolous lawsuits as lawyers all across America suddenly realized people could be killed by a wayward pomegranate.

As corny as this commercial is, I have to admit it was a decent campaign suckering many people into believing you actually got a giant-sized burst of fruit flavor in these things. And the campaign worked because Bonkers were quite popular in the late 1980’s. But the sad truth of Bonkers is revealed in this commercial when Minnie holds up a Bonkers nugget while the graphic “artificially flavored” reminds us that most cubed, soft and chewy candies strangely aren’t really natural. Come to think of it, that Bonkers candy we get a close-up of looks an awful lot like something from the video game Q-Bert.

Bonkers, like its elderly victims seen here, died a slow death through the 1990’s finally hitting the dirt in 1997. A new but different version of Bonkers reappeared in 2002, but like the Spice Girls reunion didn’t live up to the hype as it is now discontinued and only available through wholesale candy distributors. But at least we have the memories of old people getting crushed by massive quantities of fruit, and if that isn’t satisfying in a very sick way I just don’t know what is.

LIKE! OH MY GOD! IT’S THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK!

In 1990 every popular music act had a 1-900 number to stock its fan club. Before the days of the Internet and cell phone ring tones, this was the way bands (or rather their management) made a ton of dough on the side of concert ticket sales, album sales, and other public appearances. Nearly 20 years later the idea of paying two dollars for the first minute, and 45 cents for each additional minute of listening to a recording from the New Kids on the Block is laughable. But it was NKOTB so I can only imagine how much money was raked in off this scam.

I don’t even have to give you play-by-play of this commercial to figure out how classic(ally bad) it really is. Watching five privileged Boston-area teenagers acting like they’re street tough is just plain comical. Yet it was their shtick and they played it well, answering band creator Maurice Starr’s need to counter his popular New Edition with a white version of the band. Despite the over-the-top and goofy performance done here in someone’s living room, allegedly more than 100,000 calls were made PER WEEK to this phone number! Hey, at least United Cerebral Palsy got a nice cut from that.

I couldn’t tell you which member of the band is which, all I know is Donnie Wahlberg looks extremely silly with his giant “peace” medallion and puffy trucker hat askew. From him, going clockwise, we have some guy wearing baggy Boston Celtics sweats, a guy wearing something straight from the Calvin Klein catalog, a guy jumping on the Chicago Bulls bandwagon like most of America did in 1990, and a guy going for the totally 80’s look of wearing a dress shirt open with a white tee shirt under it. After watching this commercial, you can now see why “grunge music” was hailed as a Godsend just a couple of years later.

Although Wahlberg is the sorest of sore thumbs in this collection, he’s the one who had the most success after the band split up starring in several hit movies and one of my favorite and most underrated TV shows of all time, Boomtown. Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, and Danny Wood clung on to the music scene releasing one somewhat-forgettable solo album after another. Johnathan Knight wised up and got out of the business, although with today’s housing market I’m sure he’s rethinking his decision to get into real estate.

The time of teen boy bands (pre-Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC) is long gone, and so are these phony 1-900 deals that are now left up to porn… err… “singles hot lines”. But apparently the New Kids on the Block aren’t over. People magazine recently announced the band is getting back together, which of course means a new album, tour, and TV show is surely in the works. In a time of American Gladiators part II, and another Rambo sequel, it appears the lowest common denominator of the general public is getting served again.

These days the NOW! collection of top 40 hits dominates the market of “best of” collections. But before NOW!, before Napster, before you tape recorded your favorite songs off the radio, you had to get your favorite top 40 hits from the record company. And as this spot from 1973 points out, you had to get them from someone OTHER than the singer that sang them!

One of the first things you say in the first few seconds of the commercial is, “Hey… that wasn’t Elton John!” That’s the dirty little secret behind these records, the real reason why they couldn’t give the name of the artists due to “low royalties”. If the record company was merely putting 20 songs by the original artists on a compilation disc, the company would have owed royalties to the singers, the songwriters, and the music composers. By having a bunch of session singers do these songs, the record company cut out the singer royalties and I wouldn’t be surprised if they saved on some composer royalties with a few changes to the music. So with at least 33% of the royalty money cancelled out, the company would make extra money off of these rediculous records!

The awfulness of these gems would become more apparent as the spot goes on. The cover of “Band on the Run” is just horrendous, and even the instrumentals like “The Entertainer” and “TSOP” sound like they’re being played by that guy in the bad suit selling organs and pianos at the mall.

What’s even more astonishing is the length of this commercial– a whopping two minutes long. So the record company can’t cough up money to the original singers, but they can buy two minutes of airtime to sell this crap? Granted it was probably two minutes of airtime between midnight and 5 a.m., but still… two minutes is two minutes. And because it’s two minutes I feel really bad for the low-income DJ who has the voice this thing. Lord knows he’s not getting paid enough by the cheap bastards running this record company, so all he can do is say “dynamite” every 15 seconds with way too much reverb on his voice.

And speaking of two minutes, what’s with the “order by midnight tomorrow” command? Are these puppies rushing out the door that fast? If I do order by midnight, will you send me a copy of songs done by the original artists? It’s laughable to think anyone actually rushed to the post office with their $6.99 in hand for an 8-track of this garbage. It reminds me of a radio commercial I recently heard telling me listeners with a last name beginning with the letter “A” through “M” should call today, while those starting with “N” through “Z” should call tomorrow. What for? So we can all purchase run-down plots of land in rural Tennessee for $45 an acre in an orderly fashion?

The pop music scene in 1973 was a bad one, littered with some awful tunes as the world waited for the Beatles to get back together again. Instead we got “Seasons in the Sun” ,and the classic(ally bad) cover of it with 19 other pathetic songs on albums like this!

So today I’m having all sorts of problems with my ‘99 Ford Ranger XLT, and in honor of that I decided to take out my anger by dredging up som classic(ally bad) TV spots about Fords. The path took my somewhere unexpected though as Ford is the indirect target of my disdain, and Stadium Ford of Winnipeg, Manitoba, is the direct target for a truly awful commercial.

This “commercial” was done in 1983, although it should have been done in 1963 because clearly this was created by someone who spent way too much time with a Kodak slide carousel. As a producer of commercials, I know every now and then you get that client who just doesn’t have a ton of money to spend so you get by with a low-budget, low-effort commercial. But this… this is just terrible.

It’s bad enough that this is basically a bad slide show, but the fact one of the slides was put in BACKWARDS (the fourth slide after the opening logo) just makes it even worse. After the sixth or seventh shot, the slides just seem to be random shots thrown in. And what’s the deal with the writing? “Stadium’s body shop is simply the best!” Well… geez… thanks… I’m sold! Our nicotine-induced voiceover guy even throws in an “as seen on TV” line; “BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!”

It turns out in 1983, Stadium Ford not only sold cars via a few bad snapshots, they also sold them with the new and exciting world of propane power! It’s tough today to feel bad for automobile drivers 25 years ago who were paying then-record prices for gasoline, especially as we still hover around $3 a gallon nowadays, but propane? I know Canada was especially feeling the pinch at the pump then, but propane is for home heating or for grilling up hamburgers… not for driving your car around town.

WAIT! What’s this I see? Why, it’s a moving picture! Somebody ponied up some money for VIDEO with their commercial and not just a slideshow of boring pictures! Oh wait, whomever ponied up the money only paid about $6.50 for this footage of a guy half-assing a kick of a football off a tee. If Stadium Ford really was “just a punt” away from the north endzone of the Winnipeg football stadium, the guy with the tube socks at the end of the spot didn’t get across the street with his measly squib kick.

The one redeeming part of the commercial is the music. Straight from the archives of “Starsky & Hutch”, or maybe “Debbie Does Dallas”, at least you know you can get your funk on while getting those propane tanks loaded into the back of your K-Car.

It looks like Stadium Ford is long gone, replaced by a Toys R’ Us. It’s a shame, because I really thought 8 X 10’s of a car dealership showing the Randy Bachman-wannabees that worked there would make that place a Winnipeg landmark!