MGD 64 - Beer for Jerks

Now, I make a point here on Failvertising to not let my opinion on a product interfere with my like or dislike of an advertisement.  However, I must make an exception.  I loooove beer.  However, I think most mass-market beers are disgusting, with a very few exceptions. Having to drink piss-colored flavorless beers in clear bottles makes me want to beat the people who truly enjoy those beers with a lead pipe (in the conservatory. It was Colonal Mustard.)

THIS IS WHAT BEER LOOKS LIKE!!!

In my college Advertising class, we were taught that you need to make your product the 'hero' of the advertisement.  In this unfortunate ad, the hero is one of those douchey 'bros' who would be wearing a polo shirt with a popped collar if he wasn't a groomsman at this wedding.

Drink poison. Seriously.

I'd like to chat about the Best Man for a second.  He has the teeny tiniest wee glass I've ever seen.  He says it's "64 calories of Pinot Grigio" but the liquid in the class is PERFECTLY CLEAR.  (I aso think guys who drink white wine are generally assholes, but I digress.) 

Yummy Pinot Grigio?

The question for me is who the holy hell orders a specific calorie count for their drink? That's the point of these commercials, right? "Since you're ordering a specific calorie content of a beverage, why not have this pissy sucky beer that has the exact calorie content that you desire!"  Why do you need PRECISELY 64 calories of a beverage?  Sweet Zombie Jesus, if you can ONLY have 64 calories of a beverage, maybe you should rethink your nutrition plan.

 

You rang?

I think we're all thinking the same thing: NO ONE ORDERS BEVERAGES BY THE CALORIE COUNT.  You have to order what you want in the correct unit. It's one of the more important aspects of requesting goods from vendors. You're never going to ask for six cups of porterhouse.  No one wants you to pick up seventeen ounces of donuts.  If you need 8 pounds of milk, that's at least east to calculate (it's a gallon) since, as Alton brown taught us, a pint's a pound the world around.

You WILL watch my show and you WILL learn useful shit!

The icing on the cake here is our douchebro hero saying how MGD 64 is only 64 calories (Oh really? I *totally* give a shit about how caloric your beer is!) and then starts clanking his knife on his beer bottle so hard I swear it should shatter and leave his hand a bloody stump.  The noise his bottle makes is louder than the NYSE opening bell.  If the Liberty Bell could make a sound, it would be the noise this bottle makes.

Sorry, MGD 64. I was kind of with you and your toolbox assumption that people want to drink Diet Beer, but your fakey fake fake bottle clanging lost me.

Smucker's - Ma, Richard Got Into Grandpa's Medicine Again!

This chewy nugget of commercial delight is brought to you by Smucker's.  You know, the jam people.  "With a Name Like Smucker's, It Has To Be Good."  That sounds like a threat.  "Damn it, Smucker's! Your fruit paste MUST be tasty to make up for your ridiculous name or your family shall perish!!"

I WILL SCREAM WHILE EATING YOU ON TOAST!

 Or is it more like "Wow, the name of this company SUCKS! There's no way this jam can be anything BUT delicious!" Or maybe a dare. Kind of like that "Nobody Doesn't Like Sarah Lee."  Hey Sarah Lee, I don't like you! Watcha gonna do about it! (Actually I quite like Sarah Lee. Of course I do, fat kids love their pastries.) When I was a kid I thought the slogan was "Nobody Does It Like Sarah Lee." Isn't that funny?  Just like I thought that Disturbed's song's lyrics were "Get monkey down with the sickness."  Ahhhahaha.  Misheard lyrics are called "Mondegreens." Isn't that interesting? No, it's not? Oh I was talking about this stupid jam commercial, wasn't I? Moving on...

Our fun bit of commercial failery greets us with a boy wearing a large coat and talking strangely to baskets of assorted fruit in a barn.  I'm not sure if that combination of words has ever been typed out before.  (A cursory Google search tells me no.)  I think it's the fruit part that worries me about this child.  If he was talking to cows in a barn wearing a large coat, I could understand that. I like talking to cats (Gee, a chubby internet chick who writes snark likes talking to cats? Say it isn't so) so I can see how chatting with the cows can be fun.  Must get lonely living on a fruit farm with only your older brother and no apparent adult supervision, and the cows has sympathetic eyes and you can pet them.

"Tell me your hopes and dreams. I'll listen. Also: Moo."

 And the coat protects you from cow poo and drool. (I imagine cows drool? I have no idea.) Hell, even talking to sheep, or horses, or chickens makes more sense than FRUIT. "Oh apples, no one understands me but you."

Jake Gyllenhaal knows what I'm taking about.

And whyyyy do you need a big coat to talk to fruit?  Isn't that a bit like wearing a trenchcoat on the subway? There's no way you can be up to anything but no good. Might as well park a windowless van outside the playground with a "Free Candy" sign hanging on the outside.

Anyhoozle, Speaks With Apples's brother comes in, and it turns out he's been pretending to be his grandfather the whole time.  Isn't that sweet? Maybe? No? Yeah I don't think it's cute.  But then again, I'm bitter and cynical, so don't ask me. Don't kids like to pretend to be really awesome superheros like Batman, or maybe even a real-life hero like Sgt. Leroy Petry?

Superman has pictures of Sgt. Petry on his jammies. Chuck Norris wants to be Sgt. Petry when he grows up.

I can't imagine a kid pretending to be his grandpa.  Here, let me pretend to be everyone's grandpa for a second: "Back in my day, things were (harder/colder/cheaper.) Everyone was (better/nicer/smarter) than you kids today. Get off my damn lawn! (Racist statement about a nearby minority.) Liberals are ruining this nation!" There. (If it was my grandfather, that rant would be punctuated with the opening of a beer.) But apparently this kid's papa doesn't smack him when he opens up the fridge, and warrants pretend play.  Fine. I won't fight with ya there.

But it's this kid's INSISTENCE that he is his grandpa that troubles me.  "I'm not Richard, I'm Grandpa Smucker!"  Nope, you're still Richard.  "I'm not Richard, I'm Grandpa Smucker!" Did you get into the horseradish again, Richard? "I'm not Richard, I'm Grandpa Smucker."  Get the cattle prod, Ma! Richard is having an episode! Keep him away from the bell tower!

I'M GRANDPA SMUCKER! AAHAHAHAHA!

At the end of the commercial, we are treated to the still completely unsupervised children wandering through an abandoned orchard.  Does it look like all the adults have magically vanished from this farm to anyone else? The bushels of peaches are sitting on the ground like the workers just dropped them and wandered off to jump in front of the combine harvester like in that horrible M. Night Shyamalanalamalan movie.  Maybe the kids picked the peaches. They seem to be the only humans present on this farm.  That must be why young Richard is having delusions. He is overworked and has heat exhaustion from picking peaches and making jam. Hell, that would leave anyone rambling at fruit.

This post was made by special request! Please comment with any commercials you think deserve my snark.  Also, let me know if my addition of silly pictures and captions were a win or a fail.  If I get enough positive feedback, I might go through the older posts and add pictures to them!!