Wednesday, January 30, 2013
EXTREMELY RARE: world's most idiotic cat food commercial!
I have noticed that if you put EXTREMELY RARE in a title, everyone reads the post. Or something.
This ad is, I will admit, extremely bizarre, with the "p-p-p-p-protein" and the dog chasing the three cats into a barrel (with an obvious break to get the freaking cats out of there).
Cat food ads have always been way stupider than dog food ads. We had Morris, who used to complain endlessly in that smarmy voice. (In spite of his addiction to Nine Lives, he died.) We had "chow-chow-chow" and that weird running-the-film-backwards dance that no cat would do if they were starving to death. And we had the incomparable telephone-proficient Baxter ("Don't answer it, Frank"), whom I thought was lost forever until I dug up a couple of the commercials on an advertising site.
Probably the best- known was the Meow Mix jingle, with the original subtitles reading, "I want chicken, I want liver, Meow Mix, Meow Mix, please deliver." There were infinite varieties on this, with the words gradually making less and less sense ("I want lightly-grilled sea bass, I want roast turkey with razzleberry dressing," etc.). My all-time fave, which I think I already posted at some point, was the "Close Encounters" Meow Mix commercial of the mid-'80s: a cat is pictured gazing heavenwards and meows four times in the familiar Meow Mix "frequency". A huge spaceship appears and echoes the meows with "BOM BOM BOM BOM". All that's missing is Richard Dreyfuss digging up shrubs and having a nervous breakdown from sheer intensity.
I'm glad to find these things again, because they're fun, and my grandkids whoop and scream over them. They don't make ads like that any more, with those stupid cats, or rather, those stupid advertising copywriters. Paging Freddy Rumsen!
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I used to stand outside and call the damned cats to breakfast or din din, shouting "MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW, MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW, MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOWWWWWW MEOW MEOW MEOW." They wouldn't come unless I did that. The neighborhood watch squad considered having me euthanized. Now I bang on the dishes (each one has a different sound, it's like tubular bells), and they won't come until they hear their particular dish.
ReplyDeleteJust noticed, you have a new avatar photo. I like it!
ReplyDeleteI retouched this one a little bit because it was badly damaged. I had hacked the corners off it 40 years ago to make it fit into a tiny frame. So I restored the corners via photoshop. I've found that a person's eye is drawn to the main subject and mostly misses flaws in the corners. I remember the day I brought my horse Rocky home and tied him up in the back yard. The dog kept eating his shit, which was gross. Anyway, he was contentedly munching the lawn so I went in to eat dinner. While we were eating, a sorrel blur went by the window. The horse broke loose and galloped all the way back to the barn, about 2 miles away, while my father tried to catch up with him, afraid he'd be hit by a car. Then he slammed on the brakes and moseyed back into the barn and began to munch hay. Rocky was quite a character.
ReplyDeleteOur cat Murphy, God rest his furry soul, had weird eating habits. If Bill was making a ham sandwich he would meow and meow and meow. If he got a piece, he'd sniff it first, and if it was the "good stuff" (Schneider's, his favorite brand) he'd bat it across the room (to kill it) then go peel it off the kitchen cabinet and eat it. If it was a store brand like Safeway, he'd sniff it disdainfully and walk away.
ReplyDeleteA most discriminating (finicky?) fellow. And a homeboy pony.
ReplyDeleteI miss the cat, but not the litter box/vet bills. When Murphy died a few years ago, we had to ask ourselves: how old will we be in 15 or 20 years? Too old for a cat - they wouldn't allow him in the home.
ReplyDelete