I'd still eat one, but...

Dunkin' Donuts has a limited-time donut that actually sounds pretty good, but also sounds pretty bad. Good because it's "a black-raspberry filled donut with strawberry icing and a delicious wildberry bark topping," and has a taste-coordinated coffee to go with; bad because they decided to name it the Berry Berry Donut.



I suppose that the name is supposed to evoke the idea of "lots of berries!" (but there's three berries and they only call it Berry Berry, so someone's getting the shaft) or "very berry-like!" instead of a thiamine deficiency. As it is, though, it just makes me want to look around for the Scurvy Croissant, which goes great with a Rickets Coolatta.

A Coke and a grimace

Few ads bother me more than those with a hugely inflated sense of self-worth about their products. I know that the whole point of advertising is to talk a product up, but there's a difference between "delicious beverage" and "life-changing experience." Isn't that right, Coke?



Seriously, you have got to be kidding me. It's bad enough that this nursing home is apparently trying to cut costs by killing its patients, because who in their right mind would think it was a good idea to load a bunch of 80-year-olds full of sugar and caffeine, and furthermore that the ad takes the blatantly ridiculous leap of having the old guy claim he's never had a Coke before (who under the age of "Civil War veteran" has never had a Coke? It's only been the ubiquitous soft drink in America for the last century or so). No, that's a horrible setup and all, but the worst part is the mere idea that the taste of Coke is a life-changing event for this guy. Look, I like Coke fine, but if the very taste of it - a single sip, no less - causes you to re-evaluate your whole life, I think you have bigger problems than a lack of beverage diversity. This is far from the only example of "better living through massive calorie consumption" advertising - see most McDonald's ads and, really, about 97% of all Coke ads produced in the last 20 years - but it's the most recent one to grate on me.

NB: This version of the ad is a minute long, while you've probably seen only the 30-second one on TV. This contains all the same stuff, but pads out a couple scenes and adds a handful more. I'm guessing the "you haven't lived until you've had a threesome" shot near the end is a large part of the reason this one hasn't aired much, if at all.

Historical Hate: Chunky Chips Ahoy

Maybe I'm taking it a bit too seriously, but this commercial really insults my intelligence.



1. Does the cookie not know that he's a Chunky Chips Ahoy? That's ridiculous. He obviously would know that he was, and therefore it makes no sense to think that he would hear "Monkey Chips Ahoy" instead, much less that he would refer to himself that way.

2. The idea of someone mishearing "monkey" for "chunky" is plenty stupid in and of itself. And what, they didn't even have a script on this thing? He had to learn all his lines by hearing them? And he heard them wrong every time?

3. Given that the director knows the singer has the wrong words, why does he let him get most of the way through the song?

4. Where did the monkeys even come from? The singer appears to be the only one who doesn't know that it's "Chunky," and he surely would not be in charge of animal wrangling on the set.

All that doesn't even get into how annoying the song is, much less the horror of the slogan "It's a whole lotta yum." Go to hell, Chips Ahoy.