Fight for the snackers' love!

You have to enjoy - where of course by enjoy I mean "revile" - ads that insist on giving their characters dialogue that no human being would say, ever. This gives the viewer a real sense of connection. And then you also have to enjoy the fattening of America.



Guy: "What are you eating?"

Right off the bat. They've clearly been sitting out there for a while, and she's eating ice cream. Unless she's been carrying around a portable cooler, there's no way he doesn't already know what she's eating. But fine, I guess we had to set up the ensuing crap-ass dialogue somehow.

Girl: "Dibs! Bite-size ice cream snacks."

No one would ever say it like that. But I guess this is an ad. The weirder thing is the inflection she puts on "Dibs," which has a whiff of "Dibs, of course." Though we all know that the real answer is "This carton of ice cream soup, since you made me walk for an hour to get here."

Guy: [enormous pause] "Can I try some?"

This is unacceptable. You are a fucking TV commercial. There is no excuse for you to have holes like this, where the guy has time to slowly change his facial expression and then ask his stupid question.

Guy [four seconds pass in silence while he receives and eats Dibs]: "Those are good!"

Wow. Just wow. We are now 11 seconds into your boring, slow-moving commercial, and you just had four seconds of silence. Have you been watching Hot Pockets ads lately? Out of 11 seconds so far, something like seven of them have been silent but for ambient car noise. This is ridiculous. Get your act together. Also: this is the best testimonial you can invent for your product? "Those are good?" Did this ad even have writers?

Clearly there is only about 15 seconds' worth of material here, but given all the time-wasting, we're obviously going 30. Let's pad this sucker out!

Guy [after three more seconds, for fuck's sake]: "Kinda makes you wonder what's going to happen to all the giant soft pretzels of the world."

Uh... no. I am going on the record here. It distinctly does not make you wonder that. I know this is supposed to be funny, but (a) it's not and (b) this commercial's farting around for 15 seconds has not earned it the right to be cute.

[An idiotic scene featuring two rural folks playing horseshoes with a pretzel]

I'm not going to claim there are no ideas in this ad, even if none of them are good. But it's padded out so dramatically that the whole thing is just a waste. If this were basketball, this ad would be called a "tweener," since it couldn't be 15 or 30 seconds effectively. But instead of an okay 20-second ad no one saw, we wound up with this half-minute piece of shit that actually got aired.

Announcer: "Dibs, bite-size ice cream snacks."

Oh, hey, is that what they are? Thank you for clearing that up, since you didn't already have a character in your ad awkwardly work those exact words into her dialogue or anything. Very good. But at least this is on message. I also like how the Dibs carton is emphatically placed in front of the pretzel. "Fuck you, pretzel! It's Dibs time!"

Announcer: "Do Dibs instead."

Do Dibs instead! Try Dibs instead of the following:

* Pretzels
* Potato chips
* Doritos
* Gummi bears
* S'mores
* Jogging
* Seeing your feet
* Living past 65

Seriously, take a quick look at the nutrition facts and tell me you want to be "doing Dibs" instead of anything. This shit makes Cheetos look healthy. But no, it's a snack. "It's just a snack, you guys! This pint of vanilla ice cream and two Nestle Crunch bars just needs to hold me over until dinner!"