Pepto-Bismol, as you probably know by now, treats the following symptoms: nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea. In the following ad, they seem to be focusing on just one of those five. Guess which one before you watch. Hint: it's the one that is hilarious.
I'm pretty sure this is web-only, which isn't surprising - if the FCC wouldn't let Bud Light's "Cut the Cheese" ad past, there's no way this would get through.
Pepto Guy [answering phone]: "Pepto-Bismol! Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea! Oh, yes sir, how are you today? Well, what have you ingested, sir? Okay, chimichanga... okay, salsa... all right, General Tso's chicken... I've never heard of a Chinese-Mexican restaurant. I think I see the problem here, sir, yeah."
That, my friends, is tedious. Tedious, not at all funny, and it takes up nearly half the ad on just this one dude's boring problem. Can we please get to the diarrhea? (Oh, spoiler alert: the thing they think is funny is diarrhea.)
Pepto Guy: "Oh... a what? An oopsie shart? What is a- oh, gosh!"
And right here is a big reason why this ad did not make it to air. On the off chance that you're not familiar with "shart" and somehow can't guess, it's a combination of "shit" and "fart." That's right! The hilarity! The shitting hilarity!
Pepto Guy: "Yeah, hello sir, I can hear you. Mm-hmm. You're up to your what in what?"
"You're up to your knees in shit? This is about shit, right? I mean, you're not up to your trachea in stomach acid."
Pepto Guy [put off his onion rings]: "Yeah. Oh dear."
We all know that upset stomachs are really, really disgusting. I guess maybe this guy could be calling about puking his guts out, but that's not funny, so I think we can feel free to assume it's also about diarrhea. Riotous!
Pepto Guy: "Loudly? Yeah. My wife does that in her sleep. Yeah, it's funny, yeah. Well, I can see why it would not be funny for you."
But it is funny for us. Farting is so hilarious that even awkward allusions to it crack me up!
Pepto Guy: "Really? Well, why w- why would you do that in your pants?"
One guess as to which of Pepto's target ailments you can do in your pants! See below for answer.
(Answer: Diarrhea!!!!!)
This is really the best use of the "Pepto Hotline" gimmick they could think of, apparently - people calling all day to complain about how they've just shit their pants. Really, why are they even calling? If they know Pepto cures diarrhea, maybe they should go out and buy some rather than calling this guy, who, by the way, is not shown providing one iota of help to any of these people. It's all just hilarious, hilarious jokes in the "I've got to repeat what Chewbacca just said back to him so the viewers know what he said" mold - and of the five jokes in the ad, fully three are definitively about either farting or diarrhea, and a fourth is almost certainly about diarrhea as well. Was this spot written by Peter Griffin?
On the bright side, this ad is so funny that I'm going to use its technique on this blog from now on. Welcome to "Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With This Diarrhea?" And stay tuned for future posts like "This Hyundai ad was so bad it gave me diarrhea!" and "McDonald's: I'm loving shitting my pants!" I predict a million hits by Wednesday.
1 comment:
You know what's really not funny while you're actually experiencing it? Diarrhea. The last thing I'd think of while I was trying to cure a painful, incessant case of diarrhea would be a stupid shit joke I'd seen in a commercial.
Then again I'm an adult -- not one of the twelve-year olds in charge of Marketing at Pepto Bismal.
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