When did Chester Cheetah turn into a creepy, weird asshole? Oh, about ten seconds after Goodby, Silverstein and Partners decided to "re-invent" him?
You know, that woman could probably have raised her objection in a slightly nicer way. But this... what is this? "Inside the mind of every Cheetos eater is a strangely old, dickish cartoon cheetah just waiting to be turned loose." Hell yeah! Makes me hungry. That woman is going to know it was you, by the way, lady. Hope you're prepared for the fallout from that little move.
The Orange Underground? Yeah, nothing's more subversive than eating a snack food that's mass-produced by a giant corporation. And, I guess, tossing it into the laundry of people who have slightly obnoxious, but seemingly not all that unfair criticisms for the Cheetos consumer. You're like the fucking French Resistance over there, guys.
I just don't think I want my spokescharacter to be this creepy. I mean, I don't write ads for a living - I just make fun of them as a hobby - so maybe I'm crazy. But come on. In voice and hair pattern, Chester Cheetah is apparently suddenly about 70 years old. Maybe in the first ad he disappears because he had to make his seventeenth trip to the bathroom that day.
Is this an appealing character? I feel like the "aging" of Chester is intended to aim the product at adults, but that seems like a losing battle. If you like Cheetos, you're going to eat them. If you've never had Cheetos, and you're older than your early 20s, what's motivating you to try them? I doubt it's the skeevy CGI cheetah giving the stewardess a backrub. Remember when Cookie Crisp tried marketing itself to adults? It worked about as well as I expect this to. I mean, what's the movement here, the "us" you'd be joining? The movement of adults who eat Cheetos? In "secret," by which I mean they use Cheetos to do vaguely inappropriate things that mark them as the obvious culprits?
You know what? Scratch the "vaguely."
"Fuck people with different behavioral patterns than yours! Eat Cheetos!"
Three ads, three unpleasant uses for a wholly benign snack food, and an off-putting, badly-animated cheetah with AARP membership who ties them all together. Brilliant. I can only hope that in the future, the revolution of orange-fingered douchebags will not, in fact, be televised.
Maybe I'm missing something, but why is the blond woman in the first ad angry and snippy at the beginning?
ReplyDeleteWe see the brunette drop something and kind of give the blond a look. Is the blond mad because the brunette is kind of hovering and waiting for a washer?
I think we're supposed to assume that the brunette is using all of the washers to do her enormous load of laundry. That's the only way the dialogue makes any sense, I think. But yeah, it's abundantly unclear. Just think - three seconds could probably have resolved that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe she's annoyed because the brunette has taken up most of the folding table with her crap? That's my best guess.
ReplyDeleteIn the second ad -- why is everyone sleeping on a plane that's flying directly through a thunderstorm? I mean, there's lightning and thunder -- that would cause some serious turbulence. In reality, planes don't fly through thunderstorms, so this wouldn't even happen.
But yeah, those ads are not exactly repping the product very well.