Love is in the air, and it smells like pepperoni

In honor of Valentine's Day, get a load of this shit.



That is a screenshot of this page, which I took because since the listed end date for the promotion is 2/14/12, who knows how long it'll be up for your perusal.

I mean, holy shit, right? Look, I know this is probably just for publicity. Pizza Hut comes up with a gimmicky thing that no one would ever actually buy, it gets kicked around the web because people love that Neiman Marcus fantasy gift shit, and boom, free advertising for the $10 dinner box, which I did not previously know was a thing. But just imagine for a second that Pizza Hut was serious here. How fucking deranged is this?

First, I love that it's not a diamond ring, although if you're the kind of woman who INSISTS on an expensive diamond for your engagement ring, you're probably not going to be too impressed with the $10 dinner box proposal no matter how nice the ring is.

Then, how about a photographer AND a videographer? I'm not sure that's enough. How about a caricature artist too, and maybe a stenographer to get down every word you're saying? You really want to remember every facet of your embarrassing Pizza Hut proposal.

I also love that the stated cost is $10,010, because that includes the dinner box. Yeah, we couldn't just include that in the obscene $10,000 engagement package. That's extra. (The "plus tax" also kills me.) This is really the biggest tip-off that Pizza Hut is mostly kidding around, I think (although I'm sure if anyone actually wanted this they'd be happy to sell it). It's funnier if you take this extravagant package and make the cheap-ass food cost extra on top of it.

If you click on "more information" it gives you the press release, which only makes it clearer that this is a publicity stunt of the highest caliber. Most of the time is spent talking about the dinner box itself:

The $10 Dinner Box Proposal Package includes a ruby engagement ring, limo service, flowers, fireworks show, photographer, videographer and of course, most importantly, the mouth-watering new $10 Dinner Box.

Fitting all of these amazing items into one package echoes the feat pulled off inside the new Pizza Hut $10 Dinner Box, which includes a medium one-topping rectangular pan pizza, five breadsticks with marinara sauce and 10 cinnamon sticks with a sweet icing cup in one box for only $10.

Just by the way, that is like the starchiest thing that ever starched.

"If we’re able to fit pizza, breadsticks and dessert into one box for only $10, why stop there?" asked Kurt Kane, Pizza Hut CMO.

Right.

Perhaps my favorite part - and again, it's irrelevant because ain't nobody buying this - is in the fine print:

"We may substitute listed products with equivalent value products."

I wonder which of those products is most likely to be substituted for an item of equal value. If you're the sort of person who loves Pizza Hut so much you're willing to propose marriage over a pizza box, maybe you could trade in the fireworks show for a couple years' worth of Lipitor.

'Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener, buns would all be having sex with me

The GrubHub ads on the CTA have really been getting more and more questionable. They started off depicting people pleased with the fact that they can order food from just about anywhere. That's fine. Then they turned a corner with one that showed what was clearly intended to be a post-coital couple in bed, with the woman's toplessness blocked only by her laptop as she declared her desire for "something spicy!" A bit much, but I guess workable. But now... there's this.

I really don't know how many times I can keep saying this. But I guess I'll try again anyway.

Ahem.

THINKING ABOUT THE FOOD I'M ABOUT TO EAT AS THE PRODUCT OF A SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP IS NOT APPETIZING.

I mean, this just doesn't seem like that hard of a concept. I don't care how phallic hot dogs already are - I don't need an ad for your food-related service that shows a hot dog attempting to bed a hot dog bun, with the bun thinking "I hope he brought condiments!" That is gross. Surely there is no one out there who sees this ad and thinks, "Oh man, that hot dog and bun are about to GET IT ON!!! Shit, I just got hungry."

Yes, I know it's supposed to be a joke. Ha ha, hot dogs kind of look like penises! And the word "condiment" sounds like the word "condom!" The phrase "do it" could be a generic description of performing an action, but it could also refer to fucking!!!

But even if it were funny - and it's not - it's utterly lazy and just wrong for the product in question. Look, I'm capable of enjoying sex-themed jokes. But they have their place and this ain't it. All I see is an online menu service making a cheap fuck joke because they think it'll make their brand seem cool. "Oh man, can you believe what GrubHub got away with putting in the train station?" Is that really as high as our standards are?

La la la I'm not listening

The old adage is that sex sells. That may be true, but I think most people would draw the line when it came to thinking about the sex lives of their parents. Don't tell that to the makers of Canadian Club, who ran this ad in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated:



Man, what sells booze like the knowledge that it fueled your dad to pick up women in bars 40 years ago? I mean, isn't that what everyone wants to think about when they're out at the bar? "Say, if my dad could get ass thanks to Canadian Club, what's stopping me?"

Also, nice attempt at being cool by punctuating the slogan with a "Damn right." I'm sorry, Canadian Club, but you are not a bad-ass brand of liquor and you're never going to be. You're a fairly inexpensive blended whiskey, not the choice of kings. You know who drank Canadian Club? My grandmother. Now there's someone I'm looking to emulate at the bar.

Good grades are overrated!

On a very basic level, I guess I can appreciate what the Foundation for a Better Life is trying to do. Their mission statement, according to their website, is "to encourage adherence to a set of quality values through personal accountability and by raising the level of expectations of performance of all individuals regardless of religion or race." Nothing wrong with that, right?



Here's the problem I have with this: the reason it's not a big deal that Einstein didn't have good grades in grammar school is that he turned out to be Albert Fucking Einstein. I know what they're trying to do with this billboard, but it ends up being counterintuitive - the unintentional message is that there's nothing wrong with getting bad grades, which is of course total horseshit. There is nothing wrong with getting bad grades, I suppose, if you're so much of a genius that you're capable of writing equations that sum up grand, sweeping laws of the universe. To how many people does this actually apply?

Also, "As a student, he was no Einstein" is dumb because of course he was. The reason Einstein didn't always do well in school is because he was far too smart for the teaching methods being used at the schools he attended. It's important to remember that this is almost certainly not true of your kid. Moreover, the amorphous notion of "confidence" has fuck-all to do with it, as I think Einstein himself would probably tell you.



This one just annoys me. "Believe in yourself?" Look, I don't care how many movies they made, Shrek is not a real person. He is a movie character, and everything that happens to him was scripted that way. This isn't like, "Queen Elizabeth was once a lowly maid until she saved a prince's life and he decided to marry her!" Some screenwriter said, "Hey, Shrek is the main character in our kids' movie; do you think, as the hero, he should succeed?" And then the others said, "Of course!" And now it's on a billboard. Sure, it's important to believe in yourself. But we really couldn't find anyone who actually exists in real life to illustrate this point? I'm actually kind of offended that the Foundation thinks a cartoon character is a better illustration of the human spirit than a genuine human being is.



For example, wouldn't "Believe in Yourself" have worked pretty well on this one? Instead they went with the one that makes me laugh in that "going straight to hell" sort of way. "Vision! Pass it on! Seriously, pass it to this guy. Clearly he could use some."

Multimedia presentation

We focus primarily on television advertising here, and rightly so. However, print and radio ads (the latter in particular) can sometimes be even more abhorrent; they're just harder to reproduce. In this case, however, I happened to be driving through Ohio and noticed this sign outside the men's room at a rest area.


It may be hard to read that smaller text, but basically it's using the larger words to make full sentences, like "you JUST have to see it to believe it." Whatever. Kind of a lame device, but not what makes this stupid.

Let me reiterate: this was outside the men's room. "Can you just hold it for 30 more minutes?" Um, why is that necessary? I'm about to walk into the men's room. I'm pretty sure the family can wait 30 seconds before we decide to randomly interrupt our scheduled trip to stop off at a waterpark. Who is this ad marketing to? Are there people who drive around with their swim trunks on in case they should happen to find themselves in waterpark country? Don't you sort of have to want to go to one in the first place? Also, take very careful note of the message: "Hold your urine for 30 more minutes, until you arrive at our waterpark!" Can't spell "waterpark" without "p," can you?

I don't know. Am I expecting too much out of a waterpark that names itself after one of the world's largest deserts?