Just wanted to let everyone know that I added a summary of most of my main and recurring characters to the menu under my header.  Click “Meet the Gang!” to…. well, meet the gang!

Modern medicine has the cure for almost anything that can ail the human being.  Hell, drug company researchers work tirelessly around the clock to invent new disorders they can make pills for.  This post is about a radio ad that occasionally airs on the station I listen to.  It’s a post I could have a dandy time ripping apart bit by bit with my usual brand of sarcasm, but honestly, it’s such a softball that all I can do is offer it up and allow you to make your own jokes….

Commercials for prescription drugs can be quite hilarious, because they are required by law to list all of the possible side effects of the drug.  I’ve had fun with this before (ESN fun fact: that is my last comic strip which did NOT feature a cameo by Buster).

Without further adieu, here is the radio ad for a prescription drug called “NuVigil”, which is supposed to treat people suffering from “shift work disorder” who have trouble sleeping due to the weird hours they work.  I found it on YouTube paired together with this absolutely hilarious animation someone added to it that makes it so funny, you might need to take a suppository for incontinence beforehand.  Behold this masterpiece modern miracle of medicine!

And I swear to God this radio ad is real!!!!

Oh……. my…….. God!

Sweet dreams!!!!

1989 was the year I first began really showing my night owlish tendencies.  For that summer, and every summer thereafter until I replaced school with work, I began my habit of staying up all night.  Not out all night, just staying up and doing nothing but watching TV, drawing up old comics, all kinds of other stupid crap that wasn’t very productive.  But the TV was omnipresent… I got my exposure to pretty much every old rerun that aired on Nick at Nite in the late 80′s and early 90′s, and of course it was late at night when the best commercials always aired….

Over and over and over again.  You might see the same ad 10-15 times in one night because the ad space is so cheap and the buyers for the time are so few…

Could I interest you in Time/Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown Series?

It was at the peak time for my all night viewing that one of the most famous ads in television history was getting a lot of play.  Surely you remember this commercial, and if not, you’re certainly familiar with its famous line….

Amazing how dated technology can get in only a little over 20 years….

That ad was all over late night and even daytime TV in 1990, and it spawned one of the most parodied lines the world of advertising has ever given us…..

“I’ve fallen!  And I can’t get up!!!”

Are you making fun of me!?!?

Mrs. Fletcher’s one line in that whole 60 second ad drew the attention of every comedian and wannabe comedian in the world in the early 90′s.  I was in high school then, and I recall all the funny T-shirts ripping off it (I’ve fallen, and I can’t reach my beer!”).  It made its way into television shows and comedy skits everywhere.  And it made a surprise star out of the real life actress who uttered the line, Edith Fore.  When she passed away in 1997, her obituary was given the same recognition of any other good B-list celebrity…

Many people associate the phrase with a company called Life Alert now, and with good reason.  They trademarked the line after Lifecall, the company who created the famous ad and made emergency alert pendants for the elderly popular, went out of business in the mid 90′s.  I always thought LifeAlert and Lifecall were were different names for the same company, but it seems like they are/were (as the case may be) two different entities.  You be the judge.

You thought I was kidding, didn’t you?

Thank you Lifecall for giving us a reason to laugh in the face of a totally unfunny situation.  The ad is a true work of genius, and a prime example of how pop culture can take something so seemingly mundane and make it absolutely iconic.  Well worthy of this week’s Flashback Friday!

And if you can’t get enough of old commercial slogans, check out this post from my pal Merby that cleverly works in a bunch of old 70′s, 80′s and 90′s commercial catch phrases!

In one of my recent Flashback Friday posts on classic condiment ads, I mentioned that I could literally go on forever and ever about some of my favorite classic ad campaigns.  It’s true too!  I’ve had so many ideas come into my head for posts, that I could literally make all of my Friday posts about old commercials.  So I decided to split off the ads from my regular Flashback series, and create their own weekly slot.  Since Tuesday is one of the least likely days for me to post here, I’ll make that the designated day for posting about old commercials…. I just need a catchy name for it.

Since I got a few requests last time for the classic 1984 “Where’s the Beef?” Wendy’s ad, I’ll let it lead off the new format.

Fluffy buns…

Created to mock the skimpy meat used on the burgers at other fast food joints, Wendy’s hit slogan gold in this commercial featuring three prim and proper old ladies walking up to inspect the burger on the counter.  While the first two ladies marvel at the size of the bun, Clara Peller cuts right to the heart of the matter and exclaims the phrase that would make her famous.  Just like Edith Fore later, Peller wasn’t front and center in this ad… yet she was the one who uttered the words that got America talking, and she remained famous until she died 3 years after the ad originally aired.

These sesame seeds are murder on my hemorrhoids!

Did you know that this commercial helped bring us the most lopsided Presidential election in US history?  It’s true!!!  Well… kind of.  The Wiki article on the catchphrase will give you a more detailed understanding its political significance, but Walter Mondale used “Where’s the beef?” as a retort to his chief rival in the 1984 Democratic primary Gary Hart when the Senator would rave about his “new ideas”.  Mondale was able to disarm Hart’s “new ideas” enough to win the Democratic nomination for President, where he advanced to the Bonus Round to be taken to the woodshed by Ronald Reagan 425-13.

Donna Rice knows where the beef is….

“Where’s the beef?” is such an enduring catchphrase that it is still pretty universally recognized by many people today almost thirty years later.  It perfectly sums up our feelings we usually have every time we’re presented with something extravagant and dressed up and hyped… but overall lacking in substance.

How come nobody from Carl’s Jr. or Hardees ever asked this question?

We’ll see you back here next week with yet another skimpy old ad wrapped in a big, fluffy bun!

Instant freshness!

While there are many different elements one can use in creating a television commeecial, one of the most basic and necessary things it needs to do is describe your product and its benefits to the consumer… otherwise, you are wasting a lot of money on a 30 second spot that you aren’t going to get back in extra sales.  This is generally an easy concept to execute for most products out there… but what if you sell something that people just don’t talk about rather freely? (except on the blogs of preverted 30-somethings)

This was a challenge Massengill, who you may know as one of the leading brands of feminine douche (as if there is such a thing as masculine douche), faced in trying to get more women to send their embarrassed husbands to the store to buy their product.  Big ups though to these douchemeisters, who not only rose to the challenge of how to sell douche on TV back in the days when Bob Eubanks still had to say “whoopie”, but managed to create an ad campaign that got the public’s ultimate compliment…. we lampooned the hell out of it, and still do today!  Here is this week’s TV Commercial Tuesday ad:

Ahhh, that “no so fresh feeling!”  Gotta live this little peek into those private mother-daughter talks…

Here’s another great parody from the funniest sketch show ever…..

I even took a stab at that not so fresh feeling in one of my past comic strips….

Oh… and I will always pronounce it DOO-key, because my Mom was the queen of literal pronunciation, and she passed that along to me….

Let’s all grab a bottle of vinegar and water and make a toast to not so freshness!!!!

Real men drink 1800 Tequila, and douche weekly.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented” -Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899

There’s no better way to go down in history than to be remembered for a quote that is not only entirely ludicrous, but something you probably never said in the first place.  This likely apocryphal saying was obviously uttered before such world-altering inventions as radio, television, computers or Swiffers came into existence.  Man is always pondering ways to make life better through new items that had never been thought of before.  Most of the major inventions of the 20th century changed the way we live our lives, and we honestly can’t think of a time when they weren’t there for us.  They made it easier to travel, easier to work, easier to access information… technology was improving everyday life in America!

You’ve come a long way, baby…

But something was obviously missing, and it wasn’t until the mid 80′s that an invention came along that finally eased the burden of people everywhere who were tired of getting their lazy ass up off the chair to turn on the lights.  Our prayers were answered in the form of that miracle of electronic wizardry, The Clapper!

Have you lost your remote control and don’t want to get up to turn off the TV?  CLAP! CLAP!

Need to turn on the lights but can’t remember where that pesky light switch is you’ve been turning on and off for 30 years?  CLAP!  CLAP!

Want to turn off those Christmas lights because they’re a fire hazard and might elecrocute your cat?  CLAP! CLAP!

It’s kinda funny they showed someone clapping on Christmas tree lights in the original Clapper ad, because that’s what The Clapper was quickly reduced to once people realized how totally insane the whole idea behind the product was…. a cheap last minute holiday gift for the people you don’t really like, but would be ostracized if you didn’t buy them something.  I’m sure The Clapper and Chia Pet twin pack will get you on Aunt Ethel’s good side for a long time to come…

Why, it looks just like your beard, Aunt Ethel!

Listen to the commercial again and notice that even the announcer for The Clapper seems like he’s mocking how ridiculous the product was.  It’s too bad The Clapper announcer faded into obscurity, because it would have been awesome to have a famous product pitchman who wasn’t afraid to admit the merchandise he was trying to push was really just a bunch of useless bullshit…

But wait… there’s MORE!!! You can also use Hercules Hooks to hang up your child’s dirty underwear in front of his friends, or even pick your nose with them! Just watch those hard to reach boogers come out with ease! AMAZING!!!

And of course, no post on The Clapper would be complete without mentioning the commercial’s biggest star….

I wish Cousin Itt would turn off the TV when he was done watching Fraggle Rock!

The old lady in the final scene of the commercial, who reminded us all of dear old Grandmama from the Addams Family, became such a part of Clapper lore that she has always appeared at the end of their ads, even three decades later.  While the actress herself didn’t quite get the C-list celebrity fame that Clara Peller and Edith Fore unexpectedly got from their forays into the advertising world, her 5 second masterpiece of Clapper usage has been replayed so often for so many years that she is still one of the most famous old ladies in advertising history.  Not bad for some poor lady who obviously fell asleep while watching The Late Late Show again and was obviously pissed that she missed them play The Star Spangled Banner when the channel went off the air…

Just when you thought The Clapper couldn’t get any better…. it got an ejumacation!

Coming soon… The Fucking Brilliant Clapper.

Yes, they made The Clapper better, so that it can now turn random things on and off in your house based on the number of claps it hears!  Clap twice to turn on the lamp!  Clap three times to turn off the Salad Shooter!  I think Tony Orlando beat The Smart Clapper to this amazing counting technology by 15 years, utilizing it as a method for apartment dwellers to organize a booty call.  But not even The Smart Clapper can overcome the biggest fault with the product that doesn’t involve human laziness… and this isn’t a joke, I lifted it straight from the Wikipedia article on The Clapper:

The Clapper can sometimes be triggered by coughing, a dog’s bark or clapping that emanates from televisions and stereo speakers set at high volume, making it somewhat inconvenient for households with dogs and loud appliances.

I hope that boombox isn’t hooked up to The Smart Clapper.

So there you have it… a product that is legendary for its tackiness, noteworthy for its worthlessness, and celebrated for its cheesiness.  Well, here at The Nest, that’s worth a squirrely salute to this resilient piece of UL listed plastic that has been turning electrical devices on and off at random for thirty years, and entertaining us with clapping fools on the tube every December.  Heck, I didn’t even mention that The Clapper plagiarized their catchy little “Clap On, Clap Off!” jingle!  Epic!

And now, it’s time to pull the plug on this blog post…..

Don’t applaud, or you’ll turn it back on!

NOTE: Yes, I know it’s only Monday, but I spent all morning composing this post instead of catching up on my sleep, so I might want to do that tomorrow.  Enjoy your weekly trip down the memory lane of advertising a day early!

NOBODY’S HOOOOOOME!!!!

Back in the prehistoric era known as the 1980′s, people were much harder to get a hold of than they are now.  These days, almost everyone carries a cell phone with them wherever they go… making it much easier to contact people regardless of whether they are home or not, while making it a hell of a lot harder for sitcom writers since the unreachable character was a common plot device.  Since common everyday cell technology was still a decade off, the 80′s tried to solve this problem with the answering machine, the ancestor of today’s electronic voicemail.  If you weren’t at home, you could turn on your answering machine and let it answer your phone for you, greeting the caller with whatever recorded message you left asking them to leave their name and number, or perhaps just to FOAD…

Quit trying to sell me insurance!!!!

Were you ever afraid your message might be too mundane or boring for your prospective callers to hear?  Did you ever wish you could liven up your message so that people would actually wait until you left the house to call you just so they could listen to your recording?  Well, the 80′s had the answer to those prayers too, and if you were one of the cool households who blew a couple hundred bucks on an answering machine back in the post-Bell breakup days, you could really spice up your answering machine message with a little help from a 3 and a half minute cassette tape called “Crazy Calls”.

Seriously, aren’t you glad you were alive for the 80′s?  For only about $19.99 plus some standard shipping and handling charge, you could have any one of those side splitting tunes greeting all of the lucky people who rang your number while you were out buying your friends Chia Pets.

Or getting arrested for being too awesome.

But maybe you were too poor to afford an answering machine, or to pay $20 for a 3:30 second cassette tape that wasn’t from Twisted Sister.  Well, if you always wondered what those clever little ditties sounded like in all of their glory, then I’ve got a huge treat for you today!  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and squirrels, I present to you the complete Crazy Calls cassette for your listening pleasure!

I’ll give you a minute or two to quit dancing to that kickass track….

OMG! Like totally tubular!

Let’s break down the Crazy Calls debut album, shall we?

Introduction (:35)

To use Crazy Calls, simply employ the same technique all of us 80′s children had to use to record a song off the radio.  Play the tape in your breakdance era boombox next to your answering machine, and be sure to hit both “record” and “play” at the same time, because it’s the 80′s and we haven’t figured out how to do one touch recording technology yet.  I have to admit, this intro shattered a myth I had about Crazy Calls that it was something you popped into an answering machine and it rotated messages as the calls came in.  No, you have to pick your favorite of the seven crazy calls and have your machine record it playing off of your radio.  Something tells me downloading music off of Napster wasn’t this difficult…

How about we just record our own crazy call?

Track 1 – Boogie Woogie (:20)

Ah yes, who doesn’t love The Andrews Sisters?  And back in the 80′s, there were still people who were alive when they were last relevant.  I gotta admit, this is one of the best 20 second parodies of “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” I have ever heard, and this would absolutely be the crazy call your grandparents would have picked back in 1985 to put on their machine, assuming they had a grandchild available to help them put the crazy call on their answering machine….

Yes son, little Timmy helped us hook up our laptop and it’s working just swell! Your father has already found some naked pictures of our daughter in law on the internets!

Track 2 – Call Me If You Can Can (:20)

Well, if the Boogie Woogie ditty was a little too modern for you, there’s always this relic from the days of Vaudeville that sounds like it was ripped from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon.  Just in case you want to plead youth and don’t know what can can dancing is, this should give you an idea…

Vodka always brings out the coochies…

I didn’t think that sounded anything like cancan dancing music, but when I went to YouTube and typed “cancan music” into the search box, this is what came up.  Offenbach’s piece if clearly what this crazy call was inspired by, they just didn’t use the more familiar part that appeared in all those cartoons we watched as kids.

Track 3 – The Answering Machine Zone (:28)

While Rod Serling and singing do not go together, his famous introduction to The Twilight Zone has been parodied in just about every way imaginable, so why not for an answering machine message as well?  I can think of two episodes of The Twilight Zone that centered around telephones, and both of them are as creepy as hell since they involved speaking to dead people.

Yeah Gramma, I just sent Daddy out to the cornfield!

Track 4 – 50′s (:29)

The Crazy Calls naming department worked overtime on coming up with a title for this doo wop ditty.  This was the one that would play over the ordering information at the end of the commercial, and that ending was one of the tunes that stuck in my head for over 25 years.  It’s such a wonderful flashback to the early days of rock and roll, that you’d swear it was being crooned by Marvin Berry and the Starlighters.

Chuck! It’s your cousin Marvin! Hey, you gotta listen to this kid…. oh shit! The cancan song’s playing! He isn’t home!!!!

Track 5 – Bogie (:20)

Also known as the lost track of the Crazy Calls cassette!  Yes, this was the only recording that they didn’t play during the commercial, and nobody who didn’t order the damn thing would have had any idea it even existed!  Kind of like none of the kids from today even know Humphrey Bogart ever existed.  Hearing this rarely played cut makes me want to break out the old Bertie Higgins 45….

Don’t swoon over Bertie’s sparkling eyes or sexy tan lines…

Track 6 – The Rap (:25)

Also known as…. the best fucking recording of anything that ever created sound waves.  Seriously, who doesn’t like old school rap?  Especially compared to some of that garbage that passes as hip hop these days.  Kanye, Ludicrous Speed, Lil Wayne, Lil Jon, Lil Dick…. none of them can touch the def boyz from with the chainz from the 80′s!

They don’t make ‘em like The Fat Boys anymore…

Track 7 – Beethoven’s Fifth (:25)

When Chuck Berry first advised Beethoven to roll over, you can rest assured ol’ Ludwig hadn’t heard the greatest atrocity ever to occur to his music yet.  And keep in mind, just a decade earlier, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony had been turned into a freaking disco song!  So Crazy Calls really upped the ante on how to desecrate a musical classic (and hey, I love disco!)

And really, people who hate disco just don’t have taste…

So if you liked what you heard today, be sure to hit those thrift stores, rummage sales or your parents’ attic, and maybe you too could own your very own copy of that 80′s classic Crazy Calls!  We here at The Nest salute its contribution to the cheesy earworm Hall of Fame, and for coming up with the greatest short feature rap song in the history of beatboxes and gold chains.

Damn!  I gotta hear that one again.  Hit it, boys!

Now that’s what I call hip hop!

Promises, promises….

Note: This is a pretty long post, but hang in there!  I have plenty of pictures and my humorous insights to share!

For as long as man has had an imagination, he has tried to predict the future.  If you make enough psychic predictions, the chances are that at least one of them will actually manifest itself.  People in the technology industry are notorious for their predictions, trying to sell the public on all these far-fetched futuristic gizmos and gadgets we’ll have that will make life better and their grandkids richer.  Alas, these people at the forefront of science and technology have about the same success rate as the corner prophet and the TV weatherman.  If you don’t believe me, look at the picture I included above.  Just how long have we been promised flying cars now?  The concept has been around for almost as long as automobiles and airplanes have… and even Back To The Future was predicting their widespread use by 2015.

Now flying squirrels, we can do!

Let’s face it, we will never have flying cars… at least not in common use.  Flying cars are a good example of what happens when engineers get too big of a woody thinking about ways to combine examples of current technology into something totally awesome but absolutely impractical.  Another typical roadblock that hampers the Popular Mechanics seer is the inability to foresee new technology that will render their future vision to be obsolete before it ever gets off the drawing board.

For a good lesson in how corny and ironically hilarious some predictions can look when viewed from the future time that was being envisioned, for today’s Retro Ad Tuesday we’re going to take a gander at a commercial campaign AT&T was running 20 years ago in which they made the long term blunder of trying to predict the future.  While many of the futuristic advances we saw in these spots wowed us back in 1993 when they originally aired, from a 2013 point of view, we can obviously look back and laugh at how silly the world’s foremost telecommunications company that was supposed to be on the cutting edge of new technology looked trying to gaze into the crystal ball.

I see hundreds of zombies walking this way and that with some strange object in their hands…

The ad campaign was called “You Will…”, and here is a video featuring all seven commercials in the series….

First impression… doesn’t it seem odd that a company like AT&T couldn’t anticipate the impending rise of the communications advancement that they would come to be a big part of?

Yeah, I’m telling you Watson! These bulky cell phones will soon be a thing of the past! Telegraph is where it’s at in the 21st century!

Just for shits and giggles (shoutout to Merby and C.K. Hope!), let’s take a look at the 20 futuristic visions AT&T laid out in this series…

1. Have you ever borrowed a book…. from thousands of miles away?

Now on video microfiche!

Boy, they blew this one.  Thanks to the invention of ebooks on such devices as the Nook and Kindle, “borrowing” books from thousands of miles away is no longer necessary… particularly on that dated microfilm-looking technology that person in the ad is using…

2. Crossed the country…. without stopping for directions?

Turn left at the next oil puddle

Ding Ding Ding!  Score one for AT&T who saw the coming of the modern GPS device!  I don’t know when GPS’s readily became available, but the first, and I think to this day only time I was ever in a car with a GPS was waaaaaaay back in 2000 in a rental car.  It really did nothing but list directions on a screen, and didn’t talk or show cool 3-D streetviews like the gadgets nowadays do, or at least I’d assume they do.  Like I said, GPS’s are something I know little about because I still get where I’m going the old fashioned way…. by looking for the North Star.

3. Sent someone a fax….. from the beach?

This is going to end up on the internet in 5 seconds thanks to AT&T!

This is going to become a common theme in this breakdown, but this is the first case of AT&T not taking into account that a certain technology was about to become obsolete.  While faxes haven’t quite become dinosaurs yet, alternate technology to send written documents almost anywhere has existed for a while now.  The guy in the ad essentially wrote an email, and I know email was around in 1993, because that was the year I was introduced to it in college.  I guess you could give AT&T credit for conceptualizing what essentially became the iPad, but the whole fax machine routine it goes through is so quaintly funny…

4. Have you ever paid a toll…. without slowing down?

I hope they see me while they’re digging out their credit card and swiping their stereo…

I’m fortunate to live in an area without any toll roads, but I have to pass through two tollways every year when I go to Oklahoma.  Oklahoma has a pass you can buy that allows you to go around the tollgates via a sensor with verifies that you have a pass and it is valid.  I’d imagine most other tollway systems also have this technology.  So while the concept of not having to stop to pay a toll was accurate, their cumbersome method for doing so was way off.  Texting while driving is bad enough… but can you imagine driving through the narrow tollgates while you fiddle around trying to pay the toll on your in-car credit card system?  The International Brotherhood of Possums is happy this vision did not come to pass.

5. Bought concert tickets…. from a cash machine?

My ATM got me tickets close enough to touch Gene Simmons’ tongue!!!

Right church, wrong pew on this prediction, but given how poorly overall AT&T did on these, we’ll generously award them this one.  You can certainly buy tickets for events at little video kiosks, but the future of selling tickets was over the internet.  These days, almost all first day sales of tickets for concerts and sporting events are limited to internet sales.

6. Tucked your baby in…. from a phone booth?

Wahhhhhh!!! Mommy can’t tuck me in because there are no more phone booths!!!

Any prediction of the future that includes the phrase “phone booth” is obviously declared immediately null and void.  We have Skype, and I’m sure video technology exists for cell phones as well (not that I’d know with my vintage 2006 model), but no babies are ever going to be tucked in again from a damn phone booth.  Proof that even AT&T didn’t foresee the fact that cell phones would very soon take over the world… and that is proof that they were brought to this planet by evil aliens looking to take over the world.  Fun Fact:  This was the only one of their “You Will” predictions that AT&T repeated in a later commercial… which makes them missing the boat on this one even funnier!

7. Have you ever opened doors…. with the sound of your voice?

Quit voice activating my door, you stalker!

There are many modern technologies out there I don’t partake in, but I’m pretty sure most everyone else doesn’t have voice recognition replacing deadbolts.  While this technology would come to pass for use in new cars and evil automated phone systems (although not specific to a certain person’s voice), it was kind of silly for AT&T to envision a bad spy movie use for it.

8. Carried your medical history…. in your wallet?

Sorry, your insurance was rejected.

Another whiff for AT&T, who didn’t envision the penny pinching of the insurance industry nor the enacting of HIPAA laws.

9. Attended a meeting…. in your bare feet?

The guys from Brazil aren’t wearing pants.

If there’s one futuristic idea that has been around almost as long as flying cars that actually did manifest itself, it’s video conferencing.  Even Back To The Future II threw it in to their 2015 world just 4 years before this ad aired.  Maybe this is why video conferencing seems like it’s been around forever… because it was anticipated by almost everyone for decades.  Hell, it’s the one thing from the Jetsons’ future world that we did get.  Since I am not, nor have ever been in the corporate world, I have no idea how long this technology has existed, but color me surprised AT&T still thought it to be a novel concept 20 years ago…

10. Have you ever watched a movie you wanted to…. the minute you wanted to?

Dammit! I want to watch “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”…. NOW!!!!

Kudos to AT&T for predicting on-demand technology!  Thanks to cable, satellite, and Netflix, and hell, even Hulu and YouTube, we can indeed watch movies and shows whenever we wish.  AT&T conveniently skipped the part about not having to put up with commercials…

11. Learned special things…. from far away places?

Live from the rainforest, today we learn how to cook a squirrel!

I’ve been out of school now for 16 years, so I really have no idea if the classroom version of video conferencing actually became an everyday reality… but I doubt it.  These days, if you want to learn about where jazz came from, you don’t ask some professor living across the country who probably wouldn’t know Dizzy Gillespie from Dizzy Dean, you go to Wikipedia like everyone else does.

12. Have you ever checked out of a supermarket… a whole cart at a time?

Price check on squirrel pups!

While I don’t recall this particular version of the future of shopping, I do remember a similar ad from the late 90′s that shows a shady looking teen pocketing merchandise while bring followed by store security… and when he gets to the exit, the system scans all of his items and credit card automatically and the guard stops him…. to give him his receipt.  I thought that was a bunch of bullshit back then, and whaddaya know, it’s still far from being a reality.  Even self-checkout machines (i.e. Satan reincarnate) are logistically flawed, and large stores only put up with them due to perceived customer “convenience” and of course to save payroll on real, live cashiers.  The idea of a cart full of merchandise automatically being scanned at a checkout is ludicrous, take it from someone who’s worked at Mecca and dealt with their thousands and thousands of individual bar codes for 15 years.

13. Put your heads together… when you’re not together?

Help me girls!

Just a dressed up version of the video conferencing prediction.  Not only are cell phones mysteriously absent from AT&T’s future, but apparently the internet is as well.  How did these guys ever beat out MCI?

14. Gotten a phone call…. on your wrist?

PREPOSTEROUS!!!

Really, do I need to say more?  You can come up with the gag answer for this one…

15. Have you ever had a classmate… who’s thousands of miles away?

Cool! I’m sitting next to a vixen in my virtual classroom!

Public schools may be increasing class sizes due to budget cuts and a lack of qualified teachers, but those extra students won’t be coming from Bumfuck, Mississippi or Japan anytime soon.  Just another novelty concept with no real practical value.

16. Conducted business… in a language you don’t understand?

Greetings! Do you speak possum?

Sure, we have online translators now… but have you noticed something that’s apparent in most of these predictions.  While AT&T missed out on cell phone and internet booms, they apparently knew touchscreen technology was going to be all the rage.  Most of the futile premonitions that have been trotted out in these ads involved a lot of touchscreen usage.  Touching my computer monitor here in 2013 just makes the colors look funny where my finger is…

17. Kept an eye on your home…. when you’re not at home?

I wonder what my girlfriend’s doing while I’m at the game?

Just when I was giving AT&T a little credit for pushing touchscreen technology, now they whip out the old stylus on us.  And while that device the woman is holding kinda looks like a modern smartphone, it’s a pretty safe bet that whatever it is couldn’t receive a call since AT&T’s future consists of payphones and wristphones…

18. Have you ever renewed your drivers license…. at a cash machine?

The photo would probably look better from a “cash machine”

We can forgive AT&T for not envisioning 9/11 and the way it would turn us into a paranoid, militaristic state.  I’ve only had three drivers licenses in my life thanks to Illinois’ sticker renewal program, and each license has gotten more and more crammed full of security features.  AT&T seems to have a fascination with “cash machines”, which in the forward thinking 2010′s we simply call ATM’s, but I doubt the same device that can’t read my debit card on first swipe and spit out rat-eaten currency is going to be able to issue a modern drivers license… or that the states would ever allow us to skip the pleasant DMV wait.

19. Fixed a car… with your television?

No repairs required.

AT&T couldn’t see the advances that cell phones and the internet would bring us, so why should they have also predicted that cars (spurred by the profit margins of having work done only at dealer shops) would become so computerized and equipped with such specialized parts that your local mechanic wouldn’t even be able to do a simple repair on it, let alone some Mr. Goodwrench from who-knows-where that would appear on your TV?  We can forgive you that, AT&T, but really… television?  Did you seriously not think the computer would take off in 1993?

20. Had an assistant…. who lived in your computer?

Evil Squirrel, your personalized computer assistant!

The last, and fittingly the most far-reaching of all of these “You Will…” predictions was the computerized “assistant”, here shown as a digitized dog.  “Smart computers” have certainly been in the works, but so far, the only real smart technology computers seem to have is the damn internet cookie that tracks the websites you visit and searches you’ve made, and then makes the ads you see on websites just a little to personal and creepy.  Thanks for bringing up singles who want to date me in my hometown, Fido!  Now can you fetch me the one simple trick people in my state can use that will help me save a ton of money on my car insurance?  Good boy!

If you’ve made it this far through this long post, there’s no need to keep you any longer with a verbose conclusion.  I’ll just end this post with yet another frequent vision of the future that sadly has yet to become a reality….

This isn’t a nest…. it’s a pigsty!!!

One of the elements that makes a certain commercial or ad campaign in general stick out from the crowd is how much it ends up incorporating itself into pop culture.  A memorable line can turn into a popular catchphrase, a goofy scene can end up being referenced over and over again in any form of media or entertainment, and a novel schtik can lend itself to being parodied for years to come.  I’ve expounded before on this phenomenon in advertising, and how it can make otherwise forgettable commercials stand the test of time.

A porcupine selling children’s cereal… the most fucking brilliant corporate mascot decision in history!

Back in the 80′s, the deep thinkers at advertising think tanks began coming up with the idea that tricking people into liking their product was the way to go.  Pepsi was one of the first to make this type of gimmick popular with their famous Pepsi Challenge in the 70′s and 80′s (Raise your hand if you remember the bottle cap contest mentioned in that Wiki article, and that the hardest letter to get was A!).  Wendy’s did this well with their long-forgotten Burger A vs. Burger B campaign in the late 80′s (Boring author’s note:  I probably only remember these Wendy’s ads because in the ultimate one-time gag gone too far, I incorporated the guy who conducts the Wendy’s taste tests into a comic strip I was drawing in a notebook at the time, and he went on to become one of that strip’s major characters).

Folgers coffee took this idea and went even further with it, “secretly replacing” a known high quality coffee with their own… and the result was memorable ads such as this one:

Here’s a couple more Folgers hidden camera ads I was able to find….

Hidden camera? Where?

So many things stand out about these ads… like the disclaimers they added at the bottom of a couple of the commercials…

INVITED GUESTS RECEIVED A COMPLIMENTARY MEAL

Which of course means that none of the people you see who had their regular gourmet coffee jacked by this out of work news anchor are regular patrons of the restaurant.  They’re just people pulled in off the street with the promise of a free meal, so long as they’ll drink the special coffee.  Maybe this is why all of the hidden camera “victims” seem to be faking their enthusiasm that they’re drinking the same mud they can brew at home, or just seem to be completely disinterested in the revelation altogether.

ANNOUNCER: “Sir, did you know the coffee you’re drinking isn’t the normal house coffee, but is in fact FOLGERS CRYSTALS?”

DINER: “Ummmm…. OK”

ANNOUNCER: “So what do you think of the FOLGERS CRYSTALS?”

DINER: “I haven’t drank the coffee because I don’t like coffee, you nosy prick”

ANNOUNCER: “May I remind you that FOLGERS is picking up the check for your meal?”

DINER: “So…. Oh, I get it.  What!?!?  This is really FOLGER’S CRYSTALS I’m drinking!  This stuff’s the shit!  Waiter!  Can I have another cup of that delicious, mouth watering FOLGERS CRYSTALS?”

The best part of waking up!

It’s too bad Folgers did this in the 80′s rather than in the recent decade, because I’d love to see them pull this stunt at Starbucks.

What did you think of the Folgers Venti crapuccino, ma’am?

So remember, if you ever happen to be walking down the street and are suddenly invited by a strange man to dine at a fancy restaurant you could never afford to even look at the menu in, be prepared to smile and act perky when they come around and ask what you think of the coffee.  And just be sure that they’ve replaced the coffee with genuine FOLGERS CRYSTALS, and not something else…..

Good to the last drop!

Baseball, apple pie, and M&M’s.  It just doesn’t get more American than that even if you wrap it up in the Stars and Stripes flag made in China.  Back in 1985, 2/3 of these elements came together to give us this classic commercial…

Anyone out there who played Little League baseball in the mid 80′s remembers this commercial, and were frantically searching for green M&M’s prior to each at bat.  Heck, I wish I had a handful of any color M&M’s when I batted a robust .000 in 1987 (but, for the sabermetricians out there, I did have a nearly .500 on base percentage!).  There was something in the dye used to color each M&M that ensured certain types of base hits.  Specifically….

Home run indeed…

There were no red M&M’s in the 80′s since it was well known at the time that red dye was a carcinogen, so we have to assume what the red candies would have given the eager Little Leaguer who ingested one before a critical plate appearance…

While we kids ate this routine up when we got together for games full of aluminum bats and insane, screaming parents, little did we know these magic candies were in fact the very first performance enhancing drugs in baseball.  Just what in the hell kind of example was M&M’s supposed to be setting for us kids anyway?  Don’t worry about working hard and practicing every day… just pop a few of these little chocolates before every game, and you’ll be a star slugger!

Candeeeee is magic!!!!

Just a couple years after this commercial aired, a couple of overgrown little league players in Oakland brought real-life M&M’s into the game of baseball in the form of steroids.

Who knew the Bash Brothers were actually the M&M Boys?

Is it a coincidence that in the original commercial, the PED pusher’s team is wearing green and gold uniforms, just like the Oakland A’s wear?  You think the Hershey company didn’t know where their idea of turning stick figure ballplayers into instant power hitters was going?  Did they foresee the damage it would do to the National Pastime, and the stain it would leave on every player who played during the next two decades?  Did they really care since the commercial succeeded in selling a hell of a lot of M&M’s at Little League games for the latter half of the 1980′s?  Of course not.

You’re going to rot in Hell, you M&M’s pushers!

So thank you, M&M’s, for turning baseball players into backne warriors and our cherished sport into a softball beer league.  You raised our batting averages more than the refusal to award errors in Little League, while at the same time letting us know it was perfectly OK to sit on our fat asses and eat certain colored M&M’s to get better.  How in the hell all of us 80′s peewee sluggers didn’t end up in the Major Leagues is a mystery, but all of the shame and disgrace to come was worth it so we could bask in the glory of the eighth wonder of the world…. Barry Bonds’ incredible exploding head.

What 762 green M&M’s will do to you…

Much like today, fitness was all the rage in the 80′s.  Just go down to the local gym and replace all of the yoga pants, sports bras and tramp stamps with bright colored leotards, spandex, and leg warmers… and you’ve got yourself a bonafide 1980′s style workout party!  Partly inspired by the dance craze movies of the early 80′s  such as “Fame”, “Flashdance”, and “Footloose”, aerobic exercise was a fad that spanned the decade, and ushered in the Super Size decade of the 90′s.

I should have gotten hazard pay for growing up with four sisters.

Whether it was Jane Fonda, Denise Austin, or (gulp) Susan Powter, one thing all of these fitness fests had in common was a lot of thin, toned, perky chicks in tight clothing made from genuine rainbows who weren’t afraid to shake their spandex clad buns of steel to the beat.  Not only did these aerobic vixens help inspire women all over America to get off their couch and get in shape, but they also provided plenty of eye candy for the guys to do a little solo exercising of their own.

There was one exception to this rule, however…..

Pictured: Too much man for you to take.

Richard Simmons was already established as a genuine fitness guru even before he tortured our eyes with these commercials for his “Sweating To The Oldies” series in the late 80′s.  As you can see from the commercial, a Richard Simmons workout was a tad different from one you might catch in the morning on ESPN 30 years ago.  While exercise is for all, especially those who are a bit pleasantly plump, no self-respecting celebrity aerobics instructor was going to be bouncing their ponytail within 5 miles of the nearest fat person.

“IIIIIIIIII’m Flyyyyyyyying!!!”

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The author of the Evil Squirrel’s Nest Blog is certified by the medical community, and mainly his peckerhead doctor, as being 30 pounds overweight for his height.  This therefore makes him a certified fatass, and under Article XXII, Section 69, Part 4.7 of the Political Correctness Code of 1992, does legally allow him to poke fun at other people who share his affliction.

Alas, it does not allow me to make fun of Richard Simmons flaming ways.

Simmons’ trademark annoying overbubbliness is on full display in his ad for “Sweating To The Oldies 2″ for the full 120 seconds of fat burning sock hopping we are subjected to.  Back in the 1980′s, “oldies” consisted of songs from the 50′s and 60′s that rarely ever get played on the radio anymore, and “Sweating” delivers some of the best dance songs of the era, like “Jailhouse Rock”…

Just keep Richard out of my cellblock please!

“The Locomotion”

We love you, Kylie!!!

“Summer in the City”….. wait, “Summer in the City”!?!?  I wouldn’t exactly call that a dance song.  Although I imagine Richard Simmons happily provides the sound effects of the jackhammer during the instrumental break.  Seriously, Elvis Presley gave you his OK from the chalet he’s hiding at in Switzerland to use one of his songs, yet you couldn’t round up some better 60′s dance music from lesser artists like “The Twist” or “Do You Love Me?”  I guess John Sebastian was hard up for money… Lord only knows what else was considered to fill out your little VHS tape….

“You don’t believe… sing it everyone! We’re on the eve of destruction! Oh yeah, feel the burn, ladies!!!”

Today The Nest salutes a true legend of the world of fitness who got more 300 pound people off of their La-Z-Boys and into tight fitting workout clothes than the lure of a late night run to Walmart Mecca.  We vow to be bright eyed and bushy tailed every morning when we pop that “Sweating to the Oldies” cassette into our no-longer-working Sony Walkman and hit the road for a high impact power walk.  Thank you Richard Simmons for giving us the opportunity to feel the burn!

What 6 weeks of exercising to J. Frank Wilson and SSgt. Barry Sadler will do for your body.

This commercial is just plain wrong…..

Since I don’t watch A&E nor Duck Dynasty (other than being surrounded by all their licensed merchandise every night at Mecca), I would not even know of this commercial’s existence if I didn’t know the actress who plays the lunch lady.  She’s been one of my friends on the other message board for over a decade now.  I can just picture the evil laugh she was holding in when she found out she’d be serving up squirrel parts, knowing what I’d think about it…..

Bon appetit!

Who am I kidding?  I’d do it for a little money too!  Congrats on the national exposure, Melly!

That’s gonna leave a mark…

Big Business got to be big business because by and large, the people who were responsible for running the corporations made very smart decisions.  Along with a lot of hard work, a little luck, a little foresight, and maybe even a bribe or two can put you at the top of the Dow Jones in no time.  But these icons of capitalism aren’t quite perfect, and at times, the suits who make the decisions can lay a really huge egg that can bring bad publicity and financial hardship.  Think of the biggest marketing fails in business history…. the Edsel, New Coke, the Betamax, my CafePress Shop.

Doesn’t anyone need a damn shirt!?!?

Here’s one you may have forgotten about that hit a major television network in the pocket for over $50,000,000, as well as in the pride for having to own up to one of the most poorly thought out projects in business history.  Forward to the 3:15 mark to see this one minute commercial….

Yes, the Olympics Triplecast.  A novel idea in utilizing the booming pay-per-view market that was poorly thought out and horrifically executed.

I think I’ll take the quarter…

You know something wasn’t a very good idea when half of its page on Wikipedia is devoted to the reasons it fell flat on its ass.  Anyway, here’s a little background on NBC’s infamous turkey, The Olympics Triplecast….

NBC way outbid its network competitors (it’s speculated by as much as $100,000,000) for the rights to cover the 1992 Summer Olympics from Barcelona, which in turn helped jack up the price they’d have to pay for each ensuing Olympic Games.  To make a baseball reference that will go over the heads of 99% of my readership, that makes the International Olympic Committee Scott Boras, and NBC Dave Dombrowski.  Anyway, to help recoup some of the excess cost, the “jeniuses” at NBC came up with the brilliant idea to create a pay-per-view cable package that Olympics fans just couldn’t refuse.

I can watch three times the boring sports I normally could!?!? Sign me up!!!

So they created three special pay-per-view channels, creatively named the Red, White, and Blue channels.  Each channel would show live, unedited coverage of Olympics events that would either not be seen during the main NBC feed, or would be seen on tape delay.  These live events would occur 24 12 hours a day, and would be ordered by millions of diehard Olympics fans for the relatively inexpensive price of $170.  What a bargain!!!

Considering how many people would pony up $49.99 to watch one of Mike Tyson’s 90 second fights back in the early days of pay-per-view, it is a bit mystifying that more suckers people didn’t splurge for the Triplecast.

But viewers did not race to their phones to order the Olympic Triplecast, and if NBC would have paid attention to its own marketing research, they would have known this gimmick was going to be a tough sell on the public.  For one thing, while there are many rabid Olympics fans out there in the good ol’ U. S. of A., caring about the Games just isn’t our thing.  Our sense of nationalism has never extended to sports, mainly because we’re cocky enough to believe that our team sport athletes are already the best in the world, and we’d rather watch them play in our own leagues rather than in an amateur environment against people we don’t know, and whose names we can’t pronounce.

Ummm, shouldn’t you be #2 instead?

To add insult to injury, those precious few who did order the Triplecast service found that unedited sports in the raw is approximately five billion times better than the overly produced and dramaticized dreck that was offered on the main NBC feed.  It’s just like tuning in a baseball game, and turning the sound down so you don’t have to listen to the annoying announcers.  Many Triplecast viewers were choosing to do their Olympics viewing exclusively on the Red, White, and Blue channels… which wound up hurting the ratings of the primary package NBC was offering up for free!  D’oh!

Exclusive footage from the Olympics Triplecast White Channel. And you thought equestrian couldn’t be anything but boring!

And if NBC didn’t predict that this would happen, the more astute people running their affiliate stations sure did, since a handful of those affiliates boycotted the Triplecast ads and refused to air them, not wanting to advertise something that would take viewers and the advertising dollars they bring out of their pocket.  In the pre-internet days, this was serious lack of exposure in the markets that these rogue affiliates oversaw.

We’ll keep our ratings golden goose to ourselves, thank you.

About the only thing cool about the entire Triplecast package was that remote control they offered with the red, white, and blue buttons on it… which you could only get if you ordered the Gold Package 5 months before the Olympic flame was even lit.  Since literally nobody fell for this, these remotes were all sent to a landfill in New Jersey and buried along with Jimmy Hoffa.  If there’s a picture of one out there on the internet somewhere, Google Images sure can’t find it…

My search did spit out this image of “The Macho Man” Randy Savage, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

To add to NBC’s embarrassment, they were mercilessly mocked and lampooned by everyone out there who had a funny bone.  Even NBC’s own late night comedy star David Letterman let his bosses have it for such an insane idea.

I’d respond to my own viewer mail, if I ever got any….

So today, The Nest would like to give a standing ovation to the head honchos at the National Broadcasting Company, who came up with the worst idea in the history of broadcasting (at least until reality TV came along).  We hope the nine figure loss you split with your partner Cablevision was worth it to bring us all of the water polo and discus throwing we could stand if we were able to afford your tri-channel coverage.  Thanks for bringing a lasting legacy to the pay-per-view craze of the 90′s that didn’t involve trying to watch scrambled porn…

Just add some cheesy porno music, and this is an instant turn on.

Prior to the 1990′s, if you were curious about reading up on a subject, you had to go look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls… or if you were one of those poor families who couldn’t afford a set of encyclopedias, and you didn’t mind the other kids thinking you were a nerd, there was always the library.  Learning about the world around us wasn’t as instantaneous as it is now thanks to Google and Wikipedia, but if we had the time to do a little digging, we could find out all kinds of interesting things on just about anything.

Check this out, Sully! Did you know librarians are all descended from the witches of Salem?

But if your family was really cool, you had access to the most awesome reference series out there.  No, I’m not talking about Disney’s Wonderful World of Knowledge yearly editions, I’m talking about Time/Life books!  They had a series on the Civil War, a set of Home Repair and Improvement books (shilled by the legendary Bob Vila!  Track lighting!!!), and of course, the crown jewel of them all was the late 80′s series Mysteries of the Unknown!

Twenty volumes in all… just to show you how much shit out there was still unknown to us in the 80′s.

This is the second post in a row that owes a debt of inspiration to Alice at Wonderland, as she mentioned the old series in a post last week.  And now, here is the first of several 120 second spots Time-Life ran for this intriguing series…

Gotta love the fascinating examples they use in this ad…

Chicago.  A man is about to get on a routine flight.  Suddenly he pauses.  He doesn’t know why, but he’s got to walk away.  An hour later, the plane goes down in flames.  It’s dismissed as CHANCE.

I’d walk away from the TSA screenings too.

You can tell this was pre-9/11, because nowadays, that guy’s hunted down by the CIA and sent to Guantanamo Bay for “questioning” before he even has a chance to explain that he only had a psychic vision.  Oh, and thanks for sharing it with all of the other passengers at the gate there.  Their next of kin are eternally grateful that you only saved yourself…

Britain.  A woman has a sudden image of a black mountain that’s moving with children trapped underneath it.  Two hours later, a Welsh schoolhouse is buried under an avalanche of coal slag.  It’s dismissed as COINCIDENCE.

Lucy in the skyyyy with mountains.

I’ve had some weird dreams before, but kiddie crushing mountains in motion?  This should have been dismissed as a bad acid trip…

Northern Texas.  An unidentified flying object is reported by at least a dozen people.  Although there were no storms in the area, it was dismissed as LIGHTNING.

Heat lightning!

Thanks to shows like “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Sightings” that were popular around this time, stories about UFO’s that everyone but the sheriff saw were a dime a dozen.  And the excuse was always something shitty like airplanes, mass hysteria, a weather balloon on fire, or my favorite “ball lightning”.  Ball lightning was the scientist’s equivalent of your mother’s “Because I said so!” or for those of you familiar with internet forums, Godwin’s Law.  It was the end all, stop the discussion, STFU answer.

The Midwest.  A mother feels a sharp pain in her right hand.  Far away at that exact same moment, her daughter screams as she touches a hot pan.  Just chance?

No, Community Chest.

This one was so mundane and unextraordinary that even the experts didn’t bother to dismiss it as anything, so the narrator had to throw in his own rhetorical question at the end.  I’m only 38, but I feel sharp pains in many places quite often for no apparent reason other than I have the spine of a 58 year old.  We’re not going to bother wondering about the exact timing of the alleged shared psychic pain, but I’ll be the expert here and and help make a ruling on this case…

Stonehenge.  A visitor fashions a wire antenna in the shape of an ancient Egyptian symbol.  He points it at the stones, and a surge of power rushes through his arms, knocking him unconscious.  Was it all in his mind, or was it much more than that (Dismissed as IMAGINATION).

Two words for this one…

BALL LIGHTNING!

The only real mystery about this commercial is where in the hell Judy the Time Life Operator was.  Was she abducted by aliens?  Or electrocuted by throwing spare change at Mount Rushmore?  Was she on that flight the selfish bastard let everyone die on?

Well, that explains it…

As great as this commercial was, Time-Life went to a whole new concept when the wonderful year of 1990 rolled around.  They brought in some dude named Ben Randall to push the Mysteries of the Unknown series.  Here’s Ben’s finest work, and the Mysteries of the Unknown commercial I remember best…

Ben Randall is that annoying guy you’ll run into from time to time who is far more intrigued by what’s going on than you’ll ever be… and the last thing you want to do is get him wound up or pretend to be interested in what he’s saying, because he’s going to educate you on his pointless knowledge far more than you ever intended to be.

Let me tell you about ancient squirrel drawings! These were found on the wall of a cave near Lake Titicaca in… what are you doing with that gun, ma’am?

Whether you’re curious about aliens, ancient beliefs, ESP, or why Twinkies aren’t of this earth, there’s a book in Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown series just for you!  While you can no longer order it with your major credit card via an 800 number (i.e., the online shopping of the 80′s), if you look around Ebay and such places, you can surely find a set somebody is willing to part with after they experienced one too many scary dream of 50 foot possums stomping on cars along country roads.  While we here at The Nest believe in the power of Rainbow Donkeys and talking squirrels, we do have a firm grip on science and probability, and do hereby render our verdict on all such phenomena….

I’ll bet you knew I was going to say this…

No, my blog hasn’t been hijacked by Pepe Le Pew or Corporal “Cockroach” LeBeau.  But yes, that’s French I’m speaking.  And no, this blogger isn’t French, he’s American… and he just stupidly called himself a girl…

Genuine Squirrel Scout cookies, ma’am?

If you haven’t figured out what the featured commercial is for today’s Retro Ad Tuesday yet, you must not have watched much Nickelodeon in the late 80′s and early 90′s.  The ad time on Nick must have been cheap in the early mornings, because there were a handful of commercials that seemed to air during every single commercial break.  One of them was for a groundbreaking animated series that was going to teach your children how to speak a new language so fast, that you could take them along on your European vacation one week later to be your translator.  This was the one and only master of all tongues Muzzy, and if you haven’t seen the commercial in a while, here it is in all of its dated glory…

It’s usually good advice to not glaringly point out your product’s flaws in the advertisement pitching it, but right off the bat in this commercial, it’s quite obvious that Muzzy’s going to teach our children how to speak a new language about as easily as the Spanish half of the instructions on that circular saw you got for Christmas.  The most memorable part about this commercial is the opening where the kids watch Muzzy on their telly (this is a British cartoon, after all) and the girl cheerfully repeats what Muzzy just said, extremely proud of the fact that she is the only person in the entire monsterish-speaking world who had any clue what the hell that big hairy thing just belched out of his marblemouth.

The Godpigeon says Muzzy needs to clean the shit out of his throat.

Now I’m not saying kids aren’t good at figuring things out… I mean, have you tried to translate a text message from a tween into English lately?  But nobody, even the French kids who probably got to watch “The Mysterious Cities of Gold” and “Spartakus” in their native languages, had any clue what that giant hairball was muttering.  This fille was quite obviously given le cue card to read off of.

Scritch is “scritch” in any language.

If you thought that the world only recently became a global community, you better think again.  Here we have a 25 year old product featuring a British cartoon helping kids in America learn how to speak French.  This was the kind of international cooperation that helped our countries stomp the Germans in not just one, but TWO World Wars.

Verrrrry interesting!

And it’s not like we needed the very proper British lady pitching the product, nor the fact that this was a BBC production to know that Muzzy had to be British animation.  Sure, everyone knows that Japanese animation is all very similar, but the same is true with the art from across the pond.  Compare the scene from the Muzzy commercial on the left with a shot of one of Nickelodeon’s classic time-filling “Sports Cartoons”, which was British/Canadian in origin, on the right.

They only look scrawny because the hippo’s so fat.

I took two years of Spanish in high school, and another year of it in college.  While I learned enough at the time to pass the classes, two decades later, I’m pretty much back at the point of trying to speak Spanish by adding an O onto the end of every word.  I’ve learned more about foreign languages through 15 years of working at Mecca and taking note of the bilingual labels.  Seriously, if you ever want to learn Spanish or French, go to the store and spend a few hours reading every product label that is also translated into another language… and you’ll pick up some culture in no time.  Not to mention, you’ll learn some amazing facts, like how the French and Americans can’t even agree on what color a fish is…

I’d say we’re probably both wrong…

So, with a new language being as close as your nearest big box store, you have to ask yourself, “Is $28.08 a month for six months too steep a price to pay for my kids to attempt to learn a second tongue from a gang of monsters with speech impediments?”  The answer is obvious.  This little kids version of Rosetta Stone was nothing more than an expensive way to keep your kids busy watching cartoons much like everything else they’d already watched on “Pinwheel” and “Sesame Street”.  But for nostalgia purposes, Muzzy more than passes The Nest’s sniff test, and for that we give the makers of this cartoon that got lost in translation a big ol’ french kiss.  It doesn’t even matter if the creator was a guy or not, after all, je suis la jeune fille!

¡Tu eres un doucheo bago!

Brush me.

I like to poke a little fun at some of the ads of yesteryear mainly because while they may have seen somewhat normal back when they first aired, they often seemed oddly dated and absurd when viewed through the eyes of today.  Of course, some commercials are so ridiculous that you can tell from the first time you see them on your TV that they’re turkeys.  So this week, we’re going to give the WABAC machine a little breather and take the Retro out of Retro TV Ad Tuesday.

Today’s spotlight ad is one you can currently see during your favorite and not-so-favorite shows.  It pinpoints the lengths to which companies will go to make their product seem like something you can’t live without, providing viewers with some of the most shallowest views on beauty since Barbie moved to Malibu.

Or MBRS came along…

The commercial we’ll focus on today is for the Gillette Fusion ProStyle Glider, a mouthful if there ever was one.  How does one market what is essentially a hedge trimmer for manhair?  Like this, apparently…

Funny that I explored questions that seemingly had no answer just the other day, because this ad starts off with one that has confounded men since Cleopatra told Marc Antony to kiss her asp….

What do women want?

FURS! DIAMONDS! MONEY!

Well, apparently Gillette has figured out the answer to the question nobody else has been able to tackle, and as it turns out, all women want is to quit having to pick hairs out from between their teeth when they’re with a guy.  A razor company has figured out how to satisfy women where Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Carrot Top have apparently failed.  Imagine that…

And where did Gillette get their brilliant insight into the minds of the average woman’s desires?  From three supermodels, of course.  Duh!

Like, you better shave that thing if you want us to touch it!

So what do these women who are five thousand times hotter than any man with a Gillette weed wacker is ever going to date want in a man?  Normally, if you asked this question of a woman, it might take her half an hour of rattling off her turn ons and turn offs before she’d hit anything having to do with body hair.  But our man from Gillette wants to make sure the hairy dudes out there watching this commercial know they need to buy their trimmer, so he helps steer the answers with his apparent psychic knowledge of each girl’s folical likes.

Our first Queen of Vacuous is the lovely Kate…

Justin Verlander! Again? How many times have I told you to shave that back?

We are told Kate likes a man with a little hair on his chest.  After she is force fed that answer by Mr. Creepy Gillette Guy, she sensuously adds, “But definitely not on his back.”

Wait… what!?!?

Yeah, my thoughts exactly…

As far as I know, there is only one person who is capable of even looking at their back, and that’s Linda Blair.  Reaching back there’s kinda a pain as well.  There’s a reason we use bumpy walls to scratch our backs.  I don’t care how awesome this ProGlider styler is, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to reach my back with it… and if I had someone to take care of that annoying backhair for me, I wouldn’t need the damn thing in the first place, now would I?

Well, so much for Kate and her impossible demands.  Let’s move along at the world’s most boring pool party and meet Hannah…

Sorry, I can’t keep my eyes off of your smooth, sexy beergut!

We’re told Hannah loves a guy with a smooth stomach to show off his sixpack.  Then we find out that Hannah is either mute, tongue-tied over the sexy abs of the best boy grip, or her salary demands for having a spoken part were too high for Gillette to afford.  All she does is smile and wink, complete with a cheesy “ding!” side effect.  Oh Hannah, that one batted eye said a thousand words, and they all convinced me to wack all the hair off of my sixpack.  It’s underneath all that belly flab dear, trust me!

Simply irresistible.

Now if you were able to make it through these first two doozy floozies without finding the nearest monastery, don’t put away that celibate rope just yet.  Because you haven’t met the lovely Genesis yet, and she’s dying to let you know how she wants to mutilate your manfur…

Do you think I should show more cleavage? it’s hairless cleavage, after all!

You might think Genesis was named after the book of the Bible where Cain killed Abel and God smote everyone but Noah and his boatload of animals.  But she’s much ,much crueler than that… we’re told she likes men that are completely hairless!

COMPLETELY HAIRLESS!!!!!!

Now we know why she was named Genesis…

No humming little trimmer is going to do for Genesis’ dream man.  Nothing short of a painful wax job is going to turn this cold, hard bitch into a puddle of lovey goo.  And as if it wasn’t bad enough that she wants to strip a man of all that makes him a mammal, Mr. Gillette Guy just has to throw in, “…and she doesn’t think that’s weird.”

No. I don’t. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

I got news for you, Revelations.  That’s not only weird and fucked up, but it’s downright cruel and inhumane.  As much as I’d hate to pass on your poofed up looks, there are other girls at this pool party who probably have much more reasonable hair demands, and I’m going to get Mr. Gillette here to read their minds for me so I know which ones are secretly lusting after squirrel meat tonight.  What, you’ve never been turned down by a guy before?  Get used to it, bitch.  We like our hair…

And so does MBRS.

I have a hairy chest, I have very hairy arms, my legs could probably be braided, and you’d have to come over and check my back yourself since I’m not a contortionist.  I have hair pretty much everywhere except at the very top of my head… and you know what, I’m damn happy with my furry self, and I do the squirrel species quite proud.  So I’m sorry Gillette, but I won’t be buying your slick little pocket de-maler.  If men were supposed to be hairless, all that testosterone us older guys are supposedly lacking wouldn’t be growing it all over us.

Ja!

We here at The Nest would like to salute all the hairy animals out there who aren’t going to let some ditzy models filled with silicone and Nair manipulate us guys into becoming as smooth as a plush possum.  Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes the beholder needs to have their eye gouged out with an eyebrow trimmer.  We’re sure some desperately vain dumbfucks will make sure these lovely yet lethal ladies don’t go home alone tonight, but as for the rest of us, we’ll stick with the girls who love the feel of a full breast of hair…

Squirrel girls for the win!

Candy squirrel.

Everything that has ever been invented has a story of how it was discovered behind it, and quite often these stories are more fascinating than the items themselves.  Like how Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by carelessly allowing some of his bacteria cultures to get moldy, or how Alfred Nobel discovered dynamite by blowing himself up, or how the Duchess of Massengill invented douche when she accidentally spilled vinegar on her flower.

The makers of Reese’s peanut butter cups wanted you to think there was a totally awesome story behind its creation, and attempted to do so with this classic ad from the early 1980′s….

Well, that was a train wreck…. both literally and figuratively.  Let’s break it down, shall we?

First, our ears are greeted with some of the best music that strange era between disco and New Wave had to offer.  Then we meet Mr. Studmuffin, doing his best John Travolta imitation strutting down the sidewalk and munching on a gigantic chocolate bar.  You can just hear the expanding seams in those already too-tight jeans pleading for mercy….

Stayin’ Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!

Cut to a sidewalk around the corner, and we meet the other half of our history-making tandem.  Apparently, everyone in this city is so busy, they have no choice but to eat on the run… but even that doesn’t explain why this chick is lugging around a gigantic tub of peanut butter and chowing it down like it was ice cream!

I hope she isn’t on her way to a Weight Watchers meeting….

This is probably the only instance in recorded history where any person was seen walking around eating straight up peanut butter.  That’s something you probably don’t even do at home when nobody can laugh at you.  She must either be really weird or really pregnant.

Speaking of pregnant, what should happen next, but our Hershey hero ends up bumping into Little Miss Skippy and seems to carelessly stick his chocolate bar right into her thick, gooey tub of peanut butter….

Noooo!!! My virgin peanut butter has been violated by your big, chocolate log!

Now accidental collisions like this are commonplace these days since so many people are brainlessly addicted to their cell phones and paying less than zero percent attention to their surroundings as they’re walking about texting BFF’s.  But thirty years ago, when two people ran into each other on the sidewalk, it could only be because one or both people were uncoordinated or just total dumbasses.  In the case of the chocolate and peanut butter secret rendezvous, both participants more than fit the bill.  In fact, these two are so stupid and absorbed in their Christopher Cross cassettes they’re listening to in their Walkmen, that they can’t even hear each other call them an asshole for ruining their lunch…

When you get caught between the moon and peanut butter….

Ah, but then comes the epiphany as they each grab ahold of a piece of the peanut butter covered chocolate bar.  Mmmmmmm, delicious!!!!  Why don’t you two just go ahead and engage in a big ol’ sloppy French kiss while you’re at it, because you’ve already consumed a good portion of the other’s saliva.  I’d imagine with the way she was chowing down at the beginning of the ad that hers was all over that peanut butter, and which end of the chocolate bar do you think wound up in the girl’s hand?  Yep, the top half that had been in his cavity-filled mouth.  You two just effectively made out with each other, and the only excitement you got out of it was the joy of eating an unrefined Reese’s peanut butter cup.

Just when you think this commercial can’t possibly get any better, enter the friendly grocer!

A Reese’s for a threeway?

This guy seems to sniff out the growing sexual tension between the two bumpees, and just pops up out of nowhere with the creepiest grin on his face and offers them some candy.  I wonder if this guy knows the butcher, Mr. Howell?  Anyway, it seems pretty stupid to be offering these two junk food gluttons a pack of Reese’s since they’re each holding the ingredients to make their own for free.  It also means that Reese’s has already been invented, and apparently nobody ever told these two douchebags about it before.  You’d think they’d just discovered a cure for cancer, yet all they did was make a huge mess and find out they’d been living a sheltered life where peanut butter and chocolate had apparently never appeared in the same food product before.

Mmmm, cupcakes and icing!!! What a concept!

And really, it shouldn’t take two ditzy teenagers with tunnel vision to be the first to put chocolate and peanut butter together.  You’d think that with all of the culinary experts there have ever been over the past century that somebody would have thought to try out that combination already.  Discovering that chocolate and grasshoppers go well together is a creative inspiration.  Most bored kids left alone in the kitchen could slap a chocolate bar in a jar of peanut butter if given enough time.  So even if there is a real story out there about the origin of the Reese’s peanut butter cup, it’s probably boring as hell, and nowhere near as ridiculously entertaining as the saga told above.

Must try to mix earwax and toejam sometime…

While we here at The Nest appreciate the effort on the part of Reese’s to put a funny spin on how their peanut butter cups came to be, we must conclude that upon closer inspection this whole idea is about as nutty as a jar of extra crunchy Jif.  It does, however, rate a “nice try”, and gets a squirrely salute for being so ripe for my brand of overly sarcastic, comedic nitpicking.  Besides, Reese’s, we’ve already revealed to the world how you make your peanut butter cups, and it surprisingly hasn’t hurt your sales one bit….

At least you never made this nasty shit…

Huh huh huh!!!!!

One of the golden rules of advertising is to paint your product in a positive light.  Halls cough drops compares their medicinal effect to a refreshing European sauna.  Corona beer compares drinking it to a day at the beach.  Herbal Essences shampoo compares washing your hair to an orgasm.  Consumers are going to be much more likely to buy the product if the image that product portrays is a positive one.  This is why Doublemint gum was hawked in the 80′s by a pair of pretty twin girls as opposed to, say, these two…

Double your pleasure….

Sometimes, though, advertisers throw all conventional wisdom out the window for the benefit of a cheap laugh.  That’s what the makers of A&W root beer did in the mid 2000′s when they unveiled their “Thick Headed” campaign.  Here was their finest effort…

The name’s Doo-MAHZ, dumbass!!!

Here we see A&W comparing their root beer to a complete moron.  “With A&W root beer, it’s GOOD to be thick headed!!!”  I have no idea if this commercial actually sold more root beer or not, but it is absolutely funny as hell and is one of the greatest commercials of the entire decade!

Here’s another great Thick Headed ad….

Totally epic, and utter genius to use such negative imagery in your advertising and achieve a positive result!  To the thick headed dumbasses who dared to be stupid for the sake of selling root beer, we at The Nest salute you!  And that is your quickie Retro Ad Tuesday for this week, as I’ll be on the road for the next three days enjoying some baseball in Texas.  I may try to sneak in a post on Wednesday (the comic’s already in the bag and waiting to be posted), but if not, see ya for the usual late-week features!

I’ll be sure and tell ‘em Large Marge sent me…

I see you drivin’ round town with the Trix I love…

Scene: It’s noon on Tuesday at a bar that faces a giant car wash.  A rabbit walks in to the nearly empty watering hole and has a seat at the bar…

RABBIT: Bartender!  I need a shot of whiskey!

BARTENDER: Isn’t it a little early in the day to be hitting the hard stuff, Rabbit?

RABBIT: Bah, it’s been another one of those shitty days.

BARTENDER: (Spit shines a glass and pours a shot for the Rabbit) Well, go ahead and spill your guts.  I ain’t got nothing better to do than listen to your hare-brained problems.

RABBIT: It’s those kids.  Those lousy….. no good….. KIDS!  They never let me have any of their Trix!

BARTENDER: Is that’s all that’s bothering you?

RABBIT: They’ve been cereal blackballing me for half a fucking century now!!!  Here’s just one example!

BARTENDER: You gotta admit, Rabbit, that was a pathetic disguise…

RABBIT: Why should I even have to wear a disguise!?!?  What do kids have against cute little rabbits like myself?

BARTENDER: Now come on, you know as well as I do that all the old cereal commercials were full of assholes!  Fred Flintstone, that Sugar Smacks frog, Snap…

RABBIT: Snap?  How was he an asshole?

BARTENDER: Come on, you know he always bullied that douchebag Pop around.  Why do you think it’s not Pop Crackle Snap?

That’s better…

RABBIT: It’s not fair, though!  If I snapped on those kids and bit one of them to take their Trix, they’d call Animal Control and have my brain dissected for rabies.  There has to be some way to get those Trix I crave!

BARTENDER: Well, you could always buy your own box at the grocery store instead of drinking all your money up like you’ve been doing for years.

RABBIT: That’s against the rules of cereal advertising.  I can only plead for handouts.  It’s in the Cereal Mascot Actors Guild bylaws on the side of the box.

BARTENDER: OK, I tell you what, Rabbit.  There’s this weird guy who comes in around this time every day.  He’s got a problem of his own, and I think it might do you some good to talk to him.  If you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the back and shoo the possums away from the vodka…

RABBIT: But how will I know who….

BARTENDER: You’ll know him when he walks in….

The Rabbit fiddles around with his empty shot glass, contemplating whether he should have asked for another shot before the Bartender left when all of a sudden he’s shaken from his deep thoughts by a raving lunatic….

YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RABBIT:  What the fu….

SONNY: (Leaps onto the stool next to the Rabbit, then grabs ahold of him screaming) I’M CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS!!!!!  But I’ll never be tempted by them in here!

RABBIT: What’s your major malfunction, numbnuts?

SONNY: I go crazy every time I think of that munchy, crunchy, chocolatey cereal that is also part of a nutritious breakfast!

RABBIT: I’d be embarrassed to be associated with a cereal that became a slang term for a black man’s testicles.

Milky milky Cocoa Puffs!

SONNY: Embarrassment is the least of my concerns given the way I act when I see Cocoa Puffs.  In fact, kids love to see me act like a complete spaz!  No matter how I try to hide from that insanely delicious taste, they find a way to force the cereal on me and make me go bonkers!

RABBIT: You mean they make you eat the cereal you love!?!?

SONNY: They sure do!  Check this out!

RABBIT: I’ll be a son of a bitch!  Kids won’t let me have a single bite of the Trix I crave!

SONNY: Oh, I’d give anything to be in your shoes…. er, rabbit’s feet.  I can’t take the breakdowns anymore!

RABBIT: Well, like the bartender said, kids in cereal commercials are flat out assholes.  The problem is the way you try to hide from any exposure to your chocolate puffballs so you don’t flip out.  The kids are gonna exploit that for all its worth.

SONNY: You think I’m just being used?

RABBIT:  Sure.  You’re like the special education kid in junior high who seemed to exist only for the amusement of the other kids.  Start acting like you actually want the Cocoa Puffs, and I guarantee you those little pricks won’t be so forthcoming with the cereal anymore.

Back off, birdbrain, or my sister will rip your beak off your face!

SONNY: Heeeeeey, I just might try that!  Thanks a lot, Rabbit!

RABBIT: I’m glad someone’s problem’s been solved…

SONNY: Maybe you should cut out the whiny act and start ignoring the kids, and maybe you’ll get that fruity delicious cereal you rave about, but obviously have never gotten to taste before.

RABBIT: Whiny?  What!?!?

SONNY: Come on, Silly Rabbit!  You cry and pout like a little girl when the kids won’t share their Trix with you.  Grow a pair of Cocoa Puffs!  If you ignore the kids when they tease you with their cereal, that’ll piss them off in a hurry and you can bet they’ll chase you down and be forcefeeding lemony and orangey goodness down your little rabbit gullet.

RABBIT: I guess you’re right.

SONNY: Of course I’m right!  All it takes is a little self control, and…

Two kids peek in through the door.

KIDS: Ohhhhhhh, Sonny!  Want some puff puff Cocoa Puffs?

SONNY: (Starts sweating profusely) Uh oh!

RABBIT: Hey!  Where’s your self control, buddy?

KIDS: (Wag bowl of Cocoa Puffs back and forth) Chocolate tasting Cocoa Puffs!!!

SONNY: (Begins to flood the floor with saliva)

RABBIT: (Grabs Sonny’s arm) Stay calm.  I’ll get you a shot, or a Dos Equis…

KIDS: Munchy crunchy chocolatey!!!!!!

SONNY: YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!  I’M CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS!!!!!!!!!

RABBIT: Sigh…. Silly Cuckoo.  BARTENDER!  I’ll take another whiskey… and pour it in a bowl of Trix, dammit!

__________________

Special thanks to The Cutter, whose comment in my previous Retro Ad post on Pebbles cereal helped inspire today’s entry….

Add your own electric buzzing sound effects…

I think I’ve said this before on my blog, but I don’t drink alcohol.  I’ve never drank alcohol.  Even when I was in college, I never had anything harder than a Pepsi.  But if I did drink during my college days of the mid 90′s, I could have enjoyed this popular, well-liked, manly new malt liquor that had just hit the scene….

Now of course, if you remember the infamous drink called Zima that was introduced to the beer drinking world in 1993, you realize that my last sentence contained a lot of sarcasm.  Not that you would ever expect to find any sarcasm at The Nest…

I’m always a perfect little angel!

Before we discuss why Zima went down as one of the most laughed at products of the 1990′s, let’s look a bit into its history.  Zima was created by the Coors brewing company, back when they were still associated with mountains and streams instead of recklessly running ice covered trains through crowded city streets.  It was marketed as an alternative to regular beer, and was made as unbeerlike as possible by adding a shot of carbonation and taking all the color out of it.  So instead of pouring an ice cold beer, it looked like you were going to drown your troubles in an ice cold 7-UP…

Don’t drink the Zima, kiddies! HAHAHAHAHA….

Zima was an offshoot of the craze among beverage companies in the early 90′s to make clear versions of their popular drinks.  Pepsi was one of the first to try this by removing the cola color from the soda and naming the resulting mess Crystal Pepsi.  Nobody who didn’t work at Pepsi HQ thought this was a good idea, and it was quickly discontinued since more people were buying crystal meth than buying Crystal Pepsi.  Soda drinkers didn’t much care for the idea of a see-through cola, so what in the world made Coors think beer drinkers wanted to drink something clear and fizzy, at least before they got their hangover…

I can’t remember if this is my Alka Seltzer, or that Zima I didn’t drink last night…

Despite the uphill battle Coors faced, they charged full steam ahead in nationally advertising Zima beginning in 1994., and went straight for the young male demographic most beer commercials are geared towards.  As you can see from the ad I included above, there’s a straight up mid-90′s barbecue party going on there among a bunch of multicultural friends who just got out of college and like taunting the group vegetarian by slapping their meat around.  And of course, the cooler is full of ice cold Zima.  It couldn’t be more taken from the time period if there was some Skee-Lo playing in the background…

Dezpite the guy who narrated the early commercialz’ annoying tendenzy to change S’s into Z’s, Zima actually became quite zuczezzful…. for a very short time, at least.  And by short, I mean like as soon as the novelty of drinking a clear beer wore off, people quit ordering the shit.  It just didn’t fit in with the bigger, badder drinks that dominated the bar.  In the normally rugged bar scene, Zima was like a hippie who tried to fit in at the VFW Hall…

I don’t just put any bottle in my brown paper bag! I have standards, you know!

But even more damaging for Zima was that it quickly got a reputation for being the official alcoholic beverage of the metrosexual.  No matter how much we may try to blur the traditional gender lines these days, if there is one place where a man never wants his sexual identity to be called into question, it’s in a bar where he’s not only trying to impress the girls, but his guy friends as well.  Ordering a Zima at the bar now carried with it a stigma with it that couldn’t have been more damaging had you walked in the place wearing a pair of assless chaps… unless the bar you were drinking at happened to be playing this music…

I wish I didn’t have to dress in drag just to enjoy my favorite alcoholic drink!

About the only thing propping up Zima sales in the late 90′s were the urban myths that the alcohol in Zima would not register on a breathalyzer, or that it was just a fancy version of O’douls, the beer industry’s most infamous non-alcoholic beer.  Underage drinkers and drunk drivers continued to drink Zima until they wound up getting arrested for DUI’s, dancing on top of police cars, or dying from embarrassment after their friends caught them drinking a Zima…

Had Facebook existed in the 90′s, this guy would have had to move to Antartica…

Despite all the mockery that was unleashed on Zima in the 90′s, it somehow managed to remain on the shelves of fine liquor stores across the country right up until 2008.  That’s right, even just five years ago, you could have still purchased a Zima, while kissing your reputation goodbye.  However, if you are thirsting after an ice cold Zima after reading this week’s Retro TV Ad Tuesday post, just hop a plane across the pacific, because you can always buy some in Japan, where it is still marketed to this day…

Gotta (hic!) drink ‘em all!

If there are two things we love here at The Nest, it is products that are both retro and totally ridiculous… so it is with a touch of fizz that we salute the near-beer sensation Zima for making the 90′s just a bit more fun and a whole lot more mockable.  We fear not the girly-man reputation of your liquid fool’s gold, and would proudly order a bottle at the roughest bar in town while wearing our Rainbow Donkey T-shirt.  The Nest would also like to nominate Zima as the official alcoholic beverage of the Brony!  Bottoms up, fillies!

I got 99 problems, but a drink ain’t one….