How can these TV commercials work?

I took some time out over the weekend to vegetate in front of the tube. Can’t say there is often anything on that I want to watch anymore, but lately the History Channel has been putting out some good stuff, so I indulged. Every time the show took a commercial break, I realized that after all these years I still find commercials just as stupid as I did when I was a kid. It got me to thinking about some of TV’s classic commercials:

• I’m so happy that I no longer have to endure the “No Frills” furniture ad. Good God, but that commercial drove me dingy! But I guess it worked because here I am, decades later, still driving through the intersection of Lake Otis and Tudor and thinking you have to sing it as you go through (“No! Frills! Lake Otis and Tudorrrrrrr!”). Argh!

• Why is Mrs. Butterworth always so happy to have you twist off the top of her skull and proceed to dump her guts out all over your pancakes? And do I really want to eat Mrs. Butterworth’s innards? Same thoughts about the M&M guys, Chips Ahoy cookies and Kool-Aid man. Especially the Kool-Aid Man, because for heaven’s sake, there’s nothing covering the top of his head! How many dead bees, flies and leaves are floating around in there? Yuck.

• Wow, Cal Worthington is getting old! No more dogs, tigers or elephants. How come he can’t pronounce four-by-four? Or is there some kind of drive system I’ve never heard of anything that’s called a “fobuhfo?”

• Is Ronald McDonald always such a happy clown or is that just for the commercials? In “real life” does he walk around in a suit and sunglasses surrounded by corporate henchmen doing surprise visits at restaurants and chewing out the staff?

• When did $500 a month car payments become “low?” I remember stressing when I had a $240 car payment! Wow! (Although my current car payment of $0 is great. Loving it.)

• What the heck is “must see television?” I mean, really. Am I going to spontaneously explode if I don’t watch NBC this Thursday? Does the Federal Communication Commission have a secret police force that will arrive at my house in black cars to whisk me away?

• Why not just give the stupid rabbit some of your cereal already? Didn’t your parents teach you about sharing? And if Lucky the Leprechaun can make all these cool things to try and escape the little thugs trying to steal his cereal, why not just make a bat? I guarantee they’ll never try to steal your cereal again.

• Amazing how everybody drinking booze is fit, well-dressed and full of life. Strangely, the people I see doing the same on “Alaska State Troopers” never quite look like that.

• If I’m ever scrubbing the kitchen and a bald dude dressed all in white with an earring suddenly appears, I promise you I’m going to instinctively deck him.

• If a live teddy bear starts running around my house talking to me about dryer sheets, he’s going into the dryer. Immediately.

• When I bite into a York Peppermint Patty, I’m eating a chocolatey, minty candy bar. And, well, that’s really about it.

• Hey, Irish Spring guy, quit slicing up my soap. I need that. And why is Ivory soap so great because it floats? I can think of something else that floats in water and that doesn’t make it great — and I sure as heck wouldn’t scrub my body with it.

• “The more you spend, the more you save.” Who in the heck came up with that? How exactly does that work? Is that the basis for Obama’s economic policy?

• I like the dog food commercials showing all kinds of ingredients that “your dog will love,” like celery? Corn? Yeah, weird dogs maybe. Mine prefer meat, meat and, oh yeah, meat.

• What’s with the fast-food commercials showing fancy chefs in some kitchen preparing dough and such by hand? Do they really expect anybody to believe that? I’m pretty sure Burger King or Taco Bell cuisine comes processed in a can with special additives and preservatives that can double as embalming fluid. I know that. Everybody knows that.

• Do you have to be on some sort of hallucinogen to understand a Levi’s commercial?

• What’s with the extremely odd bald guy flipping out if you squeeze the Charmin? Does he not know what that’s going to be used for later? Trust me, squeezing it is nothing.

• I stood at the store in front of the orange juice cooler with the door open the other day. No gloved arm ever came out to hand me a container. I ended up having to get it myself. Dang it.

Yeah, maybe I should start muting the commercials.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.