After These Messages : The Sometimes Charming Yet Unavoidable World Of Commercials

 We have seen them, whether we want to or not. Reminding us of a place to eat out, somewhere to shop, or an individual product to purchase. Showing us accolades of a movie that is currently only available on the big screen, or even an app to install. Advertisements are inevitable, and they can be seen on the TV at a restaurant, a billboard as you navigate your day, and of course, between shows, streams, and videos. Yet there are some commercials that I enjoy watching, get a laugh from, or even have nostalgia for. Now I am only going to be focusing on commercials, not bumpers made for the channel or block of television in question, because those deserve their own post, so let's put the story on pause for a moment and dive into what makes commercials sometimes so special, for better and for worse. 

Commercials have been with me since I was a child, in between the cartoons I was watching, I was reminded of what movies were in the theaters or that had just come to DVD, what video games were out, and what toys to buy. There were even advertisements for upcoming episodes of shows, such as an hour-long adventure or maybe even a made-for-TV movie. As a kid who grew up watching shows on cable or even Saturday morning programming such as Disney's One Saturday Morning on ABC, the FOX BOX, or Kids WB, commercials have been with me as long as I can see a commercial now for something back then such as a video game, and remember it like yesterday, being filled with that nostalgic feeling. One set of commercials that I always remember is for Mario All-Star Baseball, where actors in mascot suits of the characters from the game got into wacky shenanigans, such as Bowser getting pelted multiple times by a pitching machine, or Princess Peach hitting a ball so hard, it destroys Luigi's car. 

There can be fun songs, even, that's why I always remember the Kirby Nightmare In Dreamland commercial, and I now also realize I should probably write about video game commercials at some point as well. Food commercials and certain tag lines are still used today, such as "taste the rainbow" for Skittles, or of course "Got Milk?" which as spanned decades. Sometimes the commercials can be more memorable than the programming we are watching. Whether they create a comedic moment, a memorable line, or the way the line is delivered, or just is so out of left field it leaves the viewer questioning what they just saw. 

Not only are commercials posted online, which is a cool way to show off nostalgic commercials, stores, and products from yesteryear. The commercial for the toy Cross Fire is one of the greatest, most unintentionally funny, and extreme ads of its time, and I LOVE it! Ads for classic toys or movies coming to VHS or especially for stores and chains that don't exist anymore, fill me almost with a second-hand nostalgia for stuff I am too young to remember but still appreciate. 

Fast food commercials, cereal commercials, it's also fun to see ads for brands that are still here and how they tried things that may or may not have worked out back in the day. One line delivery I will never forget is the way an elderly man says "America" in a commercial for red, white, and blue pancakes from Denny's 

Commercials can also stand out when they go into the realm of the comedic or the absurd, there are some that live in my head because they are just that memorable. That doesn't just apply to American-made commercials either; international commercials also can have staying power. Commercials like the Long Long Man series or Segata Sanshiro are also great. Even

Seeing a commercial for a video game from the Nintendo Gamecube era can feel so nostalgic and just put a smile on my face when I see one. Sometimes my friends and I will pick a game system, such as the N64 or the PSP, and just look up playlists or compilations of commercials for those systems. It's fun to see ads that were either so bad that they are hilarious or so good that they remind us of why we love the games that were being advertised.

Aside from the commercials themselves being uploaded, there are several creators on YouTube who react to commercials. Not only can the reactions be comedic but it's fun to see the person reacting get nostalgic over a product and remember something, or even show the audience a commercial they didn't know existed. There are people who discuss, parody, or even showcase these commercials. Laughing at and spoofing the bad ones, while enjoying the fun ones. 

This does not mean I think commercials are the best thing since sliced bread, much like movies or episodes of shows, there are some I love and some I couldn't care less for. There are certain ads that air that leave me rushing for the mute button, ones that I never want to see again, or ones that are just that, ads. There are some modern ads that have me shaking my fist as if I were the Simpsons joke of "Old man yells at cloud". The other problem is that they are way more apparent than they used to be; online platforms seem to play ads way more and for longer durations than when they run on cable TV. Also, shows were made for ad breaks, and even on streaming services, they seem to flow naturally where as on YouTube or on Twitch, they are way more often and pop on almost too often, often appearing mid-sentence or point being made, playing sometimes shorter ad breaks but doing them what seems every few minutes. This is why I pay for YouTube Premium, if only to banish these ads from pestering me every two minutes. 

Now I know that commercials are just meant to sell us a product or get us to spend money on something, but they can be entertaining. The mountain of videos online, or just compilations of the commercials themselves, shows that these can resonate with people. Look at the Super Bowl, one of the biggest days in sports, and some people watch it and want to talk about the commercials after, some more than the game itself. There are commercials that people love seeing every holiday season that pop up every December, seeming almost like mini classics themselves. So there's a good and a bad; there are commercials we look back on fondly, videos either laughing at them or alongside with them, and many of them act as time capsules for when they aired. Not every ad works, but some do, and some are even worth waiting till after these messages to get back to the show. 

That being said, some of the more recent ads at the time of this post with the synthetic songs need to stop, and especially the ones that use A.I., I mean, for goodness' sake, just hire the right team for crying out loud, they look uncanny.