Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

But I'm not laughing.
I'm cringing and squirming uncomfortably in my easy chair.
Don't get me wrong - I love furry pets and small woodland creatures.
But unless they're acting as furry pets or small woodland creatures, they have no place in marketing.

It all started a few years ago with the Quizno's Abomination. That...thing wasn't even recognizable as "animal" - it was a patchy conglomeration of roadkill bits at best. And they were hoping that that roadkill, through a series of grisly noises and stop-motion animations, would convince me to buy their over-priced sub sandwiches. Mmm, mmm, good!

Lately, KIA has jumped on the Quizno's bandwagon. Anthropomorphized hamsters will not sell cars. Even if they sport bling and rap. I don't care who you are. It will not work. Also, it will not give your kids warm-fuzzy feelings about the teddy bear hamster you're getting them for Christmas. Better start inventing bedtime stories about hamster-free worlds of gumdrops and unicorns now.

Someone somewhere in the deepest recesses of the pistachio business decided that the best way to boost sales of pistachios (the original low-fat snack...really? I had no idea. I thought it was Baked Lays.) was to run TV commercials. Ok. I can see the logic there: Monday Night Football fans are interested in snacking. Naturally low-fat is a bonus. However, instead of using things that appeal to MNF fans (ie: naked women, big burly beards, beer, and SouthPark), the pistachio marketing geniuses (genii?) featured a football player, Charlie Brown, and a cat.
Yes, a cat. Not even a fakey computer-manipulated cat. This cat is real, it's wearing an oversized t-shirt, it's playing a piano, its paws are being moved by human hands "hiding" under the shirt, and this cat is pissed. I NEED PISTACHIOS!

*Disclaimer: I am by no means insisting that I am a marketing genius or that my ideas are always brilliant enough to rake in gleaming piles of loot. However, I am a consumer. I buy things. I look at ads. I am moved by marketing schemes. Whether you move me to purchase your product, throw up, or look up a psychiatrist in the YellowPages is your choice. Choose well!

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.

“Repunctuate your life.”

What do you think this ad is for? Yup. Birth control.

I’m sorry – what?

Birth control. It’s a play on “period” – which I think is enormously clever, but also very sad. What a terrifying state to live in when you have detailed control over even the most natural of cycles! I find it nearly as mind-blowing as controlling the phases of the moon (which are predictable and have unseen effects on all of earth).

I can only imagine what kind of effects controlling your period (so that you only have four a year!) has on your body, which is designed to have one a month. I’m not good with math, but that’s less than half of the natural number of periods a woman is supposed to have per year. Can you imagine what your body must feel like, being forced to skip something that your DNA is driving it to do? My squirrelly mind immediately imagines your body taking revenge by storing it all up so when you have one of four periods a year, it lasts for three weeks and puts you completely out of commission. “Take that!” she says to you.

And of course there’s Kotex’s “Have a happy period” slogan. I vote they fire every one of the men on the design team and start over again – all women this time. Insensitive. Especially when they’ve never personally had the urge to overdose on chocolate. *Grimace*

The last commercial I saw was for pads with ultra-flex wings or some such. The ad showed a Gumby-like mechanical bull (saddle only, with embroidered flowers of course). A pad unfolds (like a flower, but grotesque) across the saddle and sticks itself down. The saddle rolls around like a sweet little puppy while a concerned voice tells you this pad will cover you even on your heaviest days. Yes, but have they fixed the “feels like I’m wearing a diaper” feature? Because I stopped wearing diapers when I was two, and I refuse to regress that far.