THE SHILLS ARE ALIVE!

Of the commercials that premiered during the Super Bowl, the ones that seemed to be most reviled were the Diet Pepsi twofer - both starring Jay Mohr as the televersion of Bob Sugar from the "Jerry McGuire" movie, and with P. Diddy in one and Jackie Chan in the other.

Despite the buckets of bucks he must have made, Mohr looked like he was squirming in his seat; like he should have been cast in a Preparation H blipvert instead!

I think the main complaint was that the premise was idiotic - that a soda can was alive.

But I didn't find it idiotic; that can was definitely alive. On cue it popped its top to lay down its "brown & bubbly" sound to P. Diddy's track; and it popped that top again as if was a Kung Fu move for the Jackie Chan movie.

I had no trouble believing that. I couldn't buy into the idea that Diet Pepsi would be so popular that it needed an agent.

[Full disclosure - I used to drink Coke. I hate the taste of Pepsi. Also, I hate anything connected to Tom Cruise because of the blasphemy committed against my memories of the TV version of 'Mission Impossible'. As he was one of the producers, Cruise could have done something to change a key plot point.]

Maybe all of the people complaining are fans of Diet Coke as well, not Diet Pepsi, because they don't usually complain about inanimate objects coming alive in TV commercials. For years, people thought nothing of conversing with a maple syrup bottle or chatting up a walking talking pile of cookie dough.

Perhaps if the Diet Pepsi can had fully articulate arms and legs and a smiley face?

But then again, nobody said "Boo" about the Bud Bowl......

Currently, Toyota Rav 4 is running two blipverts in which inanimate objects have come alive, and without the benefit of faces, arms, or legs.

In the first, a shopping mall parking lot is besieged by packages run amok. They scurry and flip and even climb trees; maneuvers that would stymie the drivers of anything but a Rav 4.

In the other, the Rav 4 is pursued by a relentless horde of orange traffic cones, but the driver is able to outthink them and leave them in his wake.

In the various sites I visit which deal with TV advertising, I don't see anybody making a big deal over these. Maybe they're not inanimate objects of affection, but nobody's calling for the torches and pitchforks either.

As the Faithful might expect, I have a splainin for both.

The packages are obviously a ploy by the evil megalithic corporation which runs that shopping outlet to keep its customers under its thrall. But somehow the microchips or whatever that was implanted in their purchases was triggered too early, when it was supposed to attack the owners once they were home. (This would have made a great newspaper story for 'The Chronicle', if it had only been still around.)

As for the orange traffic cones, they are made of plastic and serve the will of the Nestene Consciousness. This alien aggregate has finally smartened up and decided that its latest component should land in some other country besides England, to avoid a certain time-traveling Doctor.

The guy in the Rav 4 could be a member of 'Torchwood' working in America without letting the FBI or UNIT know that he's there. And as such, he's probably leading those possessed traffic cones into a trap so that they could be brought back for study at headquarters in Cardiff......

Just because we have to wait about a year for 'Torchwood' to premiere, that doesn't mean they're not at work already in Toobworld!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby