TV commercials offer companies a unique opportunity to visually demonstrate the awesome capabilities of their product. A really good visual image can even become iconic, and itself serve as an advertisement for the product even when taken out of its commercial context. Seeing a bored Maytag repairman instantly calls to mind the reliability of Maytag appliances. A pair of hands extending outward assures us that we are in good hands with Allstate insurance. An annoying guy with a drive thru headset is a good indication that we’re going to love his nuts…
Would you like fries with that? Who am I kidding, of course you do!
In 1980, the makers of Krazy Glue did a little 8 second demonstration at the beginning of one of its ads that it never lived down….
The image of the construction worker hanging by his hardhat that’s glued to the bottom of a steel beam became so legendary, that a drawing of it still appears on every package of Krazy Glue sold today…
Whoa, oh, oh, whoa, oh! I’m just hangin’ tough!
While the gimmick went down in advertising history, the commercial that is associated with this famous stunt is nothing short of a fucked up mess. First of all, let’s address the annoying voiceover that accompanies the hardhat demonstration….
The first words we hear are “Krazy Glue, you dirty rat!” This introduction makes no fucking sense at all since all annoying voiceover guy does after saying that is brag about how strong Krazy Glue is to hold this dumbass in midair. What did Krazy Glue do to get called a dirty rat?
You glued my guitar case together, you dirty rat!
Those who are up on their classic movies recognize the well-known “you dirty rat” line as belonging to James Cagney. “You dirty rat” is one of those uberfamous lines we so associate with one actor or character that in reality they never actually said in any film they ever did. But it doesn’t really matter that Cagney never actually said, “you dirty rat” in any of his movies, because voiceover dude is quite obviously a James Cagney impersonator…. and a bad one at that. It sound more like a bad Cagney imitation done by another well-known actor who was big in the 80’s…
Well…. Mr. Gorbachev… I’m going to get you….. you dirty rat!
Then there is the question that has undoubtedly lingered on the lips of every person who ever watched this commercial. We see that Krazy Glue is apparently great at super gluing the top of that hardhat to the beam, but just what in the name of Sir Isaac Newton is holding the dude himself up? Are we really expected to believe he is hanging on for dear life to that hat on his head? And just how is his head staying in the hardhat in the first place? I’m pretty sure if he were only being suspended by the deathgrip he has on that Krazy Glued hat, he’d probably manage to jostle that head out of the hat at some point in time… especially since the lid is hermetically stuck to the beam and can’t move along with him! Something tells me that beam wasn’t the only thing glued to the hardhat….
The Krazy Glue Man later had to retire to a monastery and become a monk…
As if this commercial hadn’t already committed enough crimes against common sense in just the first eight seconds, non-Ronald Reagan impersonating James Cagney voiceover guy then takes over and in rapid fire style lists many of the things that Krazy Glue will work on. Hell, if Krazy Glue works so well, one wonders why all the king’s horses and all the king’s men didn’t have any on hand when they needed it…
Help me, sir! Need Krazy Glue! You have all the ingredients you need to the left of me!
Now, I’m not the handiest person in the world. In fact, I’m one of the least handiest people in the world. So it’s quite possible I’m just a huge dumbass (I’ll wait for a few of you to quit laughing at that)… but I can’t be the only person in the world who hasn’t managed to get super glue to ever work on A SINGLE GODDAMN THING!!! About a minute after I’ve used it, what I was trying to bond together has already come apart while my thumb is awkwardly stuck to my middle finger. Super glue has got to be one of the biggest scams the consumer industry has pulled off on us outside of the need for bottled water. If I tried to use Krazy Glue on any of that stuff they list in the commercial, you can bet the object would be back in pieces before I could even get the cap I permanently bonded to fingers back on the bottle…
The top storeh of the hour on the Twindaddeh News Network.
And maybe that’s why they zip through the demonstrations so fast… because the shit doesn’t actually work! We never do see that Krazy Glue has actually permanently fused any of those broken objects back together in the ad… including the candlestick that is quickly “put back together” by a man who was somehow allowed to leave the house by his wife or mother with his collar protruding from his sweater. Anyone who’s ever tried to superglue anything fractured like that candlestick was knows that the pieces just don’t slide back together as easy as Mr. Rogers creepy brother makes it look. That demonstration was about as made-for-TV phony as those appetizing hamburgers they dress up with lipstick and spray paint in fast food ads…
Plastic surgery for hamburger models just leads to unrealistic expectations for common ordinary burgers out there.
If you think I’m being unfair to Krazy Glue and want to pick some up anyway to repair the knob that fell off of your cabinet, the chip in your lavish vase, or the crack in your ass… well, here’s a list of fine retail outlets where you can find Krazy Glue, if you should happen to wake up one day and it is 1980 again….
Can you guess how many of these places have been out of business for decades?
Shit happens and stuff breaks… and when it does, we here at The Nest are glad to have fine adhesive products like Krazy Glue around to help put them back together for about 1.3 seconds while creating the biggest mess possible, and sometimes prompting a fun visit to the emergency room to pry our digits back apart. Thank you Krazy Glue for making our worst nightmare a reality, because heaven forbid we have to use something sticky that won’t turns our paws into claws, and which has been trusted the world over since the days of the caveman to put anything and EVERYTHING back together again…
Duct tape…. you dirty rat!
HaHa….never used that stuff for fear I would permenantly glue my hands together…that stuff scared me!!
Trust me, I think skin is the only thing super glue bonds together! Stick with duct tape! 😉
This was worth the extra day’s wait. Revco and Woolworths, haven’t thought of them in years. And I call bullshit on the superglue too, it has never worked for me one bit, either…
I don’t think it ever worked for anyone other than construction worker dude… and then only because it glued his scalp to the inside of that hat….
I do recall once gluing my fingers together..and then removing layers of skin once I finally had the nerve to pull them apart. I should have sued…
Then you could have gone to court and said, “Krazy Glue, you dirty rat!!!!” 😉
Yeah, The People’s Court! 😉
Bingo! You could then see if Doug Llewelyn’s hair was actually real….
Why am I not surprised you know his name?? LOL… 😉
Because I loved that show too… and of course, I did a tribute to People’s Court many Flashback Fridays ago. I just didn’t get a good picture of Doug for my post….
I remember that post…um, is there such a thing as a good picture of Doug Whatshisnuts?
I’ve never gotten crazy glue to work on anything except gluing my fingers either together or to the object I’m trying to fix. And I always figured that construction guy must have had his head glued into the hat.
I’m slightly concerned, the kid duct taped to the ceiling looks a little like my son … I have to make a phone call …
Oh, those crazy pictures that end up on the internet…
“But Mom, at least I wasn’t dancing on police cars!”
BAhahahaha! Good point!
You’d probably get arrested for that now.
Okay, I agree, I hated the Crazy Glue ad! There are a lot of ads I enjoy, especially some of those insurance ads, Kleenex ads, and the car ads with the seventies music, meaning we should be able to afford a Cadillac by now, right?! Anyway, there was a lot of fun in this post!
I try to make my commercial retrospective roastings as fun as possible. Thanks for enjoying it!
Aside from abeing a bad ad, that glue sticks better to your fingers than to any other surface. Great for glueing yourself to yourself. Not much else 🙂
I’m glad I’m not the only one super glue doesn’t work for. I can’t imagine how it became so successful…
OMG!!! All my life I thought I was doing it wrong!!!
Thanks for exposing this product!! I feel better about myself!
All I ever did was make a horrible mess of my item, get sad, and then find
my fingers were stuck together!!! Yet they keep selling it! 🙂
Consumers can be so gullible sometimes! PT Barnum was right about the frequency of suckers being born…
Ha ha – before I even got anywhere near the bit where you mentioned it, I was already thinking “huh, the only thing super glue works on is human skin”!
Araldite (TM) epoxy adhesive – now, that stuff sets like concrete (but not so fast that you can’t get it off your skin in case of emergencies)!
They should use super glue to piece people together after surgeries. Other than that, it is totally worthless!
Funnily enough they do use glue these days quite a bit in medicine! Maybe they’ve finally found a use for it 🙂
My daughter discovered that super glue was not poisonous when she was 18 months old. I don’t think it was very tasty either, since she just took one bite out of the tube.
Ick! Good thing that stuff really doesn’t work! I’m glad you were checking out the posts that WordPress seemed to think were related to my McDonaldland post! They do all the Sparky channeling for me now….