Some commercials feature happy people telling you how much they like a certain product after the company pays them a large amount of money to do so. Some ads are filled with cute babies and critters who can sell anything with the twinkle of a big ol’ eyeball. Some commercials have shouting high pressure pitchmen trying to forcefully persuade you to buy what they want you to buy. There are even ads that don’t make any sense at all….
And then there are wonderful little ads where shit gets killed…. unmercilessly.
RAID!?!?!?!?!?
And why not? After all, there are many products out there on the market… stuff we buy all the time, that has only one purpose. To end the life of something we don’t find to be too pleasurable. Whether it be roaches in the pantry, mucus in the lungs, or Justin Bieber on our lawn again.
Hey! Where’s the party….. huh…. RAID!?!?!?!?
With the exception of myself, most people don’t like weeds. Weeds are just your everyday, ordinary indigenous plantlife that occupies your lawn that suburban elitists have decided are undesirables and should be eliminated with extreme prejudice. And the weeds can’t do anything about it since the ACLU has no time to represent the rights of flora, unless it’s the kind that rolls nicely into a joint. So in the lawn and garden department of your favorite store, you will find a wide selection of weed killing products. One of the most popular of these brands is Roundup, and in 1998, they released a commercial that will always be in my Top 5 list of funniest TV ads ever…
And it’s not on YouTube!!!! But this cousin ad is….
If you want to see the original and best iteration of this ad (and the one I will talk about for the rest of this post)… click here to watch it on tvspots.tv, the only place I can find it on the web…
I can’t feel my roots, Hank!!!
Roundup takes the idea of enticing consumers by showing the enemy being taken care of by their product to a whole new level. Not only have they anthropomorphized the weeds that are being targeted for floracide so that we can’t help but feel a little sorry for them… but for 30 seconds we watch in horror as these two poor little dandelions suffer a slow, gruesome, agonizing death that would make even Freddy Krueger blush through his burnt skin. The Nazis didn’t even have it this bad in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Thank goodness for the comic relief!
We are going to make you laugh and laugh and….. what? RAID!?!?!?!?!?
I’m not sure if this ad is supposed to parodying some specific genre or not, but it’s like a cross between The Godfather and a spaghetti western. Hank’s the Big Weed, and The Kid is his apprentice sidekick… and they’re both doomed to turn a nasty shade of yellow and brown thanks to some villainous homeowner who caught them hanging out in the garden and decided to spray first and ask questions later. The Kid keeps turning to Hank for reassurance that they’re gonna be OK, who just wants to die in peace. The only thing keeping Hank from slapping the shit out of the mouthy young weedling is the fact that his leafy arms fell off in the first half of the commercial. Taken literally, nothing The Kid says is technically humorous… yet within the context of this ad, it makes this one of the most hilarious death scenes in the history of drama!
Not counting any death scene involving Buster, of course…
It’s the final thing The Kid says before we are mercifully spared having to watch any more of this savage plant torture that totally makes this ad. One of the funniest lines from any commercial….. ever!
It brings a tear to my eye…. a tear of laughter, that is!
Like the tagline says… no mercy, no pity, no weeds. Not even ones that can make us laugh. I think this line of advertising would be awesome for tobacco companies. Show a couple nasty old people puffing away while hacking up a lung for half a minute. Not only would it be more effective at deterring people from smoking than those stupid Surgeon General warnings, but we’d all get a really good laugh out of it as well…
You’ve come a long way, baby…
Roundup, the only geniuses you employ who are more evil than the ones you have making your poisonous sprays are your admen who can turn the tragic into the comic so easily. Thanks, Roundup, for the belly laugh at the expense of these two fine, upstanding weeds who were just minding their own business in someone’s garden some 16 years ago. There’s nothing wrong with having a dark sense of humor towards the suffering of others, so long as we find the victims to be unpleasant to our tastes. Right Buster? Um….. Buster?
Say hello to my little friend!
RAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDDD!?!?!?!?
I would have let the front yard where we used to live go all to weeds if it weren’t for the homeowner’s association. I like the wild look.
Monsanto (who makes Roundup) is the devil, but it does make for some nice vegetable gardens.
I don’t think I had ever heard of homeowners associations before I moved a few years ago. Luckily, this neighborhood doesn’t have one. Those things are the devil….
Monsanto’s a local company. I breathe in a lot of their chemicals (cough!) every day….
That would certainly explain some of the squirrel behavior you observe in your neighborhood!
LOL… you name it, if it pollutes, we have it within 10 miles of where I live. Probably explains a lot of my squirrelly behavior as well….
I don’t love every weed (I can live without bind-weed), but I love many plants others consider weeds. Violets and pink-eyed grass. Spiderwort and tiger lilies. Solomon’s seal and the purple ground cover that grows everywhere, the name of which I can’t remember except on every third Wednesday during months that end in “R.” I even like crab grass because it’s green and will continue to grow through drought and heat of summer. Weeds or wildflowers? Just nomenclature 🙂
A lot of weeds are pretty! What can be more awesome than a yard full of dandelions?
I love killing black ants. It makes me happy.
I’ve always wanted to use a magnifying glass on ants, but never had one and a colony of ants at the same time. It’s almost time for them to start coming through the kitchen window again… me and my RAID will be ready…
Yup, cocked and loaded.
They should make this into a game for Android.
I’m surprised they haven’t. It would have to be more fun than the latest trumped up Tetris clone…
I tend to carry bugs out of places, especially recently a cricket that was chirping too much in my apt! But, I am not afraid to pick up spiders, usually either, as long as they aren’t hairy. I draw the line at ants and cockroaches! I also like dandelions and a few other wild flowers that some would yank out of gardens. But, when they are in the lawn, you can either dig them out, and transplant them or kill them with bleach or vinegar. I don’t like pesticides nor insecticides for the danger they are to children and animals, too. Great and funny post, hope I didn’t kill the mood!
Well, if you did kill the mood, than you obviously did it in the spirit of the post, which is about killing things!
It should have won an academy award!
Yes! And John Travolta could have mispronounced Hank’s name….
They didn’t show when those “poor weeds” were off killing innocent flowers. That would have lessened our sympathy levels.
Touche. But where does the circle of plant violence end? Where will it end?
When all the weeds are dead
Oh! I remember that commercial. Poor Hank. Poor The Kid. Poor Buster. 😛
Seems like Hank and The Kid are just as good at resurrection as my dear possum is…. just makes you want to kill them even more! 😉
I think Bill and Ben would have something to say if you could get them on the phone and they were sober. 🙂
Heh heh, I bet Bill and Ben would be well ticked off if someone sprayed Roundup on their “Little Weeeeeed! 🙂
LOL, never heard of those two before and had to look them up! I see that the most recent iteration of their show featured a squirrel named Scamper!
Yeah, “RAID” the Bieber!
Some ads kill nice things as well. I don’t know if you have “Cadbury’s Creme eggs” over in the US? We have a series of ads where they run around doing dangerous things and getting all squished and exploding and whatnot. That upsets me, seeing creamy chocolate goodness exploding 😦
We certainly do have those over here, but I am unfamiliar with any ad like that. Cadbury’s Creme Eggs are best known here for their classic commercials with the bunny clucking like a chicken…
I like dandelions, they break up the boring of acres of green grass!
Yes! A field of green and yellow in perfect harmony!