There’s a fungus among us…
One of the general rules of advertising is to make sure your message to the masses doesn’t end up turning off consumers with excess cash burning a hole in their pocket. Cute babies and animals will always do the trick, not to mention they’ll probably work for treats. Having plenty of young, demographically pleasing twenty-somethings on hand to show how much fun your product can be is another sure winner… especially if you remember to include plenty of cleavage. And you can never go wrong with a good, old fashioned paid celebrity endorsement since everyone wants to be just like their overbloated idols…
Yeah, boys and girls! Huggies Pull Ups are just what you need for those nights when you pass out from binge drinking and don’t want to wet the bed! Take it from Da Biebs!
Going against that conventional wisdom, another more effective way to get the attention of your target audience is to gross them the fuck out. The same culture that takes a perverse pleasure out of watching a zombie in a hockey mask whack off the heads of innocent teens over and over again will totally freak out if you bring up the fact that you had a mild case of the runs the night before. Bodily functions seem to instinctively make us ill… and if something out there we can’t see may wreak icky, grody havoc on us, we don’t want to know about it!
Don’t tell me how many germs are on these buns… I’m not listening!
But is you’re selling something that can help protect people from these real or imagined invisible dangers, you want to make damned sure to let everyone know just how graphically disgusting these microscopic monsters can be. This is why those junk mail ads for companies that will come out and clean your ductwork make sure to include creepy images of dust mites magnified ten billion times their normal size so that they look like a reject from a 1950’s B horror movie. Who wouldn’t overpay for the peace of mind that comes with making sure this doesn’t greet you at the kitchen table one day…
Hey. baby! I hope you don’t mind… I invited a few million of my friends over for dinner.
This tactic has been taken to truly crazy lengths by several pharmaceutical companies who have to make enough money to pay all of those class action lawsuits by pitching remedies for everything from eye boogers to jock itch. In 2003, several years before Mucinex anthropomorphized globs of snot for our viewing pleasure, the advertising geniuses behind Lamisil decided it would be a great idea to bring the wonderful world of toenail fungus to life…
Meet Digger the Dermataphyte! No, Digger isn’t a he/she freak show, dermataphyte is just a fancy name educated people in lab coats use to discuss toenail fungus in uppity medical journals. Isn’t he just adorable, though? Digger loves you so much, he wants to make himself at home under your toenail.
Ow! Forget the creepy Monsters Inc. castoff… I’m wincing just from that toenail being lifted off its bed!
Like every other naive bad guy to ever do compensated endorsements for a medicine commercial, Digger starts off by bragging about all of the damage he’s doing to your delicate insides and how you’ll never be able to rid your body of his villainous ways. It seems dermataphytes like to wallow in their own fungal filth, so he and all of his toadstool friends just start shitting nasty yellow spores all over the tender underside of your toenail. Hope you didn’t eat before this commercial ambushed you in prime time…
I could sure go for some moldy bread right now!
Short of sticking an icepick under there, you’re never going to stop digger and his buddies from unleashing their moldy mayhem underneath your lower lunulas. Fortunately for you, Lamisil has a pill with a fungicide that works through the bloodstream, penetrating the layers and layers of crusty yellow dermataphyte filth to punch Digger and the boys in their penicillin producing penises, and make them run away screaming like the creepy little bullies they are. If you don’t believe what you see on your TV screens, go dig through your grandma’s magazine rack and see Lamisil’s print ad in The Saturday Evening Post next to the coupon for Burma Shave.
It’s just such a Rockwellian scene, isn’t it?
Of course, wonder drugs like Lamisil are never quite the panacea the drug companies make them out to be. There’s always that list of side effects that have to legally be included in prescription medicine advertising that make taking the drug a virtual game of Russian roulette…
Lamisil isn’t for people with liver or kidney problems.
Well, shit! Oh wait… Digger? Is that you, Cuz?
In rare cases, serious skin reactions have occurred…
Well, at least my toenails are all purty!
Other side effects were generally mild, like headache…
I’ll never get rid of this toenail fungus! Never!!!
Diarrhea…
Aren’t you glad Pepto Bismol doesn’t use an anthropomorphic mascot…
Indigestion…
Also a side effect of reading The Nest.
And rash.
Pass the Butt Paste.
Well, even if you’re still willing to risk taking a pill to cure your yellow toenails, don’t break out those sexy flip flops just yet. In fact, you may want to just go ahead and throw them away permanently. You see, Lamisil promises to evict Digger from the toenail projects, but like any good slumlord, it won’t do a fucking thing about the mess he ends up leaving behind. All that yellow gunk stubbornly stuck to the underbelly of your toenail like those stretch marks tiger stripes on your hips isn’t going to magically go away just because you’re now dermataphyte free. You gotta wait for your body to naturally wallpaper over it just like a cheap interior designer would cover up a hole in the plaster…
10 to 12 months to grow a new toenail!?!? It only takes 9 months to make a fucking brand new human being!
While I may be in the minority, most people enjoy showing off their tootsies to the world…. but nobody wants that pediview to be ruined by nasty yellow toenails. So for making us take action by not being afraid to show us the ugly face of footsie fungus, today The Nest salutes Lamisil and Digger the dermataphyte for going deep undercover to make our phalanges fungus free, even if we’ll still have to keep breaking out the socks and toenail polish for a year. Thanks to your miracle of modern medicine, our third little piggy will finally be able to enjoy his roast beef without it being dry rubbed in a flaky yellow batter…
Here at The Nest, we proudly give you the middle toe.
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I’m ready to sign on the dotted line any petition to ban gross-out advertising from prime time. Or for that matter, entirely. Ew. Really. Just EW!
I think the best you could hope for would be a Do Not Gross Out List… though Lamisil and Mucinex would probably just find ways to get around that and keep showing you the gross things in your body…
NO. Nope. Not even liking this because that…THING…may end up on my page.
I couldn’t even read this…that’s how bad I hate that commercial and the visuals.
:-<
Wow! I think that’s an even stronger reaction than when I did my Jar Jar post, and I didn’t think that was possible!
Sorry, but a commercial about a toenail fungus creature just seemed made for mocking…
I lost a thumbnail to a fungal infection (why I will not get professionally applied fake nails or salon manicures ever again), so I’ve actually been on Lamisil. It took over a year for it to grow back but the med did its job, you would never know to see it now!
My issue is that the commercial involves toenails and bending backwards etc. A friend of mine had that happen to her toenail after tripping outside while wearing flipflops and I would freak out about that happening to me next when I was a kid. seeing that happen made me sick then and still a little bit when I remember now. (and it takes a lot to make me feel ill when it comes to injuries, surgeries, etc)
I think I would prefer Jar Jar over this… Just barely though.
Ah, then you latched on to the one thing I find creepy about this ad. I related my own story of a fingernail I lost in a comment below that did the same thing…
Not that I was ever informed before my days off, but Friday was Star Wars day at Mecca, and employees could wear their “favorite Star Wars shirt.” Not that I have any Star Wars shirts (or shirts with any kind of printing on them), but I kinda wish I’d had a Jar Jar tee to show off….
I am grossed out, disgusted, ready to barf and laughing out loud. Ack and somebody please pull that poor animal out of the toilet. I mean the squirrel, not that disgusting man with the spoon. That is almost as gross as foot fungus or someone with larva under their skin.
I seem to have brought a lot of things together for a Wide World of Grossness… but I blame Lamisil. If they can animate toe fungus, I the gloves of yuck have come off.
Come together right now over my fungus.
Congrats on being the first commenter not grossed out! And even upping the ante…
I wasn’t grossed out at all…. *bows*
Dude, I thought you were going to start giving a warning up front. Toilet cereal is bad enough, but being on the hind end (ha…) of a one two picture punch is just too much…..
You don’t like toilet squirrel either? Sheesh!
Funny how bathroom/toilet/toe fungus humor doesn’t bother me one bit, but the blood and gore that seems to fascinate a lot of people makes me want to barf in my cereal bowl….
I was going to comment just to be angry about you showing the toenail fungus guy again! And then – it got worse. The skin peeling, the poop OMG, gonna go barf.
Show that to all of your princess dolls and see how they like it!
Is that a squirrel in that toilet? I thought it was some kind of lizard but then I noticed it had whiskers.
I think the gross out factor is the only way to go when trying to peddle a drug that can cause so many serious problems. Ya gotta make the toenail fungus really gross to make kidney and liver damage attractive in comparison! What I wish they didn’t show was the toenail lifting up. It makes my toes hurt just thinking about it….
That is most definitely a squirrel!
https://evilsquirrelsnest.com/2013/06/16/the-ty-d-bol-squirrel/
I agree on the hinged toenail. I had a fingernail come unhinged after I slammed it in a screen door as a kid. That was not only gross, but effing painful!!! That may be the worst part of the commercial for me…
Yuck. As if the thought of toenail fungus wasn’t already bad enough 🙂
I see Da Biebs and “toilet cereal” are making blatant attempts at the image number one slot…
It would be interesting to see which picture would get voted as worse… Bieber vs. Toilet Cereal. The results might be surprising…
I dislike the lamisil ad… it’s called Lamisil ONCE here… so why they bomb the people in an endless loop with this scary stuff? once should be enough :o) … the beaver kid and the fungus are twins, right?
I think you’re right…. only they haven’t invented a pill yet that can make Bieber go away. 😦
Am I the only one who thinks the wee dermi is cute? Not JB though. No waaay!
I would imagine Digger is an acquired taste… although given what he is, that’s a gross statement itself!
nothing makes me crook! 😀
I’d forgotten about that little fucker. The derma doc had me use the Lamisil cream for the topical yeast infections that I got as a “free gift with purchase” from taking the antibiotics.
The ad for Digger’s yeast infection spreading cousin was probably too hot for TV…
Topical means “on the surface” perv. Though those places still shouldn’t be seen in public.
How can you make me like such absolutely appalling and gross stuff? You are so evil and mean.
Don’t credit me, credit Lamisil for making toenail fungus so appealing to the masses by giving it a face and personality!
Yeah, indeed. No need to share the fungus among us, Bill, unfortunate yellow-nailers. Even though my guys are in no need for a clearance sale, my opinion about toes in public is: I even wear socks with Crocs. Shaddup, world. They’re really comfortable.
As weird as it looks, I agree with any effort to keep the tootsies covered. I need to see about getting the public indecency laws changed…
You should check out these ads from bleach maker Domestos:
Although on the plus side, these ones don’t mutilate any poor defenceless toenails.
I missed this comment the first time around! Mold, mildew and toilet germs anthropomorphized…. epic win!!! I thought at first Domestos had to be what Lysol was known as overseas since the ads bear a resemblance to theirs, but it turns out Domestos is a Unilever brand. I’m a little jealous we don’t have those commercials here…