Pizza Hut Launches New Line of Bad Grammar

Have we just given up completely on language? It’s troubling enough that people are buying their meals from the Pizza Hut counter at Target, where pizzas and pasta mingle alongside moist glistening hot dogs. But do the Pizza Hut folks really think it sounds cooler to the kids to say they want to “Plus Up” their meals? “I’m wanna plus up my food box with breadsticks.”

Change My Pitch Up! Plus My Sticks Up!

Change My Pitch Up! Plus My Sticks Up!

I can only imagine the phrases that missed the cut in these marketing meetings:

  • I’d like to “More On!” my meal with some Cinnamon Crust Nuggets.
  • Let me “Extra Do” that pizza with another, larger pizza on top.
  • Could I “Barf Include” a side of Pepperoni Pods?
  • And I’ll give mine some “Fatitude” with quadruple cheese and cheese.
  • Sure, I’ll “Go All Insulin” with the Alfredo Keg.

Now watch John Mulaney decide between salad or fries.

Taco Bell Grilled Stuft Nacho: Food for the Statutory Rapist on the Go!

This commercial has annoyed and amused me for a month or so. Taco Bell introduced a new foodstuff envelope called the Grilled Stuft Nacho. The ad makes scant mention of what’s in it or what it tastes like, focusing instead on portability as its most desirable characteristic.

So, who does Taco Bell think this on-the-go edible nacho purse would appeal to? Perhaps the businessman seeking a quick bite on his way to a meeting across town? Maybe the mom with the kids in the car coming home from soccer practice?

Well, no. Taco Bell has a different demographic in mind: The high school kid who’s fucking your daughter. In the ad, we see an older teen boy in close up, running frantically in slow motion. He looks back over his shoulder and then we see a father, slobbering with rage as he pursues the teen down a sleepy residential street. The voiceover says what we couldn’t otherwise believe Taco Bell would want us to think: “Why would you ever need to eat nachos on the go? Let’s say her parents came home early.”

Is this really the brand identity Taco Bell wants?

“Once you’ve stuft her taco, grab that Taco Bell Grilled Stuft Nacho you keep handy by the window for your hasty departure. You’ll need all the energy you can get to escape a brutal assault at the hands of a maniacally enraged dad who just caught you sexually violating his daughter.

And what young predator has time to sit down for a meal? You’re going to be busy pumping your young date full of Fireball shots, just in case your AXE Body Spray sex cloud doesn’t completely overwhelm her defenses.

And at just $1.29, you’ll have allowance money left over to buy those Roofies from your uncle Randy who drives a van. Taco Bell!”

I didn’t realize John Hodgman was doing commercials all the way back in 1970

OK, the guy in this ad just reminded me of him, but obviously advertisers have relied on the nebbish everydork to sell products for generations.

I’m more fascinated that even in 1970, advertisers would’ve found this message effective. To summarize: “Even if you’re a greasy putz, you can kick sand on your nerd girl and pick up hot beach bikini pussy instead. Dodge Charger.”

Although, as we’ve noted here before, marketers still like to appeal directly to the grunty inner male sex panther. The folks who make Axe products for men bring it as shamelessly and offensively as anyone, as in this ad for Axe Rape-is-Her-Fault Chest Wax.

Axe applies the same pot-clanging subtlety to its packaging. I took this picture in a Target the other day:

Gargle with it and she'll let you do butt things

Gargle with it and she’ll let you do butt things

The sassy silhouette says it all: “Axe it up tonight and get 33% more HOT LADIES!”

Also, this particular flavor of Axe Shower Gel is called SHOCK (all caps mandatory).

Which invites the tagline: “Our SHOCK isn’t toxic, at least not in that way.”

There is another Axe variety called ANARCHY. Here too, the message is clear: “It’s lawless here in Pussytown, fellas. When you’re soaked in Axe Torso Dip, civil order disintegrates and your fat wagging meat is the only law the ladies bow down to.”

It’s easy to make fun of this mentality in men’s marketing, but Axe and similar Neadveristers probably have a point. Men are simple creatures; we are not clever. Axe could save a lot of money on broadcast advertising by just sending female field marketers into stores to thwap us over the head with a mallet and tickle our balls a little bit. We’ll buy anything you’re selling. AXE!

K-Mart’s Fishy Holiday Charity Angels: Bah Humbug!

How cynical am I for thinking this is a brilliantly executed marketing campaign by K-Mart? Google “K-Mart layaway” (without quotes) and you’ll see 650 news links, national and local, all associating this feel-good holiday story with K-Mart. Why would these anonymous Christmas layaway angels not also drop by Wal-Mart or Marshall’s or Best Buy? (To be fair, these reporters at least checked with Wal-Mart, which said it had seen some cases of anonymous charity. But the overwhelming and extremely valuable positive press coverage focuses on K-Mart.)

I am officially calling a special Scrooge Edition Bullshit. Please Santa prove this cynic wrong.

Campbell’s Soup: Also made with meat from carbon-based animals

We’re sure others have noted this before us, but tonight a TV commercial bragged that Campbell’s makes its soups with “farm-grown ingredients.”

Our expectations for Campbell’s soup already linger pretty low. Still, Campbell’s impresses us with the brazen suggestion that the benchmark for soup quality and wholesome yumminess is having ingredients grown on a farm.

“You won’t find back-alley carrots or interstate-median herbs in Campbell’s soups. Our produce comes from a special place—the place where produce comes from. Does Progresso make its minestrone with beans and potatoes formulated in windowless concrete laboratories staffed by inmates from federal psychiatric prisons? We can’t say for certain, but rest assured that we pack every can of Campbell’s soup with vegetables picked by migrant workers aching with sweat, crippling joint pain and financial desperation. And they picked those vegetables on a farm.”

Here’s a super bonus from our extensive research for this post: A couple of eerie old animated commercials featuring the Campbell’s Kids.

In the first commercial, two creepy tomato cannibal twins cheerily boil a naive, trusting Midwestern farm tomato alive. (“Welcome to the jungle baby!”) Apparently the sun is complicit in their blood lust:

In the second commercial, two new serial agri-killers harvest a colony of fat, smiling mushrooms for Campbell’s delectable and apparently hallucinatory cream of mushroom soup. If the kooky kids didn’t already motivate you to bolt to your corner grocer, just wait until the closing shot in which a gelatinous glob of gummy fungi concentrate slithers from the can like an alien afterbirth. A special containseggs prize to the person who can best articulate the sound it makes. Bon appetit!

Poor Judgment in Promotional Photos: Sesame Street Edition

So, apparently “The Office” star John Krasinski will kick off the 42nd season of Sesame Street by bracing for a high-velocity money shot from an enormous uncircumcised penis. Do Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity know about this outrageous filth PBS is peddling?

Scene Directed By Bert and Ernie

The Fast and the Follicle: Coif in the Fast Lane

This is the awesome new packaging for my hair stuff.* Because speed-limit hair is for pussies. Bad hair, keep right; Style is passing you on the left like a red Mustang. Better turn on your hairstyle hazard lights, because your look’s out of gas, bitch!
 
Seriously, this packaging says, “Touch this hair and buckle up, sexy lady, we’re taking off on a short, fast, perilous, one-way straight-line pleasure drag race. No need to stop for foreplay gas here; I’ll be gone in 60 seconds.”
 
I shared this on Facebook, and our good friend Davin Wood posted this funny take on absurd marketing to men’s masculinity from Sean Lock.

That fancy salon cuts my hair in kilometers.
*You think hair that looks this good just happens?