Commercials I Enjoy

I agree that most tv ads are preposterous wastes of airspace. I mean, how many ads do you encounter that actually make you think "Wow, I should totally buy that Swiffer!" In fact, the only ads that really motivate me to buy something are infomercials, with their amazing demos and insanely over-enthused spokespeople. And even then I don't buy them.

However, some of them are funny. Funny in the way that I will watch them again and again. In fact, if I'm flipping channels idly, and come across one of these, I'll stop for the duration of the commercial. Robitussin, Swiffer? Not among these. Here's a brief list of some that are.

Febreze - The one with the baby toys/dog toys
If you haven't seen this ad, you need to. Basically, this lady cleans all these little toys off the floor, then sprays the carpet with Febreze. She puts the bottle back in the cupboard, and when she turns around, all the toys are face down on the floor, including this insane-looking money. In my mind, the crazy implication that the floor smells so good that stuffed animals love it is pretty inventive in itself, but the deal-clincher for me is the close-up shot of the monkey, who looks bat-shit crazy. Seriously, that is the cutest little homicidal monkey ever.

Trident - Did you say filing?
Basically, this guy working ina cubicle is given a stack of files to...file, and the whole office breaks out into a song and dance about filing. There are spirit fingers, dolphin dives, and theatrical faces. It's pure genius, and when it went off the air, I cried a little.

Fido - What if cell phones didn't exist? pigeon edition
There are no cell phones, and everyone is using carrier pigeons to communicate. Pigeons are everywhere, and there's this one hysterical moment with employees cooing to the pigeons, telling them to "fly home!"

There are more (there's a car ad in which a guy gets his blackberry thrown out the window by his jerk of a "friend", and then turns around and throws the guy's toupee out the window), but there's no hope of me ever remembering them all. Anyway, it's nice to know that in all that garbage, you can find the occasional gem.