11 of the Weirdest Commercials of All Time
Most commercials only want your money. These want your sanity.
In the world of advertising, grabbing the viewer's attention is key.
Sure, you could just list off the benefits of whatever you're selling in a straightforward manner, but is that going to leave an impression?
You want your audience to take notice. You want to keep them thinking about your ad for days and weeks afterward — to infect their brains with a little consumerist parasite that reminds them to cough up their money in pursuit of a false sense of fulfillment. So anything you can do to make your ad stand out from the crowd is a good thing, right?
Well, maybe not anything... Sometimes commercials try so hard to achieve that memorable or viral effect that they veer into strange and disturbing territory. They stop being little tributes to capitalism and become vivid flashes of madness.
These 11 ads took that attention-grabbing ethos to strange and upsetting new heights. Maybe they were hoping for the kind of quirky virality that Old Spice has made iconic. What they got instead was...
Kinder Surprise - Humpty Dumpty
It shouldn't be hard to sell chocolate to children. And if you make that chocolate into an egg and put a little toy inside, your work is pretty much done. Show some kids having fun and not choking on the little toy, then call it a wrap.
Well, that's not how Ferrero felt when they made this 1983 ad for Kinder Surprise Eggs that aired in the UK. Rather than let the product speak for itself, they brought in a dead-eyed animatronic Humpty Dumpty to speak in tongues...
Because what kid doesn't love a giant giddy egg made of human flesh, with human limbs, speaking in gibberish?
▲Dole - Banana Man Japanese Commercial
This entire article and ten more like it could be devoted to nothing but weird Japanese commercials. The Japanese advertising industry has embraced weirdness with a lot of surreal and supernatural nonsense like the aggressive insanity of Nissin Instant Curry commercials.
But this ad from Dole deserves special recognition for being so succinct with its strangeness. It starts with an introduction to a man who is at least 50% made of bananas -- banana hands, bananas coming out of his ears, and a little banana mustache. We see him being beaten up and harassed by gangsters and ordinary citizens alike -- all ravenous for his fruity goodness. But then, Banana Man senses sadness.
A woman is crying on a park bench, so Banana Man cheers her up by spraying a snot-rocket of bananas into her lap before flapping his banana-hands to fly off. The entire saga unfolds in just 15 seconds.
▲Levi's - Kevin The Hamster
Back in 1998, Levi's wanted to emphasize that they were "original," so they took an original approach to advertising by telling the story of Kevin — a hamster who dies of boredom.
What does a dead hamster have to do with jeans? If you're still asking questions like that, you haven't yet relinquished your grip on sanity. Keep reading...
▲Little Baby's Ice Cream - "This is a Special Time"
In 2011 Little Baby's Ice Cream launched in Philadelphia selling small batches of specialty ice cream. In 2012 they decided to announce themselves to the world with an advertisement featuring a humanoid creature made of glutinous white "ice cream," using a spoon to eat the contents of its own head.
The ad became the first in a series of surreal and disturbing art films by Doug Garth Williams, all designed to form a permanent association between ice cream and nightmares. Because apparently, "ice cream is a feeling" (of overwhelming dread).
The campaign was apparently so popular that the founder was able to branch out with a pizza restaurant called Pizza Brain -- which predictably became embroiled in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. While Little Baby's Ice Cream has since closed all its locations, the bizarre commercials are still available on the official Little Baby's Ice Cream YouTube channel.
▲Workplace Safety and Insurance Board - There Are no Accidents
If surreal horror doesn't do it for you, how about hyper-realistic gore? That's what everyone likes to see between reruns of Trailer Park Boys, right?
That's apparently what Ontario's WSIB thought when they made this series of workplace safety PSAs. In each installment a worker happily lays out all the negligence that led them to be gruesomely injured or killed. If Final Destination and OSHA had a baby, it would look like these commercials.
▲PS3 - Demonic Baby Doll
No list of weird commercials would be complete without this classic 2006 ad for the Sony Playstation 3, featuring a demonic baby doll.
The doll's haunting laughter and the scenes of violence that flash in it's tear-filled eyes before it demonstrates its telekinetic powers all work together to send a clear message: video games.
▲Alinamin V - Arnold Schwarzenegger Japanese Commercials
In addition to general weirdness, another highlight of Japanese commercials is the use of western celebrities reciting phonetic Japanese in incomprehensible scenarios. In this series of Alinamin V energy drink ads, Arnold Schwarzenegger lends his genie alter-ego to a variety of bizarre situations.
Highlights include a bottle of energy drink transforming into a scantily clad woman before the Arnold-genie bursts from her head, laughing maniacally. In another ad, Arnold is accused of groping a woman on a crowded train, but then he drinks his energy drink, transforms into the genie, and destroys the train while, again, laughing maniacally. So...problem solved?
▲Hyundai - Pipe Job
In 2012, Korean car maker Hyundai introduced the first commercially available hydrogen-powered car, the ix35.
There are numerous benefits to running a vehicle on hydrogen fuel cells, not least of which is the fact that the only exhaust it produces is water vapor. And how else would you advertise that amazing feature than by showing a man methodically trying — but failing — to kill himself?
Why, Hyundai? Just why?
▲Confused.com - Chain Reaction
Confused.com is a website designed to help confused britons navigate their options when it comes to car insurance.
Back in the early 2010s, they made a series of ads featuring their frazzled cartoon mascot Cara Confused singing along to classic tunes. It doesn't have much to do with car insurance, but the music is catchy enough, and the animation style would actually be pretty cute...if not for all the gratuitously-bouncing cartoon breasts.
In addition to Cara, the ads also feature a buxom Black woman named Bertha— who is somehow able to pull ice cream from her cleavage. But Bertha is just the most blatant example of this series' breast obsession.
More or less all the cartoon women in the Confused.com commercials have absurdly bouncy busts. Why? Either to hypnotize you into buying car insurance, or because these commercials were animated by and for 14-year-old boys...who are also in the market for car insurance.
▲PFRV - Biggie Bear (2004, South Africa) (better quality)
Biggie Bear is the adorable star of a series of PSAs that aired on South African television back in 2004.
The ads were intended to draw parents' attention to some of the negative messages that TV could be sending to their children. And they achieved that effect by offering horrifying depictions of violence and drug abuse in a kid-friendly package. What a great idea!
▲Softbank - Otosan and Tommy Lee Jones Japanese Commercial
Softbank is a tech company that offers mobile phone service in Japan, and they advertise that service with the help of "the White family" made up of two Japanese women, a Black man, and a talking Shiba Inu named Shirato Jiro (AKA Otosan) — the stern and mysterious patriarch of the family.
All of these commercials are absurd, but they reached their peak when they crossed over with another long-running series of ads featuring Tommy Lee Jones as an alien who has developed a taste for Boss canned coffee. The White family hires Alien Jones as their housemaid, and brain-melting insanity ensues.
You can skip to the 3:20 mark in the video above to see the dramatic moment when Jones reveals his true form.
▲Now go buy stuff.