10 Awesome Ads (For Traumatizing Children)
Sometimes it's because TV ads try a little too hard to be "edgy." Sometimes it's because ad executives are fucking insane. Regardless of the reason, since the television was invented, it has brought us ads so unintentionally terrifying that they'll haunt you forever.
So hold on to your butts, because we've gone out and found 10 ads that are sure to leave a lasting impression . . . in your nightmares.
Kinder Surprise
The Marketing Meeting:
Ferrero President: We need a hook for our horrible chocolate eggs filled with two cents worth of plastic. For some bizarre reason kids are not all over them.
Marketing guy: I propose a commercial with a Humpty Dumpty rip off. A beloved icon shaped as an egg.
Ferrero President: Wonderful. But what if we give him a nightmarish face and gently imply he is mentally retarded?
Marketing guy: And then when the children start weeping, their parents will comfort them with our chocolate! That is why you are president, sir.
The Result:
What the Fuck?
If insanity were a living creature, chances are this is what its nightmares would look like:
So this creature appears, and he's the love child of Humpty Dumpty and all of our darkest fears. He addresses the viewers who are now sitting in a puddle of their own piss, with an important announcement on the versatility and intrinsic details of the Ferrero Kinder Surprise: "Kinder, yebbol shakey." Well, thank you Humpty, that certainly needed to be said. "Me unscrabbly," continues the giant egg wrapped in human skin.
After that, the whole thing spirals into some sort of gibberish, which we are forced to assume are spells from the Necronomicon.
The monstrosity strategically forgets to tell you anything about the chocolate which holds the "awesome" prize, proving to us that even Ferrero knows they are behind a barrel of surplus WWII diarrhea in the taste department. But that's okay, because the lousy chocolate holds an even lousier plastic toy inside.
A toy which, by the way, was apparently meant to be a chef in a red suit, but in this commercial, looks very much like a skinned torture victim:
Tarako Pasta Sauce
The Marketing Meeting:
"I don't know man, cod roe pasta sauce? How will we make kids want to eat it?"
"Come on, all we need is a cute mascot. Like a toddler in a red blanket."
"Well... that sounds OK, I guess."
"And then we'll have thousands of them emerging from a spaceship, marching in formation in a terrifying mass with the obvious goal of enslaving humanity."
"What?"
"Nothing... let's go film this thing."
The Result:
What the Fuck?
In what brings to mind a rendition of Village of the Damned... in Space, the invading identical army of blanket wrapped toddlers descends upon Earth from a turd-shaped spacecraft, all singing in perfect unison the immensely creepy chant of "Tarako."
Now, children are hideous monsters as it is, but when you have an apparently limbless army of them, advancing in a Roman Triangle Formation with their doll faced frozen expressions, chanting a tune which can only be described as a war song, then you are not that far away from your brain sending an evacuation order straight to your bowels.
But believe it or not, this is not even the fucked up part. No. What really drives us insane from horror and bewilderment is when the obviously tripping albino Japanese boy-girl stares emotionlessly at the hive consciousness legion of alien babies...
...after which the commercial cuts straight to the kid enjoying a plate of spaghetti. Why is that terrifying you ask? Here is what cod roe looks like, compared with an image from the commercial for your convenience:
That's right. The commercial implies that the kid ate the invading alien horde by turning them into pasta sauce. So, suddenly, what was probably devised as a cutesy commercial for a food product becomes a dramatic tale of a young albino on acid saving Earth by eating alien babies in the shape of human toddlers. We'll give you one guess as to which country this came from.
PlayStation
The Marketing Meeting:
Guy#1: We need to tell our customers just how awesome and totally sweet the PlayStation is.
Guy#2: We could talk about its hardware, the assortment of games and online...
Guy#3: No! Creepy alien girls in pigtails talking gibberish with a Scottish accent!
Guy#1: ... promote this man!
The Result:
What the Fuck?
Never before has the theory of the uncanny valley been proven to such an extent. The... thing in the commercial possesses enough features to be sorta labeled a human, we guess, but there is something off here... something that makes you quiver in the deepest corners of your very soul... we don't know what though. Could be her hairstyle, lack of make-up or the fact she is an alien-human hybrid.
Our collective acid fantasy from Venus babbles nonstop for almost 40 seconds about humans, making a point to tell us she is not one them, in case you were wondering if subtlety was Sony's forte.
And just as a bonus, E.T. Girl laughs the laugh of the damned after something growls off camera, perhaps the sound of a fellow alien eating a human child. After that, the tagline, "Do Not Underestimate the Power of PlayStation," sounds very much like a threat.
Norton Furniture
The Marketing Meeting:
Mark: I don't get it... we keep losing customers. What are we doing wrong?
Stuffed tiger: ...
Mark: Yes, I see, but where will we get the dancing hippo?
Stuffed bear: ...
Mark: I never actually tried cantaloupe.
Cop mannequin: ...
Mark: But isn't murder illegal?
The Result:
What the Fuck?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hear a furniture credit pitch from the bastard love child of Peter Lorre and Mr. Miyagi amidst a sea of stuffed animals giving away random growls? What? What do you mean "No"? You lie! Well, even if you didn't, Norton Furniture still provides an answer. A creepy, disturbing answer.
Welcome to Norton Furniture, can I paint your nipples green?
"Now, seriously, if you can't get credit in my store........ you can't get credit anywhere." The unusual emphasis on "seriously" and the long pause before finishing the sentence gives the whole thing an unintended feeling of danger. We are now afraid that if Norton declines us credit, we will not leave the store alive and end up inside one of his stuffed animals.
After you are left uneasy with this subtle threat and try to decide if Norton's voice sounds more like Igor from Frankenstein or Christopher Lambert's Rayden, you are a served a large portion of baked creepy when another of the supposedly "dead" animals growls at the furniture salesman causing him to consult his current situation with... a policeman mannequin.
Nike Pro Apparel
The Marketing Meeting:
Nike.... Nike... Ni... ke.... shoes... shoes, people wear shoes on their feet, they play sports... Yes, sports, sports... ee... football, baseball... pro athletes.... arena sports... arena... big open arena... the Coliseum... Coliseum... dead Christians.... blood and gore.... Unrelenting horror strapped to the heads of pro athletes! I am a genius!
The Result:
What the Fuck?
Holy donkey balls on fire, what the hell is that in the first 0.5 seconds? Rewind. What the hell? Can barely make it out, the images move too fast. OK, in slow motion. What... in... the...
OK... so, from the very first nanoseconds of the commercial, Nike decided to thoroughly roofie up and rape our minds by planting subliminal messages of pure horror in their ad before immediately cutting to a bunch of MLB and NFL players posing for Sports Illustrated in some dark dreary basement which still looks, to us, like solitary confinement. To pass the time at their... well, prison--we guess, because we aren't seeing an exit anywhere--the guys engage in some typical sports oriented activities: throwing baseballs, footballs, swinging a bat. And then the whole thing not only goes back to Insanityville, it sets up shop there:
My sweet baseball is the only thing keeping me from going insane. That and my kickass wooden monkey mask.
In what we can only assume to have been the end result of a bet gone horribly wrong, each of the pro athletes starring in this cerebral enema of madness gets transformed into David Lynch's rendition of Power Rangers.
The last guy clearly does not understand the basic premise of a helmet.
Orville Redenbacher's Popcorn
The Marketing Meeting:
"So, gentlemen, the 40th anniversary of our brand is coming up, and we want something snazzy, tasteful and BIG to commemorate the occasion, in loving memory of Mr. Redenbacher."
"How about we bring him back to life!"
"Oh, you mean like with CGI?"
"Eee... ye... yeah, that's exactly what I meant..."
The Result:
What the Fuck?
"Hello, I am Orville Redenbacher," as the beady eyed wax skin Orville Frankenstein monster lies to us from the very beginning.
Hello, I am an abomination against nature, and I am here to give you a heart attack.
The porcelain Orville, very much like a zombie, strikes fear into our hearts with its grotesque form which perhaps will be recognized by some that knew it in life, but that uneasy feeling of familiarity will only accentuate the horror of the creature's lifeless pale apparition and its dead glass eyes. Then, zombie Orville will try to sell you popcorn.
Now available in Plain, Butter and Human.
The people around the resurrected snack peddler seem as surprised and terrified to see him as we are. It's like no one told them this is a commercial, so among the gathered faces you can see any emotion ranging from cautious assessment of their own insanity, to downright fear:
Mr. Orville? But I heard you were...
Still, unlike most entries on this list, undead Orville actually takes the time to tell you something about his popped corn, saying how fluffy and light it is, but all of it is nullified when the marketing department input kicks in and the abomination starts jiggling to some modern "popular music" and proudly shits on the memory of its originator by exclaiming: "You'll like it better, or my name isn't Orville Redenbacher."
We assume at this point the lounge employees gathered around the dancing doppelganger abomination and struck it down once and for all.
THIS MADNESS ENDS NOW!
Rejuvenique
The Marketing Meeting:
Rob Zombie: Gentlemen, I am liking how things are going so far, we have basically licensed Halloween to every commodity possible, with the cat food arriving in stores next week... BUT, I feel we are not making a dent with the female demographic. Solutions?
Marketing guy: Mike Myers's electric facial zapping mask? We'll call it the "Rejuvenique" and sell it in infomercials.
Rob Zombie: Okay, but only if you make the ad about five times more disturbing than any of the films.
The Result:
What the Fuck?
Watching this thing with no sound at all, and just the woman in her featureless beauty mask, would qualify this ad for nightmare fuel. But add the song "You Are So Beautiful," to the background, and it takes it to a whole, new, ball-shriveling level.
Holy hell, that is one creepy... what exactly? Well, apparently, the Rejuvenique is an electric stimulator slash spare Halloween costume which uses metal bolts on the inside of the mask to zap your facial muscles and rejuvenate them, in a process which, in the scientific community, is known as The Frankenstein Principle, from the University of Gimmicky Bullshit.
Because putting electrical zappers on a psycho killer mask replica seemed like such a good idea...
And this piece of revolutionary merchandise is not only for the gals. Men worldwide, with that little vain psychopath inside of them, can also experience the pleasure of being electrocuted right in the face while sporting the Michael Myers look. Now, we are not psychologists or anything (at least according to the court system), but we do question the wisdom of equipping a man with a famed murderer look and then pissing him off by electrocuting his face.
Man, if it wasn't for this magazine to read, I would murder everyone in the house.
The most spectacular part of the commercial, however, is when it warns the potential customers that you should NEVER (written in blood red letters) get the Rejuvenique wet... while they show a character in a bathtub.
And just because we know people will be asking for it, you can buy the Rejuvenique here.
Axe Dark Temptation
The Marketing Meeting:
"OK, Bill, what do you have for us with the Axe account?"
"Get THIS: There is this guy, and he gets turned into a chocolate golem and slowly eaten by a bunch of psychotic women..."
"Bill... let me... stop you right there. I don't think this is really what we are looking for."
"Well... fine. So, get THIS: The Ku Klux Klan is lynching this..."
"You know what, let's get back to the chocolate golem, I like it now."
The Result:
What the Fuck?
The commercial makes the rookie mistake from the get go by showing on-screen one of the side effects of the product it's advertising: Apparently Axe's cosmetics turn you into a chocolate monster which makes the Burger King look downright pleasant to the eye.
What the hell does this have to do with deodorant?
While strolling through the city, the monstrosity starts ripping off parts of his sweet fattening flesh and feeding it to random women, signaling another flaw with the product: Axe's deodorant might cause urges of self mutilation.
The obviously food deprived lot of females cannot control themselves and simply attack the poor creature on various occasions, taking bites of him whenever they feel like it (women... always trying to cannibalize you. Right, guys?). One of the girls actually goes as far and eats the creature's ass.
But you know what's even more disturbing here? So far, Chocostein has not appeared able to express any emotion other than the trauma inducing frozen grin; so for all we know, he might be screaming in horrible pain from the inside, begging for death.
PlayStation 3
The Marketing Meeting:
Sony employee #1: OK guys, we have a problem. Research shows people sometimes stop playing their consoles, for things like... wait, let me get my notes... food, urination and sleep. How do we fix that with the PS3?
Sony employee #2: We have to cut into their sleep time.
Sony employee #1: How do we make them not want to sleep?
Sony employee #2: Oh, you just leave that to me... you just leave that to me...
The Result:
What the Fuck?
So the commercial opens with a shot of a window and doorless white painted sterile room occupied only by an unplugged PS3 and a baby doll. If this surprises you even one bit, you obviously have just tuned in to the list.
Not pictured: anything unusual.
For those of you who always refused to stay alone in your grandmother's room with the army of porcelain dolls quietly looking at and judging you, your fears are finally justified when you get a look of the doll coming to life and stretching its arms out in anticipation of a hug. The urge you will feel to throw your monitor out the window is perfectly natural, as is the urine in your pants.
Mommy, why didn't you love me?
Then, the doll will laugh with the voice of an adult... after which it will start crying from its plastic, lifeless eyes. That sound you just heard was the last shard of your sanity bouncing off the floor of your skull.
And what commercial for a family console would be complete without that little dash of Satan in the mix? Near the end, you see the very reflection of Hell's flames in the living doll's eyes. Again, we wish we could tell you this is just our Photoshop Department fucking with you, but even they have limits (and we're talking about guys who once Photoshopped a naked Bea Arthur for us...).
This charming little piece of psychosis ends with the tagline "Play Beyond," which here can only mean "Beyond Sanity." Hey, that is a pretty good tagline. We will mention it to our shrink while we try to forget this happy memory.
Baby Laugh-a-Lot
The Marketing Meeting:
"So, Mr... Lu-ci-fer, is it?"
"Just call me Your Dark Lord."
"Well, your credentials are amazing, and we would love to have you on board."
"Glad to hear it. What will I be working on first?"
"You know, we have this one account which I think you would be perfect for."
The Result:
What the Fuck?
We are not entirely sure, but there is a possibility we just lost our immortal souls after watching this ad, though with us making a living off perverting young and promising minds on the Internet with dick jokes, it's really hard to tell.
Where is your God now?
The unholy commercial opens with a little girl turning the switch on her Baby Damns-You-Lot doll, unleashing a stream of rapid demonic laughter which fills the house. If you started to experience a burning sensation in your chest area, there is no need to panic, you are not having a heart attack. It's just your soul being consumed by the black flames of Hell.
Do I push here to pledge allegiance to Satan?
The siren call of the Legions of the Damned penetrates the minds of children nearby, making them gather around their new plastic master, their innocent yet undoubtedly condemned laugh mixing with the demonic cackle, ready to take orders.
Kill my parents? Sure!
And then, the narrator decides to join in on the psychological damage. In a manner which can be very generously described as "troubling," the voice-over guy starts talking about the product, pausing only for outbursts of increasingly more maniacal laughter which, no matter how you cut it, still sounds like a desperate plea for help. Almost as if the doll was watching him.
If you want to see that clip again, no need to click above. You'll see it every time you close your eyes.
Don't think the media is finished giving you nightmares just yet. Check out The 10 Most Terrifying Video Game Enemies of All Time and The 5 Most Unintentionally Scarring 80s Music Videos.
