The Smartphone Commercial That Will Ruin Your Christmas
On the morning of November 1, Santa Claus receives a 61-day furlough from his spider hole deep under Madison Avenue to shill dozens of goods and service. And over the last century, admen have pressganged Kris Kringle to hawk everything from booze to nipples.
And in Japan, he transforms into a sloganeering velociraptor should Christmas Eve fall on a blood moon.
But perhaps no ad in human history has abused Old St. Nick as heinously as this recent TV spot for the Samsung Galaxy line of smartphones. Watch it below, and then let's unpack the enormity of this commercial.
First off, this ad is more or less a yuletide-themed rip of Samsung's previous commercial for the Galaxy and its "S Beam" feature. In this earlier ad, a woman uses her Samsung Galaxy S3 phone to give her work-tripping husband an erotic MPEG so that he can enjoy a chaste wank at some random-ass Holiday Inn. Yes, Samsung was touting how the S-Beam allows mommies and daddies to sext like those no-goodniks down at the billiards hall.
"I have filmed my perineum because I still believe in romance."
That's a pretty fucking weird way to sell a phone, but at least the 30-second narrative makes sense. The same cannot be said for the Santafied version of the ad. When you swap out the sexually adventurous suburban couple for Mister and Missus Claus, this scene becomes grotesque on multiple levels, all thanks to her line, "But you probably shouldn't watch it on the sleigh."
"I'm cuckolding you with The Grinch, just the way you like it."
Look, we're not going to razz senior citizens (or immortal holiday icons) for having active sex lives - someday you'll be older too, and you and your partner will make whoopee that will resemble a very rambunctious leather octopus.
But the line "But you probably shouldn't watch it on the sleigh" is more or less wife code for "Please do not pleasure yourself to climax on your mystical toboggan while tearing ass 50,000 feet above the Earth's surface. The headwinds will tear that barber pole in your pants clean off."
Even worse, Mrs. Claus' comment suggests that - at some point during Santa's one-night-only, good-will-fueled delivery of presents to the virtuous tots of the world - Father Christmas has penciled in a masturbation break.
"I am coming to town."
So if Santa's not watching Mrs. Claus' commit acts unspeakable on his Samsung Galaxy III while trying to steer a bunch of supersonic caribou, where is he going to watch this video? At some pay-by-the-hour fleabag? Behind a Carl's Jr. like a drifter aroused by the scent of rancid hamburger meat?
Goodness no, the man has a timetable - a magical timetable. In all likelihood, he's unmasking the turtledove in the sanctity of some of your homes. He does possess the telepathic ability to know when you're sleeping or awake, after all.
"If you just celebrated Hanukkah, you wouldn't have to put up with my shit."
One Cracked editor caught Samsung's ad during a nationally televised football game. How many parents were forced to sputter out an explanation to their sportsfan progeny that did not sound anything like, "Well kids, the reason you can't come downstairs on Christmas Eve is because an obese wizard from Lapland who happens to be the moral custodian of the human race is spraying his genetic material all over the walls like a bored orangutan."
So Samsung, eat 10,000 gingerbread houses made of lutefisk for making a commercial casting Santa Claus as an onanistic home invader, and save one for us because we gave your pervert phone publicity. As for the rest of you, we've reached the point where the Christmas ads from Scrooged are now a real thing. Rejoice, despair, or all of the above.
You can find Cyriaque Lamar on Twitter.
