OK, I admit it. I am a judge show junkie. When possible, I watch a lot of those cheesy courtroom TV shows. They usually feature a charismatic judge (almost always a minority) and many times some pretty weird and stupid people. Anyhow, here are my favorites:
- Judge Judy – She rocks. She’s stern. She doesn’t give a break to these morons in her courtroom. Gotta love her.
- Judge Mathis – Judge Mathis is a cool dude. He went from a troubled childhood to becoming a lawyer then judge.
- The People’s Court – The show that started it all! In the new version, Judge Marilyn Milian is a nice judge. Sometimes almost too nice. But she’s fun and fair. More about The People’s Court
So like many Americans, we watch a fair amount of television in my household. And that means a lot of commercials. Some good, but many bad. And some overplayed to the extent that I change the channel to anything during the 30-seconds.
Here are some really bad and overplayed TV commercials:
- Jessica Simpson’s DirectTV (satellite television) – I haven’t seen the movie “Dukes of Hazzard”, but I’m assuming Jessica Simpson is acting like her role as Daisy in this commercial for DirectTV. Either way, I can’t stand it–it’s so corny! Why would I pay attention to what a dumb blond has to say about high-tech television service?
- Geico Caveman (auto insurance) – talk about overplay; I’m so sick of the “cavemen” and the “gecko”. At first these commercials were new and hip, now they’re just completely obnoxious. The “caveman” should just start a blog to keep the marketing going with those actually interested.
- Disaronno (liquor) – I don’t think that anyone stupid enough to fall for this sexually blatant commercial has enough money to purchase this liquor. (But I must be wrong as these ads are still running.) The woman in the ad is not even attractive.
- Rock Financial/Quicken Loans (Michigan) – These commercials for mortgages are so overplayed it’s not cool. Yes, I like the Detroit Pistons NBA basketball team, but man, are they ruining it for me with their partnership. And it’s not just TV, it’s radio, billboards, etc. If I hear or see David Hall and that terrible rock jingle one more time I’ll puke! Don’t do business with this Rock Financial either (that includes parent company Quicken Loans)–they’re terribly expensive, then they pass your mortgage on to a completely different company.
Good TV Commercials>
Here’s some TV commercials I think are really good:
- Burger King – The latest TV spots use that big, goofy “King” character in different situations. They’re kinda weird, but quite memorable. Here’s a low-quality bit of the BK football commercial.
- Any Victoria’s Secret commercial – Professional, tasteful, and sexy. A recent features legendary model Heidi Klum singing along to a cute holiday jingle. [view Victoria's Secret ad]
- Casino Royale – The commercial for the new James Bond film does a great job of (and the movie’s good too). Couldn’t find the video on the web, but here’s the Casino Royale trailer.
- Pepto Bismol – The classic stomach remedy has a great ad with old-school monsters and superheroes, and a very funny but effective jingle. [view Pepto Bismol ad]
Bad and Overplayed TV Commercials >
“A Brief History of Computers, As Seen in Old TV Ads” is a really cool article by PC World, so I just had to share. It’s about past television ads for computers and contains many of them embedded on the page to view (via YouTube). The commercials include Atari 400, Commodore 64, Apple Macintosh, Tandy 1000, IBM, and many more. Brings back the old days when I was a kid and my brother and I would write funny BASIC programs and save them on a special cassette tape recorder (seriously). And didn’t we all just love the dot matrix printers, monocrome monitors, and powerful 133Mhz processors?
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