Yo Quiero Mr. Whipple: The 7 Most Annoying Post-Taco Bell Chihuahua Attempts To Create An Iconic Ad-Campaign Character
Posted at 9:00 AM Sep 11, 2008
By Kenny Herzog
We've entered a strange era in the advertising age. In the early aughts, large companies like Burger King began planting the seeds of viral campaigns on their websites with the Subservient Chicken. A mere few years later, that postmodern mentality has been deemed ready for prime time, and we've been deluged with creepy characters like BK's Manute Bol-sized updating of their iconic King and the advertising verite of Mike's Hard Lemonade sad sack Joey. This can, of course, all be blamed on the 1997 emergence of the Taco Bell chihuahua, which was a monumental success amongst people who think dressing their dogs up like people is cute and knowing how to say "hola" makes them bilingual (i.e. 90 percent of people who go to Taco Bell).
But, depressingly, the aforementioned King and Joey are among the most creative of the ensuing decade's strained attempts at shoving enduring (and not even necessarily endearing) advertising mascots down our throats. Here's a rundown of of the seven most grating, or just weird for weird's sake (Note: Jared Fogle from Subway only gets a pass because he at least had theoretically altruistic purpose):
7. GEICO Cavemen
Yes, we know, this is one of the few ad campaigns the public has really warmed up to in recent years. But four years and one innocuously mediocre sitcom spinoff later, and the paleolithic product-pushers have lost their ironic bite. Over the last year, they have merely been coasting on the surface juxtaposition of prehistoric social climbers placed against any contemporary backdrop. In a true irony, real cavemen would likely be insulted at the reductive nature of the latest spots, which, as evidenced below, have been lazy and laughless.
6. The Pizza Hut "Mooch"
Pizza Hut actually deserves credit for earnestly harkening back to the early days of "edgy" advertising, when companies would develop a ne'er do well sidekick for their spots that paralleled the token goofy neighbor on a sitcom. "The Mooch" was unleashed in 2007, and is basically a lazy stoner (or in this case, a devastatingly handsome lazy stoner, in order to make us forget that having Pizza Hut for breakfast will make you a fat, pimply fuck) who keeps coming late to his friends' P'Zone parties (just wait to see if they get invited to the party in his pants later) and gets greeted with collective laments of "Moooooch," before being urged to get his own. Because who would want to share a glorified beef patty that could feed an entire village from MTV's Exiled?
5. Burger King "King"
There's definitely something enjoyable about BK's subversive, and terrifying, 2006 revamping of their King mascot. And the initial ads (particularly ones that introduced the oversized meat monarch into hilariously contrasting scenarios, like a football game) were actually hysterical and very well done, inspiring a spiked interest in BK merchandise, if not its actual food. But I'll tell you this right now, Burger King: If I ever go to one of your outposts and have the King pop out from behind the counter, Candid Camera-style, I will knock him the fuck out. Unless I'm stoned. Then I will just run away screaming across the street to McDonald's.
4. Joey, Of Mike's Hard Lemonade
The idea here seems to be, "If you were a guy and had reservations that our Hard Lemonade was a girly drink, just watch how we verbally abuse our portly, hard-working well-intentioned employee with a speech impediment when he suggests our product should possess any holistic value." Joey is ostensibly a complete rip-off of Chris Farley as Tommy Boy, but without the third-act redemption.
3. Jack In The Box "Jack"
Jack In The Box's latest updating of their longtime "CEO" mascot has two strikes against it: It's both transparently derivative of Burger King's aforementioned "King" ads, and an embarrassingly pandering, post-Harold And Kumar concession to the chemically enhanced state of their adolescent customer base. While Jack In The Box is nowhere near as ubiquitous as BK or any of its other calorie-cramming contemporaries, these pseudo-ironic vignettes are even more depressingly symbolic of corporate-sponsorship's lost innocence.
2. Aflac Duck
After nine years of bludgeoning TV viewers with an anthropomorphised Gilbert Gottfried (didn't we get enough of that in the three installments of Aladdin?), Aflac should offer insurance from trauma induced by their own ads. Yes, there's a humorous contrast in play between Gottfriend's abrasive shriek and the innate genteelness of a pastel-white duck, hence our attention being jarringly, unforgettably drawn to the company's name. But you have simply gone too far, supplemental health-benefits carrier, by expecting us to absorb both your nails-on-chalkboard spokesman and a nonsense-spewing Yogi Berra simultaneously.
1. iPod Silhouette
Yes, it’s a fairly nifty promotion, wowing us with technological wonder and sending a colorblind message that all music is for everyone─and everyone should have an iPod. That said, even beneath all those jiggling shadows and sashaying outlines, it was plainly apparent that in order to really get down with the liberated spirit of the iPod, you had to be a distinctly good-looking silhouette. But despite the contradictory messaging, just imagine how many more units Apple would have sold if those bloodless bodies were dancing to something significantly less lame than Jet.
