Sometimes when I’m working, the TV is running in the background to provide innocuous “white noise”. Not real white noise, mind you… just a something-going-on mutter that helps me think. Naturally, somewhere along the line, this will involve commercials as well as content.

There are a few of these lately that seem to be turning up a lot, and they’re really getting on my wick, to the point where I’ll change channels to avoid them. These (at the moment) primarily being:

THE CUSHELLE KOALA

This creature is part of the toilet paper company’s project to rebrand Charmin (who else remembers Mr. Whipple?) as Cushelle. Frankly, I preferred Mr. Whipple. (Bizarre as he was.)

The whole romancing-the-roll thing strikes me as faintly peculiar. It’s toilet paper. Get a life, Koala.

 

…And then there’s the Birds Eye frozen food commercial series of the last couple years, featuring an exceptionally creepy Muppet-style polar bear. It lives in people’s freezers and lectures them in a sinister tone on their cooking talents, the content of their fish sticks (“fish fingers”, to the UK/Irish audience) and other such topics. Lately it’s even escaped from the freezer and has started manifesting itself to people on vacation (at the next table in the restaurant), etc. Bad enough that the rude creature disses your cooking, but it has to stalk you too? Sheesh.

 
One of these is worse than the rest. An unfortunate woman with a fish on a plate opens the freezer and finds the Bear eyeing her with obvious disdain for her ability in the kitchen. “Cooking fish?” A pregnant pause. “Tricky.” And then goes on to sell her bake-it-in-a-bag fish.

Oh, really? Scale-it-rinse-it-pat-it-dry-oil-it-salt-and-pepper-it, run-it-under-the-grill-for-seven-to-ten-minutes tricky? THAT tricky? Gaaaaaah. Here comes a whole generation of cooks put off cooking by the Bear That Lives In The Freezer.

(Please note: I do occasionally use this product. But I started using it before I saw the damn bear. If I’d had no previous experience of it, I ‘d by now have made a conscious decision never to go near it because of the Bear commercials.)

Enough ranting. Here’s one of a series that has been making me laugh: the commercials for the online insurer MoreThan, featuring “MoreThan Freeman”.