Weird British Advertisements 3

It's back again! And this time, it's even weirder!

[@LunarPurin]

0:07 I saw this ad as a kid at like... 1 AM on BBC 3 with the flu and I was convinced until I saw it again it was just a fever dream and it never happened.

[@iansweeney9953]

That FreeServe commercial might come back to haunt me

[@tersethewurse2952]

Christmas Ads are very common in the UK, the one at the end is just one of hundreds of similar advertisements. John Lewis was actually one of the pioneers for these types of commercials they got a few weird one under their belt

[@CinnamonGrrlErin1]

That Tango one is like a Benny Hill skit, all it needs is the music played over it.

[@ExtremeWreck]

Ahhh yes, Walkers, or as we Americans call them... Lays!!!

[@joshhacker8503]

Yikes! Some of these are just bizarre!

[@snbsixteen6stars201]

Nescafe commercial looks atleast aestaticly Nice with the clocks The green blues and laser holograms in yellow

[@calebpribyl5152]

Also that tango commercial reminds me of those slim Jim commercials!

[@SuperCaleb360]

The Wario World music is so fitting at 9:00

[@klingoncowboy4]

Watching American reviews is fascinating as they all reveal a buzzard revulsion towards nudity lol

[@nathanblevins9870]

I like the looney tunes commercial Also this is the only time we see if Lola.

[@MrDannyDetail]

The Nescafe ad was a tie-in with a TV show called Banzai, and the ad features a character from that show, as well as using the frenetic noisy aesthetic of the show. It didn't really occur to me that without context it would seem racist. In the Tango ad the point is he is doing something far fetched (with Tango ads being generally associated with far-fetched acts) as purely a means to an end (dumping his girlfriend), but is then more than surprised when the father-in-law reciprocates his knee rubbing, which scuppers his plan. I honestly think most people in the UK would have just giggled at the Freeserve ad, which I presume would only have been shown in later slots, and not, for example, in the middle of kids shows. The only real purpose of an ad is to lodge the name of the product or service into your mind, which that ad does indeed do by being a bit provacative. The Sainsburys ad (and Sainsbury's aren't famous for them as such really) on the other hand is a poor imitation of the ones that actually are famous, the John Lewis ads, and as such it does literally nothing to differentiate itself from John Lewis, meaning it actually does the opposite of an ad by not ensuring we know exactly which brand it is for and that we then keep that specific brand name in our memory afterwards. I bet you there were many conversations in the UK that xmas where people were under the misapprehension that specific ad was a John Lewis ad. And that cereal wasn't a 'Shrek cereal' as such, in that the cinnamon grahams and golden grahams in the box were, I think, completely unchanged during that time, and it was just a superficial tie-in with the film, possibly with Shrek free gifts in the box or tokens to get a ticket for the movie or something like that. A few months later there was probably a completely different franchise or characters on the box, and completely different free gifts based on them. Given that it was a short-term tie-in it makes sense that they only licence a very few short clips from the original movie, and not comission any new animation for the ads, but yeah I guess they could have worked the clips into the script better.

[@Montythegold]

My favorite british advert is the robinsons juice one

[@RikuDoesStuffs]

Calling Sainsbury's adverts over the top?! Dude, check out John Lewis Christmas adverts, they go all out!

[@dr.insaneoiv]

uhh... I think... I can understand the Free Serve ad... A: Internet p*rn was bl*wing up. 2: If not the first, I think they predicted p*rn online. and/or D: a senior citizen fetish. I could be 100% wrong, though.

[@calebpribyl5152]

Oh cool you’re gonna talk about the graham brothers!

[@Brianna-eo8nu]

I would say that green lighting that mildly racist Nescafé ad is probably the worst thing Nestle has ever done... ...but then I’d be lying, wouldn’t I? :)

[@tiffany-chan1235]

Oh my god....I remember the Looney tunes ad from back in the day.

[@brianmerrett1893]

11. 🥔Walkers 12. 🥣Golden and Cinnamon Grahams 13. ☕Nescafé 14. 🍊Tango (2) 15. 📡Free serve 16. 🛒Sainsburys

[@mightyfilm]

I could easily tell the second it started that Nescafe ad was supposed to be what Western Audiences think of Japanese commercials, based on the ones they show (or used to anyway) on those lame "World's Weirdest Commercials" type shows. You see, they ONLY pick the wacky ones. In my experience looking at them through YT, they're either surprisingly tame or weird for other reasons. Like Tom and Jerry advertising refrigerators where they're just there and don't really do much but appear and dance around for 2 seconds. Or The Flintstones shilling for a home loan office, where the commercials get increasingly poorly drawn and animated. My personal favorite, that's unfortunately lost to copyright take down of the channel that hosted it, a Goodwill commercial where two white American looking guys rhythmically yell at each other in flawless Japanese. Like they're giving a sports chant or something.