Friday, November 22, 2013

Ho, ho, what the hell?

I was…I don’t know, I was doing something the other day, and I had the TV on. As usual, unless it’s a foreign film or something that actually engages my interest (or something so gobsmackingly bad that I’m nailed in place, like the Father Brown series currently running on PBS), I wasn’t really paying attention.

Look, the TV for me is basically a talking lamp. It’s background noise for doing other things.

Anyhow, there I was, doing whatever it was, and I heard some Christmas song being  done entirely by little bells. So I glanced up, thinking it was the Hershey’s Kisses “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” commercial—you know, the one where the chocolate doing the “yeeeeaaarr!” note kind of goes bananas.


But no. It was not. It was a line of boxer-shorted guys shaking their stuff just like the kisses did. Only to “Jingle Bells”. And it ends with the guy on “sleigh” doing essentially what that Kiss does; with, so to speak, a flourish. Play it again, you’ll see what I mean.


Imagine my surprise—and my gobsmacking paralysis to see this: I mean, really—I kind of stood there, mouth agape, eyes blinking in disbelief. It was a huge change from my expectation of cheap little chocs—to cheap little…oh, never mind.

Then I realized it’s for Kmart. And not yo mama’s Kmart, apparently.

(Although, in fairness, when I went to look up the video, I couldn’t remember what the commercial was for—store, shorts, Chippendales, what. Which means it’s not the best possible ad—you’re supposed to lock into the product being sold. Or maybe it just means that I’m not a Kmart customer and there’s nothing that’s going to change that.)

And it’s generated some controversy, as you might imagine.

For me, the bells in a commercial is always going to mean Hershey’s kisses doing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, even though I don’t buy them or eat them. But I’m going to be a lot more careful when I look up the next time I hear those bells.

And it’ll be interesting to follow Kmart’s sales performance this season. And other, you know, performances.





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