Dairy Queen Insanity

Have you seen it yet? You must have. That Dairy Queen commercial. The one where the guy on the airplane puts his Blizzard down while he tries to load his bag into the overhead compartment. The bald guy in the seat next to our hero sees his opportunity and begins furiously eating his ice cream. It’s when our hero sees the guy eating his treat and catches him red-handed that the magic happens. The dude doesn’t stop but proceeds to eat faster. Awesome. Pure genius. Keep eating, because they can’t get it back once it’s in your mouth.
The owner gets mad and tries to stop him but actually manages to dump his suitcase on some poor woman, effectively amping up the tension even more. Still, the goofy ice cream crook scoops away with abandon until our beleaguered hero finally collapses into a mess of his own sprawling luggage. Brilliant. It tells me everything I need to know. That Blizzard is so darn good that I would get into a fistfight on a commercial airliner to protect it, while at the same time some other schmuck would risk a social stigma and a potential punch in the face to eat as much Blizzard as he could before being stopped. This spot is hilarious.
Check out the pure anger and desperation on the face of our hero as he falls to the floor for the last time, trying in vain to stop the treat bandit from eating his Blizzard. DeNiro never performed with that much heart or commitment. Bravo. I love it.
Now put that up beside the Burger King ad for BK Stackers aka giant hamburgers with meat piled ridiculously high. What is the deal with this ad? I don’t get it. The burgers are so big that what? People look small beside them? No, these are little people. Okay, they look big next to little people. No, these are very, very little people. Okay, but is it funny? Well, the little people drop the patties and make messes and their boss gets angry and yells and then he gets hurt…….but am I laughing at them or with them? Total confusion on my part. I don’t know what to think.
Either way I am uncomfortable watching this ad. It may sound PC but what is actually funny about it? If the humour is seeing little people run around then that’s no good. It seems kind of offensive. If it is the idea of a “stackers union” I still don’t get it. In fact, this “union” does such poor work in the ad that any real life union folks might want to file their own grievance against the company for airing it. Why is Burger King doing this? I know that recently they embarked on a sort of weird humour motif (see past ads featuring the freakishly plastic, shiny and always smiling Burger King waking up in strange beds or riding bikes with random people while feeding them) but this stacker thing is clueless. Granted, it is more inspired effort-wise than that horrible KFC ad where the guy comes home, kisses his wife and then says “spicy” to no one in particular before grabbing some chicken. Am I not hip enough to get these? How does this make me want to buy KFC or BK? Answer: They don’t. So get up right now and go to the nearest Dairy Queen and buy a Blizzard and anything else they have on the menu. Support good advertising. It’s the only way to make sure they continue to give us their very best sales pitch. If we’re going to get fat on their food anyway I think we deserve it.

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