A commercial has been on Repeat in my head for weeks now. I’m not sure if it’s because the candy it advertised has been sadly discontinued — a tragedy we all had to deal with at the time — or because the spot was so stupidly watchable.
The ad hocks a candy called Bonkers , which, as you’ll see if you venture to play this wonderful slice of Saturday-morning, sunshine-coming-in-through-the-cracks-in-the-blinds bliss, has an extra-fruity center, better than the bottom of the yogurt container BY FAR.
This commercial is creepy:
a) Because GIGANTIC pieces of fruit creepier than the Kool-Aid guy fall from the sky; if that really happened, lives would be lost, would they not? This freaked me out as a kid …
b) (I should have started with this) Because an old lady is narrating the whole thing, and she’s totally off her fucking rocker. She delights in the near-psychedelic size of the pieces of fruit being dropped on unsuspecting victims, and she has this weird old-lady accent I can’t put my finger on, too … Anyone who would cast this lady in a commercial is a sick, sick person …
c) Because the victims of the fruit droppings all seem so giddy, so uncontrollably happy it all starts to take on a surrealistic slant, like maybe Bonkers candy contains some super-addictive future-drug that afflicts people like that crazy gas did the town of Gotham in the original Batman (Michael Keaton was sexy, no?) … Again, broadcasting content such as this to primarily young audiences is not only irresponsible but flat-out WRONG.
And that’s precisely why I find it fascinating. What do you think? I feel I can blame a lot of my problems on cartoon commercials of the ’80s, so stay tuned for plenty more psychoanalytical coverage of this brand — pun intended — of media artifact.
