There are many things I like about living in the UK. Insanely clever humour, aimed in all directions, with much “friendly fire”, probably comes very near the top. But also, compared with my home country, the TV ads are, in the main, quite watchable, and often highly entertaining. I am not sure how much of the product I subsequently remember the names of, but I suppose the advertiser’s psychologists must know a thing or two.
Back home they once screened a Tyson fight. The fight was over in about a couple of minutes, but the 3 hour reserved slot was otherwise completely filled with the most boring ads and " few words from our sponsors" imaginable. How very lucky you UK commercial viewers are.
So tonight they screened the latest Tango ad in the Uk. They added Britwit to the Sony Bravo TV campaign, and no doubt with Sony’s full agreement ( although I do hope not) they parodied it with fruit in a terraced Swansea street, complete with frog. I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the spoof “Swansea Residents Association Web Site” complete with traumatised frog story. More Brits being idiots in their finest tradition. Excellent.
I find it hard to believe they would just throw fruit down the street and at peoples cars and windows without letting anyone know or cleaning it up.
Edit: Oh and Tango is not sold in the US. A fact that only makes me want to taste the sweet sweet apple-goodness again. Theres no similar product over here to my knowledge.
Edit again: I did read your post, but apparently I missed all apearances of the word “spoof”
Hahaha, that’s brilliant. I love the Sony ad, and this one is just as good. The bit where the orange goes flying through the window made me laugh out loud.
I generally hate adverts, even though there are a few good ones out at the moment (Citroen, Honda, Guinness), most of them still make me want to punch the TV screen. Especially that bl**dy Frosties one with the annoying kid singing ‘it’s gonna taste great’ over and over again. Grrr.
What a fantastic advert!
I thought the whole thing was beautiful! Who’s the music by?
I too laughed out loud as the orange went through the window.
Having lived in Swansea for the last 15 years, I’m pretty sure I know the street that was filmed on. Swansea is full of ridiculously steep hills, many of them cobbled, like bleedin’ Hovis adverts! http://www.tramways.freeserve.co.uk/Tramframe.htm?http://www.tramways.freeserve.co.uk/Cards/Postc40.htm
Once (and only once) I cycled up here on my mountain bike. When I got to the top I needed oxygen and thought I was going to vomit.
The picture does not do the incline justice!
They filmed Twin Town on this hill too. We watched them setting up the car chase scene and tried to sidle into shot, but it didn’t work.
Bah!
Alas, the tram lines have long gone.
The bleedin’ cobblestones are still there though.
A couple of years ago we had a final stage of the Tour of Britain bike race finish in Swansea, and the last few miles of the track had a loop which included this hill.
After watching these guys climb this hill four or five times after doing about a hundred miles of racing, let me tell you I had a new found respect for roadies.
And just one more co-inky-dink.
My first car was a Morris Minor, just like the one that’s parked on the hill.
Just one more reason to like this advert!
(Did you know that Morris Minors came with a crank, so if the battery was flat, you could actually crank start it? Fabulous!)
Spoke to the neighbours, and did a little web research on trams. Wow: trams used to run up and down my road up until 1951. I mean real trams, not these modern things they have in Manchester. One of the old trams from my town is still in use in Blackpool: Picture:
And pictures of trams, some actually on my road. With cobbles!
But the thing that astonished me is that I was told the trams used to climb, on standard rail type track, the hill near to the Plaza theatre, which is about as steep as that Swansea hill. If old fashioned trams can get up slopes like that, without assistance from chains, why do the railways bleat about a few leaves on their lines?
Cider doesn’t have to be sparkling… at least in the UK.
Plenty of ciders from small brewers are not sparkling. These also tend to be drier than commercial ciders in my experience. Nice stuff, though. However these tend to be highly alcoholic and drunk only by the strange people who also like Real Ale - for instance, unicyclists.
I have to confess that cider, when I knew nothing about it, once sneaked up on me and got me far more drunk than I had intended. It just seemed to taste nice at the time.
But it is tasty.
