Irritation May Work, but it's Still Irritating!

There are certain major advertisers’ commercials that drive me completely insane.

I am so sick of hearing the Blue Bell Ice Cream commercials. Yes, their ice cream is good, but no, I simply want to gag when I hear the ads.

It’s a man, with a pathetically syrupy voice, singing:

I remember our old country home
Clean fresh air and flowers
Growing in the field
Along the path
Beside our swimmin’ hole
And mama hollerin’ thu [through] the screen,
“Would yew kids like some homemade ice cream?”
That was such a simple time and place.
Blue Bell tastes just like the good ol’ days.

Blecccch! I’m not diabetic but this makes me absolutely crave insulin.

Aside from the sappy voice, the “country” accent of the singer, the “good ol’ days” were nothing of the sort. It might be more true-to-life if it went something more like this:

I remember our drafty country house
Getting up too frickin’ early
To milk the cows
And walk to school
Uphill in snow both ways
And mama hollerin’ at my pop
“You worthless drunk, keep beating me, I’ll call the cop.”
We ate our cheese with help from Uncle Sam
It’s amazing I turned out as good as I now am.

The “good ol’ days sucked.”

One of my favorite books is The Good Old Days — They Were Terrible! by Otto Bettmann, who documents how nostalgia is a wicked mistress.

This one even outranks the previous heavyweight champion of radio commercial advertising, “rich chocolate” Ovaltine… that lovely product made of sugar, malt extract, cocoa and whey, whatever the frick whey is (It sounds nasty, and all I really know is that it’s something Miss Muffet ate on her tuffet, while watching for spiders. She also ate “curds,” which is the only thing I can think of that sounds even less appetizing than “whey”).

In these irritation-fests known as commercials, not only is the dialog stilted, Nestle’s Quick (“Nesquick”) almost always trashed for being not as good for you, but worst of all: the kids (and sometimes the friggen adults) at the end shout in annoying unison, “more ovaltine, please!”

If you’re not familiar with it, (a) you’re lucky, and (b), I have found an example, so you can have some torture: here, on You Tube is actually a TV commercial from years gone by, but the content of the commercials is largely similar — and the annoyance factor at the end is unmistakable.

“More ovaltine, please!?!?” Oh, puhleez!