Antikewl Daily » Advertising

You Will: AT&T’s eerily accurate predictions of modern day technologies

Trevor May — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:52:17 +0000

In 1993, AT&T ran a number of commercials in which Tom Selleck (or someone who sounds remarkably like him) predicted the kinds of crazy things we’d later just take for granted in our everyday lives, like in-car GPS to help us navigate our way, pay road tolls without cash, TV movies on demand and so on. (thanks Will!)

If you hadn’t seen these before but thought they seemed a little familiar, it may be because Universal Studios parodied them in their Terminator 2 3D attraction pre-show video.

Martin and Alice Provensen: Creating Tony the Tiger

Trevor May — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:22:42 +0000

Leif Peng has a superb piece over at his blog, “Today’s Inspiration”, on Martin and Alice Provensen’s creation of Tony the Tiger, the long-standing spokes… uh, -tiger for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes (“Frosties” to us over this side of the pond). As it turns out, Tony wasn’t the only animal auditioning for the part…

Tony the Tiger’s birth was noteworthy enough to make it into the news briefs section of the September 1953 issue of Art Director and Studio News. The short piece mentions that Tony was not the only cartoon mascot intended for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. There was also Katy the Kangaroo and Zeke the Zebra, and from doing a little research I discovered that Elmo the Elephant and Newt the Gnu were also under consideration.

Thai ghosts light bulb commercial

Trevor May — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:05:04 +0000

This is one of the most surreal and entertaining things I have seen in a long time! It’s, apparently, a Thai commercial for Sylvania Light Bulbs featuring a bunch of incredibly odd ghosts.

There’s no point me explaining it, just watch! (thanks Harsh!)

Mr T and Bill Shatner Tout World of Warcraft

Trevor May — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:35:12 +0000

Mr T (above) and William Shatner star in commercials for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. They really play. No, really, they do.

Sony ripping off Kozyndan?

Trevor May — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:18:36 +0000

Possibly an enormous co-incidence, but the new animated Play-Doh bunnies commercial for Sony Bravia by ad agency Fallon bears a rather remarkable resemblance to one of artist duo Kozyndan’s earlier pieces of artwork, “What’s next, USA-chan?”

It really is a beautiful commercial, but a huge shame they haven’t credited the very obvious inspiration. Bad Sony. Again.