"What the blinking flip is that": Channel 4 adverts, Christmas 1994

Those nuns continue to run, and we start the second and last commercial break within the film with another Bosch film starring the hand of the Incredible Hulk. THIS TIME HULK ADVERTISE SANDER. EXCELLENCE STILL COME AS STANDARD. BOSCH STRONGEST THERE IS! BUY FOR HUSBAND OR HULK SMASH!

Next, there's a highly sinister commercial for Microsoft, anticipating the launch of Windows 95 featuring random shots of adorable children and wrinkled ancient Asians for no reason at all except to induce some kind of vaguely atavistic response in the viewer. That's you. Where do you want to go today? WHERE WE WANT YOU TO GO.

Next, because it's Christmas, it's Milk Tray, and an explicitly symbolic entry into the long-running series of "berk does stupidly dangerous things in order to deliver box of chocolates to hot chick" films. In this one, he blatantly cheats at chess for the sake of shooting his wad (of chocolate) at the White Queen. Then he just runs off, leaving the advert to end with neither slogan nor packshot. Wouldn't happen now, because your Sky+ impossible-o-vision boxes, with their ability to skip the adverts for you, have forced advertisers to use massive glowing words and logos and packshots that can be seen on fast-forward, albeit only for a nanosecond. And thus Max Headroom turns out to have been a prophet.

Next is that French girl in the tight red dress and her slightly creepy relationship with what I have to assume is her son. Then we return to Existentialist Party Game Hell for the full version of that advert from the previous episode in which Michael Fenton Stevens jigs around like a prick.

Then a witty advert that's not for a suncream, because why would they advertise suncream in December, but looks absolutely indistinguishable from your average Ambre Solaire commercial of the time, until someone - usually a subsequently famous attractive woman - suddenly breaks the fourth wall in a broad Mancunian accent. In this case, it's Sarah Parish. Boddingtons - it's a bitter - did a bunch of these, the most famous involving a runner in the desert looking for all the world like he's advertising Right Guard until Melanie Sykes shows up with an ice-cream van. The voiceover here adds to the authenticity, because his sultry, vaguely Cadellish tones were the default for those suntan adverts. This was the height of Boddingtons' powers, as "The Cream of Manchester". In 1998, the campaign was replaced by a bloody creepy set of animations about a cow, with a man's voice and udders, and his hot northern girlfriend, which were so bloody confusing and unsettling the brand never recovered. It's not even made in Manchester anymore. And if none of this interests you, there's a naked tit to look at.

Next, one of those Dove vox-pop commercials, this time featuring a Northern Irish woman and a tacked-on Christmas-related bit. Finally, a Malibu advert in which Mark Benson is magically transformed into a cool black man. I don't even.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Christmas
• Commercial
• Commercial Broadcasting
• Advertising
• Commercials
• Television Advertisement
• Channel 4

[singinglawnchair]

Also why UK TV is superior - visible sideboobs.

[singinglawnchair]

Wow, I remember those keyboards shown at 0:49! Occasionally I'll see one at the local thrift store that's dirty, yellowed and kind of sticky.

[uhegbu]

The Boddingtons one is a spoof of those lotion adverts such as Ambre Solaire.

[docmagnus88]

I don't know know if I could buy soap from someone so terribly earnest