Commercial Break

This commercial irritates me to no end. It starts with fake thank-you letters to "Grandma" and segues to scenes of squeaky clean kids have abnormal amounts of "fun" with these over-sized stuffed animals.

I especially dislike the pandering voice-overs, allegedly by the precocious little kids. To me, they sound more like adults trying to sound like little kids.

Worst of all is the constant, "I love you Grandma", "Buy me this Grandma", "This is the best gift ever Grandma". What is this with all of the "Grandmas"? The whole subtext seems to be, "Buy me this and I'll love you, Grandma", or conversely, " Don't buy me this, Grandma, and risk me not loving you. Go ahead. Your choice."



Lately this commercial has been followed a different one- one for high speed internet. In this other commercial, two adolescent siblings are sitting in the back seat of a car. Dad's up front telling them that he knows visiting Grandma is about the most boring thing in the whole wide world, but for them to try not to kill themselves- it'll only be for a couple of hours.

But when the kids show up at Grandma’s door- good news! Turns out Grandma now has high speed internet! Finally, something to do! By the end of the commercial, the kids are begging Dad to let them stay over at Grandma's- presumably so they can surf the web, watch videos, and oh yeah, maybe talk to Grandma- that is, after she fixes them something to eat.

At what point did pandering to needy grandmas with poor self- images become identified as a profitable demographic? Do Grandmas really buy into this crap? Do they sit around at home wondering how they can be exploited?

And now that I think of it, where are the Grandpas? What the heck is going on here??