also 9:00 LUM-CHAN SIGHTING!!

It's impossible to know how much money was made in the 80s by nerds asking illustrators to draw Lum for them in artist's alleys in conventions across the USA.

Are there, like, "normal" commercials in Japan? Like here in the US there's the high budget attempts at humor or weirdness, but if you're watching local daytime TV you have ads for ITT Tech and local car insurance companies and such that are just really boring.

Yeah. When I lived there the "local station" Tele-Tama would show a bunch of mundane commercials for stuff like a Chinese restaurant or a 2nd hand shop.

I also remember during the Madoka Magica finale, a relatively "normal" commercial for some documentary on tequilia distilleries was a gag for the people watching it live.

When I was there it was August of 1995, so the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima Nagasaki bombings. Our homestays had the TV on during dinner but every channel was doing documentaries commercial free. It was sobering and awkward for a 13 year-old me.

Yeah really. I don't watch TV but since the Badgers are in the final four I've been watching a lot of TBS at bars lately. It seems like they're trying to be more like Japanese commercials in terms of weirdness (like Fatal Farm's Old Spice campaign) but it never works and feels forced. Seems like Weiden Kennedy and such should just purge everybody and either hire these ad wizards, or recruit Americans who enjoy these commercials and would gladly sit through 12 minutes of being told to buy shit. AKA hire 99% of poetv.

I disagree, I think these are way, way superior to our advertising. They just strike me as a lot more fun.

The only ones I see that are about the same are the phone app game commercials (you know, the ones you have to sit through if you don't pay for a game). The American ones that attempt it are usually done via celebrity (like the Gary Busey Amazon commercial) or every sports commercial because it's funny to see Shaq cry about something (once again, a lot of March Madness for me) but never just zaniness like these. Also, I guess I never thought about it, but e-books must all be right swipes. Tres interessant.

totally meant above comment to be a reply to IZ

You can tell the Geico people have a good sense of humor, and probably are inspired by a lot of the same things that we like to watch. For example, the Tazmanian Devil one where he downs an energy drink and destroys the set is pretty much that sketch on Rick and Morty with the fake doors: a new commercial begins in a china shop or you think it's a new commercial but nope, Taz goes and smashes up that set too. It's genuinely clever, even though it's not going to sway my opinion on what car insurance to get, if I had a car. As for celebrities, it seems like the 80s and 90s were full of celebrity endorsements in the states, and then sometime in the '00s they went for a more "viral" man/woman on the street aesthetic: it's not Cindy Crawford eating that sandwich, it's the guy who works down the hall from you and never says much but you assume he does all sorts of designer drugs after work, drugs you've never even heard of yet. And celebrities are sort of in there to be ironic now, like Rob Lowe, Samuel L Jackson (don't get me wrong, I like him but why would I want to buy car insurance from him?) Gary Busey.. it's like "hey this is me doing normal people things and being zany about it" rather than the straight-laced days of old. The only one that seemed genuinely old-school like that was Matthew McCantspellhislastname's Lincoln ads, which were immediately launched a thousand parodies.

I meant "good weird" but perhaps surreal is a better term so I'm just gonna go ahead and change the title to that.