Listen, we’re friends, OK? And if you like the Charmin ads featuring the adorable bears running around, picking clingy pieces of TP off each others’ asses, that’s fine. Just don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know. I don’t want that information to color our relationship. Let’s just agree to disagree at the outset.
Leah will tell you: I talk back to the TV. A lot. And especially at ads. It makes me feel like I’m not just a passive consumer being force fed the propaganda on these products, like I’m going down swinging. And the ad I hate more than any other right now — indeed, more even than BK’s insanely stupid and offensive Spongebob Sqaure Butts ad from last year — is the current Charmin ad with the Dingleberry Bears. My hatred is easy to define: I resist, firstly, that Charmin is using bears to sell toilet paper. Even, and especially, cartoon bears. Secondly, I’m incensed that the makers of Charmin don’t follow through on the comedic promise inherent in their script and have the afflicted bear pick up a “Charmin rabbit” to wipe its ass with. Do not leave that card on the table. Lastly, who is the audience? I mean, obviously, people who’re using TP that clings to their butt after wiping. I get that. But (sorry) how are those people identified? If someone has seriously been lamenting how much toilet paper sticks to his butt, surely he’s not going to have an epiphany upon seeing this ad and realize that Charmin is the answer to all his troubles? I just hate those bears, and I hate that Charmin makes me hate them. ESPECIALLY when, at the end of the commercial, there’s a short ad-on plug for a moisturized wipe that’ll really solve your problem. Why not just advertise that product at the start?
Either life is too short for this kind of inane obsession, or this kind of inane obsession is what life is all about. I’ll think on it….