Grizzly Ass-Dumbs

One thing I must say I missed about doing this blog is that while there is rarely a shortage of commercials to write something about, it's only periodically that you see an ad so ridiculous that you feel like you have to write something about it.  I don't plan on revisiting too many old ads from our fallow period unless they're still airing, but this one... requires comment.

Oh boy.

Dad Bear: "I'm not picking it up.  You pick it up."
Mom Bear: "I'm not picking it up!"
Dad Bear: "Somebody's gotta pick it up!"

Given that these are the Charmin bears, I'm sort of alarmed by what I'm supposed to think is happening in the first five seconds of this commercial, with the forced underneath perspective.  "I can't believe Junior just did a massive shit on the rug!  I mean, we are bears, so it totally figures, but why did we even pay for that animal trainer to teach us all to use human toilets if it wasn't going to take?" 

[cut to reveal it's a pair of underwear on the floor]
Son Bear: "I'll pick it up: they're clean!  Because, my hiney's clean!  Oh yeah, I'm Charmin clean!"

I really don't even know where to begin with this one.  First off, I don't need to hear the word "hiney" in a television commercial or, frankly, anywhere.  I also don't need to see a child character shaking his ass at me, even if he's just an animated bear.  And why is this a SONG?  (And barely a song at that.  I too can start the "hip-hop demo" on a Casio and then awkwardly talk over it, Charmin.)  Also, in a world where it's absolutely fine to casually talk about the condition of children's feces-encrusted asses on television, it's hard to take seriously the idea of parents being terrified to pick up a pair of their child's underwear just because it might have a few skidmarks.  Isn't "getting your kid's shit on you while changing a diaper so many times that you become inured to it" basically a critical component of the parenting experience?  Admittedly, I don't have kids, but that's what I've always been led to believe.

But the kicker to this ad is that it also just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.  You know why?  Because of course that pair of underwear is sparkling clean: THE BEARS DON'T WEAR UNDERWEAR AND THEY NEVER HAVE!!!!!!!!  WHAT THE FUCK????  There was a whole commercial years ago where one bear sees pieces of toilet paper stuck to another bear's ass because THE ASS IS JUST OUT IN THE OPEN BECAUSE BEARS DON'T WEAR CLOTHES, TO INCLUDE UNDERWEAR.

I don't remember if there's never ever been a single piece of Charmin advertising in which any of the bears had underwear on, but in the vast majority of cases, anyway, they simply don't.  No one ELSE in this ad is wearing underwear!  The kid isn't wearing underwear when he fucking Joel Goodsons it into the bathroom!  Maybe the parents were so horrified by the idea of picking up the underwear not because they thought it was going to be full of skidmarks but because they had literally never seen this kind of object before, and were confused and scared about how it got into their house.  They actually never had to change their kid's diapers because he's a FUCKING BEAR and never wore diapers.  He just shit in the woods, like bears do.  This bear family probably lived in the woods until just a couple years ago, when they took over one of those empty houses in the Vegas suburbs or whatever.  Kind of remarkable that using toilet paper was the first hallmark of the bears adopting human customs before putting on clothes, but then it's gotta be hard to find briefs that are going to fit a grizzly's hindquarters.  Probably had to special order those things.

I'm not even going to deal with the rest of this ad in which the kid keeps "singing" and the dad starts dancing, yet more flagrant editorializing of how great a ridiculously terrible "song" is.  But my word.  Sure, it's ridiculous to treat the lore of Charmin commercials seriously, but did nobody really think it mattered if they made an ad revolving around the use of an item that the characters in the ad don't use?