Commercial Dexterity

There’s a commercial I see every once in a while which features a paper-cutting board. You know, one of those ones where you put the paper onto the board and then slice it with the little roller thing. Assuming the paper is aligned correctly on the board, the cut will be a perfect 90 degrees. Pretty much all the schools have them nowadays, rather than the ‘pirate specials’ where instead of the roller thing, there was an actual blade you guillotined the paper with (and, if you weren’t paying attention, cut your hand off as well).

NOTE: If you happen to remember the ‘pirate specials,’ did you ever heft one of those blades when it wasn’t attached to the board? Those things were murderous! If there had ever been a zombie attack at my high school, I would have grabbed one and started looking for a cheerleader to save.

Anyway, the commercial in question has a line like ‘tired of being unable to cut a straight line?’ and shows a pair of hands with scissors cutting a piece of paper. However, instead of cutting a marginally crooked like (like most of us would), the person attached to the hands apparently had an epileptic fit and just massacred the paper.

This is an example of ‘Commercial Dexterity,’ where an otherwise mundane task is demonstrated in the most ludicrously ham-handed fashion possible. There’s another one for a vegetable peeler, where the hands use a butcher knife to carve huge sections out of a potato (and yet, don’t cut themselves). I would be willing to bet a pirate with a blunt cutlass and a wooden leg on deck during a hurricane could peel a potato better than the hands did.

I’m waiting for a commercial where a pair of hands attempts to mop a floor ‘the old-fashioned’ way and the mop actually explodes, setting the house on fire. Which, frankly, would be a pretty cool commercial.

It just amuses me that the commercial people think that they need that to sell their product. Y’know, if it’s a good product and it works, just show us that!

Cheers,
-Jason