More on Adventureland

After I posted that video yesterday, I ended up watching it a couple more times and noticed some things that I hadn't really noticed the first time.

First of all, the music is absolutely atrocious. Even for a jingle, which everyone knows is supposed to be silly and just a little annoying, it sucked. The melody was pretty much the least catchy tune I've ever heard and the lyric phrasing was even worse. I mean, the end of the first phrase is a drop of a major sixth down to the root. blech. You really couldn't have left it at 5, or even gone down to 4? What about "the discovery never seems to stop?" Do you think you could have done more than just alternated back and forth between 3 and 5? I'm not even gonna talk about the end of the song, other than to mention the fact that even the mixing was bad, as I can't make out half the words.

On a completely different note, I approve of their choice of cat. In the dog world, food commercials are dominated by yellow labrador retriever puppies, west highland terriers, and other exceptionally cute pure-bred dogs. Never would one expect to see a mutt, even an especially handsome one. That seems to not be the case with cats. Cat breeds do exist and are maintained just as aggressively as dog breeds, but for some reason the general public seems to be far more accepting of non-pedigreed cats. The cat in this commercial is a domestic shorthaired (read: mutt) which seems to be a very subtle way of encouraging adoption rather than buying from a breeder, which is a position I respect. Compare this to Fancy Feast, for example, which, while also owned by Purina, uses a purebred white Persian in their commercials. (Note: though the Fancy Feast cat is preportedly a Persian, I suspect they may actually use a Persian crossed with a longer faced cat, such that their spokescat looks somewhat less like it got hit in the face with a shovel. Not only is the snout more elongate, but the eyes are also much more almond shaped, rather than totally round, as in a true Persian. Also, the Persian breed standard only allows for blue or copper eyes with a white coat, while these eyes are clearly green.)

What's also interesting about the casting, other than the choice of a mixed breed cat, was the choice of a classic tabby coat pattern. Despite the name, a "classic" tabby pattern is quite a bit less common than a mackerel tabby pattern. Unlike the mackerel tabby, which has a series of vertical color stripes down the side of the cat, the classic has that trippy swirly bullseye pattern, which may have done deliberately to highlight the hallucinogenic nature of the commercial as a whole.