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September 22, 2005:
When a company endorses its product with a television ad, it's nothing unusual. Some are effective, others are not. Some provide images and sounds that stay with you for weeks, months -- even a lifetime. It's why I still know that Jimmy is giving the kids a "cheese wit nuttin," and why I can't say "Lite Brite" without saying "Lite Brite" again in a slower, softer tone. Certainly the most memorable ads, for me at least, are the ones that have sex with the holiday spirit and redecorate for the appropriate season. I can rattle off at least five dozen Christmas-themed commercials from the past twenty years that fill my heart with gladness and take away all my sadness just by thinking about them. It's the same with Halloween ads, but because they've appeared in such fewer numbers, each and every spooky television commercial counts that much more.
When it comes to the holidays, I'm obsessed. Christmas and Halloween, Halloween and Christmas. I survive the spring and summer only with clear knowledge that the next Halloween and Christmas seasons will only come to those who survive them. Why these two particular holidays? Lots of reasons, but perhaps the foremost involves a general feeling of the seasons being beyond you, touching someone else at the same moment they're touching you. I never have more in common with the people around me, and the people not around me, as I do during the holidays. If you're a longtime reader and you're questioning this theory, answer this question: Of all the calendar months, which two make you like me the best? See?
That's part of the reason I enjoy the many holiday specials of network television so much. I love them for being awesome, yes, but I also love the fact that a zillion other people are loving It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown at the same exact time. It's this rare sense of ultimate camaraderie and doing exactly what I should be doing at that precise moment in time. It works a little differently with the holiday commercials, but generally, it's the same kind of satisfaction.
Because fuck, I love it when I look across the street and see foam tombstones lining the neighbor's front lawn. It means they understand. And if the Pillsbury Doughboy turns up on television with bat-shaped sugar cookies, that means he understands it too.
I'm pretty sure the commercial we're featuring today comes from the very early `90s, but it's conceivable that it was repurposed after a late `80s run. Does it matter? No, I was a kid under either set of circumstances, and being a kid gives you free reign to devote every second of your day to worshipping the holiday season.
The ad kicks off ambiguously, taking exactly half the time of its thirty-second duration to even name the product being promoted. At the start, it's just some creepy music over panning shots of a haunted castle, as we work our way through its doors and hallways from a first-person view. This was the coolest thing ever. You're watching whatever you're watching, and the last thing you expect during the commercial break is a ghoulish tour through Castle Dracula. It meant so many good things. It meant that the Halloween season was officially on and it meant that your decision to wait until the following commercial break to take a piss was worth the groin pain. Ominous castles don't receive nearly enough respect for what they've brought to the Halloween season. Think about it -- the best decorated homes you've ever seen are probably the ones that were made to look the most like ominous castles.
It plays out wonderfully -- for first time viewers, it comes off as legitimately spooky, like it's going to lead up to something genuinely terrifying. For people who'd seen the commercial a hundred times, it was a reminder that they were about to once again lose life's troubles in a sea of battery-powered vampires. Yes, this was a Duracell ad. Starring Count Duracula.
I fell in love when I saw Count Duracula. Young enough to hold out hope that the "toy" would somehow be available in stores, it was a dark and stormy damn night when reality hit me in the face with rocks and yelled otherwise. No, Count Duracula was never for sale. Count Duracula never will be for sale. The thought of that still pains me today. There have been plenty of animatronic Dracula statues, and yes, some of them could maybe even fly. But none have ever looked this good. None have invited me to the creepiest corners of the universe with such a strong bid. I distinctly, or close to distinctly remember keeping an eye open at every toy and department store I tagged along on a visit to, refusing to let go of the dream that somehow, someway, I'd have that battery-powered bloodsucking asshole flying around my bedroom and sleeping inside an emptied Lego pail.
As Duracula rises from his real bed, that one that's a coffin and not my Lego pail, the voice-over kicks in with various promises about Duracell batteries' long life. There's some vague reference to the long lives of vampires to make the visuals match the stupid battery promo on some arguable level, but the real deal was that it was October and people were too fixated on Dracula to pay attention to Duracell. Somehow, these two powerhouses needed to be combined.
Look, forget the batteries. We're talking about ambiance. We're talking about a thirty-second spot motivating enough to make everyone who sat through it get an irresistible urge to make little ghost ornaments out of Kleenex tissues. With terrific shots of Duracula's shadow to equally terrific shots of Duracula doing performing his money pose, seeing this was as good as Frankenstein popping his face through your window and screaming "IT'S THE HALLOWEEN SEASON SO GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!" What's cool is that Frankenstein almost never says shit that long. Course, Duracell couldn't spend all of this money on spooky ambiance alone -- somehow, they had to integrate a product shot. Annnnd how...
Because I'm laboring over every second of the ad, it's easy to see where things were headed. When you actually watch the commercial, everything happens too fast for you to solve the world's simplest puzzle and realize that Duracula was going to reveal a big ass battery shoved in some part of his monstrous figure. When he finally does it, you almost cheer aloud before catching yourself and realizing how stupid it would've looked. Yeah, that Energizer Bunny stuff...it worked. Fun campaign that never got old no matter how much it kept going and going and not ever stopping with the going. I say this, but I say this knowing that if someone pit that rabbit against Duracula in a televised wrestling match, the vampire would be downing pints of hare blood quicker than I could hook up the VCR to record it.
And then the freakin' thing smoke-morphs into a bat and takes off. As I said, Halloween commercials are fewer and farer between than most other holidays. They're by no means nonexistent, but they're not a guarantee. When you see them, you feel warm and tingly, but also a little bit lucky. You know every jack shit furniture store's gonna have Santa Claus telling you about couches in December, but you can never predict when the horrors of Halloween will make a side trip to Advertising Island before landing at their final destination of Human Soul Restaurant. Finally, an excuse to break out my new catchphrase: "Potluck prize!"
Though largely unmemorable, battery commercials are played very, very often. In this case, it worked to our supreme advantage. Duracula was on TV all the friggin' time. You couldn't escape him. It got to the point where you could accurately "call" the Duracula commercial's appearances, in part because of intuition, but mostly because 95% of that particular October's allotted time for television commercials went to Duracula.
Click here to download the commercial in WMV format, and tell me you're not 100% more inclined to spend tomorrow night gluing button eyes to a bunch of gourds.
- Matt (9/22/05)
One year ago on the Halloween Countdown:
Aliens -- The Final Battle!
Two years ago on the Halloween Countdown:
Freaky Froot Loops!
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