B'ings: Bounty Paper Towel Commercials

 

            Hey, everyone! You’re reading From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin, and I am Tim Cubbin. Of course this is a B’ing of mine. If you don’t know what a “B’ing” is, it’s a semi-polite way of saying a complaint. Yeah, it’s that word.

            Anyway, if you’re reading this, you’re interested in seeing what my complaint of the Bounty paper towel commercials. If you’re not, I don’t know why you’re here, but please stay anyway. Okay, so let’s get to the main point. In the Bounty commercials, there’s a scenario involving a few people. Somehow, someone is doing something and someone else knocks a drink over that threatens a device that is susceptible to this liquid. Then as the drink comes closer to the item, the focus goes into slowmo and the people scream “No!” in a dragged out cry. Then the paper towel appears out of nowhere and the device is saved from certain destruction.

            Alright, I’ll break them down for those who haven’t seen these commercials. The relationships between the characters is never confirmed, so for every time I mention the connections to the characters, I’ll use the word “potential.”

            A girl is on her laptop. Her potential sister is playing a game dressed up as a pirate. Her potential father is holding a drink. The potential sister has some toy sword and thrusts it at the potential father’s backside, causing the potential father to lose control of his glass of drink. The drink flies out of his hand and slides across the table towards the girl’s laptop. The girl screams “No!” to which the father echoes her cry. Suddenly, a paper towel appears and absorbs the liquid before it destroys the laptop. Then the potential father and potential sister go about playing pirate, which the girl seems to enjoy. Okay, now my complaint. As the drink slides across the table towards the laptop, the girl recoils. Simple solution: grab the laptop and pull it off the table, and the laptop is saved. And where did the paper towel that magically saves the laptop come from? Okay, that last line comes up to every description, so I’ll try to make this the only time I use this sentence.

            Next example. A little boy is playing with knockoff Legos (because Bounty did not get the permission to use actual Legos). The potential father has made a green drink (which most likely is a veggie or fruit drink which is healthy for you, which I would never drink myself because if a drink is green and thick, I really do not even want to look at, but that’s just in my mind) for the potential mother. The potential mother is wearing a white suit. The potential father starts to bring the drink to the potential mother, but steps on a knockoff Lego and loses control of the glass. The green liquid then slides across the counter towards the potential mother which will definitely make that suit go to the dry cleaners and need to dress in a new suit. The potential mother screams out “No!” the potential father screams out “No!” and the son screams out “No!” Then, boom, paper towel saves the day. Then the boy continues to play with the knockoff Legos and the potential father looks down to make sure he doesn’t step on another knockoff Lego. Simple solution: back away from the counter, so the drink slides on, with the now new potential of spilling to the floor, to which hopefully doesn’t have a carpet on it, but if it does, that’s an all-new problem, but for the moment, the white suit is saves and we don’t know what is on the floor.

            Next example, a potential family is eating a Chinese food dinner, with chopsticks (which I can’t use, to my embarrassment). The potential father asks the boy “You got it? It’s slippery” as the boy picks up a dumpling. The dumpling then slips off the boy’s chopsticks, falls to the table, flips a bowl of sauce, and slides off the table. The boy calls out “No!” the potential grandmother screams “No!” the potential father calls out “No!” and the dumpling drops off the table and we hear “Yes!” and realize it’s a dog who catches the dumpling and eats it in one bite (if the dog’s lucky, it took several takes and the dog got several dumplings). The paper towel appears and cleans up the mess, but hey, the damage is done. Then we see the boy with another dumpling and he says “Hey, look, I got it!” which seems to amuse the potential family. Okay, well, there is no simple solution, and sometimes the channel abbreviates the commercial and we don’t see the dog (which, sorry, ruins the commercial as the joke is no longer there).

            Okay, I’ve been going on for quite a while, hope you’re still with me. Well, you can go now, I’m done. I just sign off as Tim Cubbin… out!