B'ings: Bounty Paper Towel Commercials Part 2

 

            Hey, you’ve found your way into From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin! I’m your guide, Tim Cubbin!

            So, we’re doing this: another B’ing! If you say you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve done about ten others of this, so feel free to check out other posts, but finish reading this first. Oh, all right, I keep this blog G-Rated, so I’m not going to write out the whole “B’ing” word and now I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. Of course, some of you already have read my B’ings, so, yeah, you know, but I just had to tell the newbies what I’m talking about, and thank you for your patience.

            So, you may have noticed this is Bounty Paper Towels Commercials Part 2, which obviously means I did another post on this topic (okay, maybe not obviously, I might be tricking you into BELIEVING I’ve done a part one when I actually haven’t. But yes, I did do another post about Bounty Paper Towels Commercials, so I’m not lying). Well, I talked about the commercials four months ago, but there have been new commercials since, so we’re going to talk about them now and I’m going to complain about them. There are some of you who have possibly seen them, so you’ll know what I’m talking about, but some of you don’t watch cable television of DVR your television shows and zip through the commercial breaks so have never seen the commercials I’m about to talk about and will now hear about these commercials for the first time, and if you really want to see them, someone on YouTube probably has them on their pages, so you can look them up and watch them.

            Okay, the first commercial we’re going to analyze is what I will call “The Lottery Ticket.” So it starts with a guy watching a television. He is holding a lottery ticket, listening to the lottery numbers on the television. His wife/girlfriend (the commercial doesn’t confirm their relationship) is going through the mail. He has a drink on the table in front of him, by the way, and this is EXTREMELY important for more of the commercials. The numbers are called one by one. As the numbers are called, he repeats the numbers. He then realizes all his numbers have been called and that they all match, he puts the ticket down and calls out “We won! We won!” and throws up his arms. As he throws up his hands, he knocks over the glass. The drink starts to flow towards the lottery ticket placed down on the table. He screams a long, drawn out “NO!” and throws up his arms. His wife/girlfriend throws the mail in the air and screams a long, drawn out “NO!” The man on the television who read the numbers throws up his hands in front of him and screams a long, drawn out “NO!” Then a roll of paper towels is placed down on the table and the announcer speaks on a voice over (I can’t remember it all, but says that it cleans up messes in several words that probably aren’t needed). Afterwards, the wife/girlfriend walks over to the husband/boyfriend, snatches up the ticket and says “I’ll take that.” I think there’s another voice over, and then the commercial ends. Now, there are three things that bother me in this commercial. First is the ticket on the table. If your winning lottery ticket is on the table, snatch it up as soon as possible. Throwing up your arms in the air while a drink creeps towards your winning lottery ticket is pretty dumb. He totally had enough time to pick it up before the drink reached it. I mean, honestly. The second thing is the man on the television. Why is a man who reads the lottery numbers throwing out his hands and screaming “NO!” when he’s on the TELEVISION? He’s not there, he can’t see the drink creeping towards the winning ticket, so how does he know what’s going on in the room (presumably the kitchen? He has absolutely no reason to scream “NO!” as if he’s there and can see what’s happening. The third thing that bothers me is the roll of Bounty paper towels put down in front of the spill to prevent the ticket from getting soaked. If this happens, you don’t have time to put a paper towel in front of the spill before the winning ticket gets ruined, especially if YOUR ARMS ARE IN THE AIR! I don’t even think that’s possible to get a paper towel in front of a spill, even if your arms aren’t in the air. So, to me, the commercial is just superiorly flawed.

            A second commercial finds a woman looking at a tablet with a younger man (presumably her son) over her shoulder. She is swiping through pictures on an online dating site. She swipes left, saying “No, no, no,” then stops and says “I like him!” She also has a drink next to her tablet. In the process of swiping, she knocks over the drink. The liquid proceeds to spill and creep towards the tablet. The woman screams a long, drawn out “NO!” The younger man screams a long and drawn out “NO!” The man on the tablet screams out a long and drawn out “NO!” Que up the narration and saving of the tablet from the spill the same as the prior commercial. The end of the commercial is brought on as the younger man says “He’s an eight,” to which the older woman says with an emphasis “He’s a nine.” We now have pretty much the same complaints; pick up the tablet, the man on the tablet screaming “No!” when the picture on the tablet is a still image, and getting the tablet protected with paper towels when there’s no possible way to get a paper towel in front of it. Again, like the prior commercial, I feel it’s flawed.

            I do believe that those are the only two new commercials since my previous Bounty paper towels commercial. And if any more commercials hit the television, I’ll probably revisit this for a part 3. So, if you’re here, you’ve made it through my stupidity and are THE BEST! I mean, this whole post is pointless, but I did it anyway, so if you’re here, you either like me or are just very patient. So you can expect more stupidity from me, including more B’ings, prose and graphic novel reviews, short stories, poetry, editorials (I am a certified journalist with no actual current job and I do this blog with no pay out of the kindness of my heart), and plenty of other content, so please come back for more pieces of my mind, and follow, comment (which NO ONE has ever done before), retweet, whatever you can on the platform you used to find this post, and I now say to you, goodbye and Tim Cubbin… out!

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!