Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Sad Snackers

I am deeply troubled by the commercial for a new (?) product called "Hot Pockets Snackers." Several "cool" young people are sitting in an apartment just relaxing and enjoying some "Hot Pockets Snackers." You can tell they are cool because they have a guitar and a bicycle in their apartment, and one of them is wearing a knit cap indoors. The announcer suggests that the "Hot Pockets Snackers" are so much like restaurant food that they should "come with an annoying waitress." Then suddenly by magic an "annoying waitress" appears and "annoys" everyone by being cheerful and doing a little dance. The cool people look on in mute horror (we must assume) with their cool blank faces which cannot express emotion. Part of the heartbreak is thinking of the big wigs in the "Hot Pockets Snackers" corporate boardroom getting excited about how much the cool kids with guitars and bicycles are going to love their "Hot Pockets Snackers" and how they will really "relate" to this commercial that speaks their language of wearing knit caps indoors, opening up the whole "Hot Pockets Snackers" experience to a brand new demographic. The executive officers of "Hot Pockets Snackers" just want to be loved! The other sad part is about the working woman who tries to be upbeat and is implicitly mocked and scorned by the makers of the "Hot Pockets Snackers." This "annoying waitress" who has to go out and make a living probably has little time for cooking and might be forced at some point into a gruesome situation when all she has time for before heading out the door is a bag of "Hot Pockets Snackers." (Note: I couldn't find an actual image of the commercial, but I think this "beatnik" gets the feeling across.)