Tag: advertising

Talk to the hand

Talk to the hand

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The_Shining_danny+2 Tony has some notes on the performances in this advertisement, Mrs Torrance.

Maybe one day somebody will explain why the people in tech advertising– especially white people in ads for east Asian companies– always seem to be deliberately portrayed as affectless, malfunctioning animatronic mannequins with a limited grasp of their own language (example 1, example 2). Surely the ideal user likes to see themselves as more human than their phone or gadget, not less? In this latest effort by what must be a Taiwanese company, judging by the surtitles and the reference to Taipei 101, an insane lady called Pretty Woman Smart Living talks to her finger like Danny from The Shining and never misses an opportunity to humiliate her boyfriend for his inability to do mostly pointless things with his phone. He should also stop cutting his own hair, or at least try looking in a…

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Say KO.NICHI.WA. to your secret

Say KO.NICHI.WA. to your secret

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I think a lot of the time weird Japan is weird, weird Japan knows it is weird and weird Japan is laughing about it, e.g.

Japan's food company Kagome employee Shigenori Suzuki tries to eat a tomato which is provided from the newly developed tomato dispenser for marathon runner

“We know. It’s OK, go ahead and laugh. We know.”

But sometimes Japan apparently has no idea it’s peculiar and creepy to invent an AI talkbot bear called (I think) Himitsuno Kumachan– Secret Bear?– then have it introduced in a stilted, badly dubbed video by the 100 Yen Shop version of David Duchovny. Remarkably, even I can tell that the Japanese is even more stiff and unnatural than the English.

“Mr J” also visits a coffee shop to have a little chat with his bear, which isn’t a strange and awkward thing for a grown man to do, no, not at all.

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Children are presumably the actual intended users for the product, as opposed to 100 Yen Shop David Duchovny. Here we see a genuine…

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Your chocolate is in my banana

Your chocolate is in my banana

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ChocoBanana2

If you search your heart you will recognise that your life has in truth been a sad and pitiful travesty because you’ve never found any way to conveniently inject bananas with chocolate sauce. Luckily Sonna! Chocobana-na is here to fill your bananas and to plug the aching abyss of your soul hole. そんな！チョコバナ～ナ: Sonna translates as “like that” or something similar, although I’m guessing they mean something more like “Such/So Chocobanana!”. You can also insert cream into your banana if you’re in the mood for even more symbolically charged fruit consumption than that which will ensue from the chocobana-na. You could try some jamu, or other gelatinous substances, but we need to face the fact that this product is called Sonna! Chocobana-na so I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept that chocolate is the orthodox choice. One thing to be said in the ad’s favour is that it’s relentlessly innocent…

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Eat, human / Eat human

Eat, human / Eat human

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Japan's food company Kagome employee Shigenori Suzuki tries to eat a tomato which is provided from the newly developed tomato dispenser for marathon runner "Tomachan" during a demonstration ahead of this weekend's Tokyo marathon in Tokyo on February 19, 2015. The hands free tomato eating machine was developed by Japanese artist Nobumichi Tosa and Tosa also developed a compact one "Mini-Tomachan". AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO Hands free tomato eating machine by Japanese artist Nobumichi Tosa. AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu Tsuno.

A Japanese vegetable juice company has made a backpack robot with a tomato-shaped head, designed to feed its wearer tomatoes… because of course they have. Another solution to a problem nobody in their right mind ever thought was a problem.

It is at least credited to an artist, so we’ll give him some leeway to not be entirely utilitarian, and possibly even satirical. In the picture above it looks disconcertingly like some kind of high tech kawaii BDSM ball gag get up, and even more disconcertingly like these mechanoid, fetor-powered parasites from the manga ギョGyo (Fish) by Junji Ito, who seems to have a boundless imagination for scatology, body horror and despair. Probably not the vibe that Kagome were going for.

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I hereby announce the blogging genre of Japanese misadventures with vegetables and/or…

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???est posts of 2014

???est posts of 2014

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Otherwise known as the now traditional lazy retrospective listicle

JoyceQuote2

We all know by now don’t we my little blackguards my pretty roadside fartflowers of the friggingfields my dearest filthy fuckbirds yes we know yes yes yes oh yes that the top pages on the site are invariably James Joyce’s paeans to using the tradesman’s entrance and the translation of Hokusai’s tentacle hentai. Tens of thousands of you, constantly, from all over the world, day and night. You must have massive right arms by now (if you’re right handed).

But there is so much more to explore, and some of it doesn’t even involve sexual fetishes. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

JANUARY

I have no idea what's going on in this picture.“What a shocking bad hat”, and other stupid 19th century memes.

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My kingdom for a wearable futon

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KingJim-01Japanese office supply company King Jim offer this lovely wearable futon and air mat set for a mere ¥4,500 (about £25, €30 or $40), because Japan. It’s ideal for those times when you’ve come to hold your own life and dignity so cheap that you’re willing to voluntarily wear a futon at your workplace and sleep next to your desk like a dog. The title in the blue box says “kiru futon & eaamatto” (literally “wear futon and air mat”). The kit also contains an air pump. I once slept on a legit air bed for far longer than is sensible and it nearly crippled me, so I’m guessing this glorified packing material is hardly better than the office utility carpet from which the air mat is supposed to protect you.

KingJim-04

Stylish cuffs, no? It’s nearly as hip as turning up selvedge jeans, except you’re wearing a futon therefore you…

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When moustached Japanese children make popcorn with maracas

When moustached Japanese children make popcorn with maracas

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LET’S COOKING AND DANCING!

Maracas de Popcorn I hope the Japanese never learn that in English “let’s” doesn’t just go directly with any verb you can think of. It’s such a charming error.

Maracas de Popcorn is a Japanese product for making popcorn with maracas. Who hasn’t, at some point in their life, wanted to make popcorn with a special pair of maracas? I daresay the company condicted extensive research and discovered to their horror that a commercial void existed, a howling abysmal hellscape in which maracas are just a Latin American hand instrument and nobody can ever make popcorn inside them. Coming soon: Xylophone de Toast, Bassoon de Pancakes, and Bongos de Beefburger. I think at this point the Japanese are being deliberately random and weird to save face because the rest of the world would be so terribly disappointed if they just made popcorn without measuring it in a golden crown…

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Hello Cat-headed Person from Suburbs of London

Hello Cat-headed Person from Suburbs of London

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HKittyOver the past few days many bloggers and even newspapers have gushed that Hello Kitty is apparently a “girl” and not a cat, although for no adequately explained reason she has a cat head. Maybe I’m sheltered, but I don’t know any girls who love to bake and have cat heads. She’s officially and canonically got no mouth, so why or perhaps more cogently how is she so enthusiastic about baked goods anyway?

What none of them have done is behave like a real journalist and really look into Hello Kitty’s background. And while we’re on the subject, newspapers and so-called professional journalists, WTF? This blog here is explicitly dedicated to silly stuff, and I don’t get paid for doing it. Hello Kitty possibly not being a cat isn’t current affairs or headline news by any stretch of the most overcaffeinated imagination. Nor is the Great British Bake Off. Stop…

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You and me, happy meat

You and me, happy meat

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(Customary wow, somehow it’s been nearly two months since I posted anything apologetic preamble.)

Nikuniku1 Tanpakushitsu ga tarinai no ne / Isn’t your intake of protein sufficient?

Our Japanese cousins– specifically the Japan National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations– have again excelled themselves in applying the kawaii aesthetic to a wholly inappropriate subject. Why are you so “gloomy”, as demonstrated by the girl in this clip? It’s because you don’t get enough “domestic meat” inside you. Yes, the first few lines of this video are “Kokusan no oniku / kokusan no oniku/ Nikku niku”… “Domestic meat / domestic meat / Meat, meat” and in case you were wondering, the subtle message is that you should eat lots of domestic meat. Domestic meat appears to be laced with a combination of Ecstacy and LSD, but this is BONUS SUPAA NIHON CANDY FLIPPU FEATURE and not a defect. Luckily the protein-starved girl receives…

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The worst of Adoxoblog

The worst of Adoxoblog

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HalloThereCropped72HALLO, THERE! This is the 200th post on Adoxoblog. Choosing to celebrate that milestone with call backs to the ten least read articles on the site is not as perverse as it might seem. Many posts have tens of thousands of views– which I think is pretty good for a blog that isn’t really about anything in particular, never has cat GIFs on it and almost never mentions tits– but some pages have almost no views, and there are hundreds of other things to read here as well besides the greatest hits. So may I present to you the top ten least wanted on this blog in the hope that you’ll be encouraged to seek out some of Adoxoblog’s less frequented areas.

Mushuda I and Mushuda II. Almost no text here, which is probably why hardly anybody ever finds these pages. However, if you read this blog regularly then…

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Short Skirt/Long Download

Short Skirt/Long Download

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“Anime personifications” of random things are unfortunately an established phenomenon in Asia, via (of course) Japan. They’re rarely sane and often pervy. Now Microsoft has come along to smear the anime personification scene with their own unique stink of creepy and slightly out of touch trying too hard uncle-ness. This goggle-eyed, barely legal character in the orthodox moe style– who apparently also needs to wear a compression garment on her arm to manage the excruciating pain of her RSI… nice touch, lucky nobody at Microsoft noticed– is Inori Aizawa (藍澤 祈) and she has a Facebook page where she talks as if she’s a real person:

Hey everyone! My name is Inori and you can think of me as a personification of Internet Explorer. When I was younger, I used to be a clumsy, slow and awkward girl. However, just like the story of ugly duckling, people told me that…

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Badvertising

Badvertising

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Of course there’s no nation on Earth with a monopoly on baffling, pointless, annoying, off-putting and inept advertising. The advertising industry as a whole is one of the things that the planet would be better off without, the unscrupulous deceiving the unwary. In my experience, though, there’s no inexplicably bad advert like an inexplicably bad Asian advert. As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s often because the product being advertised is a solution to a problem that nobody in their right mind thinks is a problem. That’s the case in the following advertisement, for the “Unchoken Lucky Dog” money box. Tortured puns are quite common in Japanese product naming. This one doubles up on kanji for “lucky saving dog” and “unko” (poo). Yes, basically the dog eats your coins and then craps them out into a hole. I’m not sure where we’re meant to understand the luck coming into play. Is…

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“A shock-fest for your scare endurance”

“A shock-fest for your scare endurance”

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theabominablesnowmanafifx7“DEMON-PROWLER OF MOUNTAIN SHADOWS… DREADED MAN-BEAST OF TIBET… THE TERROR OF ALL THAT IS HUMAN!!

A great poster for the 1957 Hammer film production ‘The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas‘. I’ve not seen the film and I hadn’t heard of it before I found this poster, but look at the pedigree: directed by prolific Hammer hack Val Guest, written by Nigel Kneale of the Quatermass series, starring Peter Cushing. Apparently it was originally a BBC television play, which I should imagine was ineptly made for about £5 as was their wont.

It’s also fascinating how quaint warnings like “WE DARE YOU TO SEE IT ALONE!” are for things like this, half a century on. Most of these films wouldn’t frighten, shock or disturb anybody over the age of ten nowadays.

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Smells Like Papal Spirits

Smells Like Papal Spirits

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An endorsement by His Holiness the Pope from Graphic, 1899, for Mariani Wine. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 until 1903 and he had a ticket to ride on the white line highway. The product was pretty much just coca leaves steeped in ethanol, with about six or seven milligrams of cocaine content per fluid ounce. So when the advertisement says Mariani Wine “fortifies, strengthens, stimulates and refreshes” they’re probably right, albeit in a not strictly medicinal Studio 54 style. Other celebrity Mariani space cadets included H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Edison.

As funny as it seems now, until after the First World War substances such as cocaine, Heroin, laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) and Chlorodyne (laudanum, cannabis and chloroform) were widely available to all and sundry, children included. There were ads recommending Heroin as a cough medicine, and laudanum as a remedy for a baby’s teething…

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Large Papier Mache Heads

Large Papier Mache Heads

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demoulin_catalog_cover

“To be worn over head and rest on shoulders. Full size. Fine natural painted. Heads kept in stock can be shipped on short notice.”

Freemasons: plotting in secret to run the world and conceal an age-old conspiracy, or getting drunk and running around wearing a donkey head? On the evidence of this old catalogue of “Burlesque and Side Degree Specialties, Paraphernalia and Costumes” by De Moulin Bros. & Co., I’m afraid the latter scenario seems much more likely. Sorry, conspiracy fans.

OR MAYBE I’M A NWO REPTOID TOO AND I’M IN THE PAY OF THE ILLUMINATI. STAY ASLEEP.

This is more hard drive detritus. I don’t know where these images came from or why I originally stored them. I know only that they’re from late 2001 or early 2002, and they therefore predate the books or sites that came out over the past few years with nutty material from…

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Yeah that’s the perfect roll roll roll perfect roll

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Let’s reluctantly step away for a moment from the lovely gay animals of Gay Animal Fortnight, and take a look at one of the most wretchedly un-fun depictions of human beings supposedly having fun that I’ve had the misfortune to witness for quite some time. Can you make it through all seventy two seconds of this without frantically denuding your head of all sensory organs using any available implement?

This is the kitchen of the Overlook Hotel, where you’ll roll the perfect roll for ever, and ever… andever. Either that or they’re all so manic because the sushi is laced with PCP. Shortly after the scenes shown here they all shaved their own faces off with potato peelers and then rolled themselves in the perfect roll and ate each other.

These poor models are clearly at the very nadir of their careers and we should pity them for…

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Commercial interlude

Commercial interlude

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Normal nonsense will be resumed shortly, and if you’re on the front page you can scroll down to see the newest posts as normal. In common with most bloggers I do this in my free time with no great expectations because I enjoy it and because I relish the knowledge that thousands of people share my interest in the things that I post, and probably also because I’m a bit of an attention whore. As many of you probably do, I use an ad blocker and I tend to switch right off when people try to sell me stuff or talk to me about my responsibilities, so I understand that some of you might not want to hear this little lecture from me.

Also in common with most bloggers I have to make a living and I rarely make any money from blogging, although in my case one of my…

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Hello sailor

Hello sailor

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Illustrations from the Jno. J Mitchell Publishing Company’s The Sartorial Art Journal, intended to assist tailors in their consultations with clients about bespoke menswear. I’m assuming they weren’t intended to be but these look rather homoerotic to me, in their own splendidly buttoned-up fin de siécle kind of way. Check out this little cruise:

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